Food Cardiff
Sustainable Food Places Member: Going for Gold!
Food Cardiff believes that the food we eat has a huge impact on life in Cardiff – not just on people’s health, but on communities and businesses, individual farmers and growers, and the environment too.
Good food creates strong, healthy, resilient communities. It acts as a hub for connecting people and projects working to promote healthy, sustainable and ethical food; acts as a voce for wider change as well as being the catalyst for changing the local food system in Cardiff.
Food Cardiff now comprises 127 individuals across 74 organisations and has a strategy board that includes a range of members, including Cardiff Council, Cardiff & Vale University Health Board, Wrap Cymru, Riverside Real Food, Public Health Wales, Action in Caerau and Ely (ACE) as well as many others. Through this network of dedicated partners, Cardiff is driving change at a city level and is working to tackle some of today’s biggest social, economic and environmental issues.
In June 2021, Food Cardiff was awarded Sustainable Food Places Silver Status, becoming the first place in Wales and one of only six places in the UK to achieve the accolade, recognising the city’s pioneering work in promoting healthy and sustainable food. In July 2021, Food Cardiff’s achievements were also recognised at the annual Peas Please Prize Ceremony, with Cardiff winning the Veg City Prize. This award acknowledged the city’s impactful and integrated place-based approach to increasing veg uptake at a local level.
Pearl Costello is Food Cardiff’s co-ordinator and is grateful to the people of Cardiff for taking such an active role in the food partnership’s success. “The recent Silver award is a testament to the huge movement we’ve seen from citizens, groups, businesses and institutions to make healthy and sustainable food the norm, for everyone, in Cardiff” says Pearl.
“Throughout the city, we’ve seen so much varied activity….families growing cress on the windowsill for the first time; neighbourhoods setting up food co-ops or pantries; the food businesses supplying our city with excellent food as well as institutions making Veg Cities pledges and designing sustainable menus.
“We’re really excited that the next step on Food Cardiff’s journey – the Good Food Strategy 2021-24 – has been co-designed by thousands of people in Cardiff. This city-wide plan has already been recognised as the widest and most inclusive strategy in terms of its engagement across the whole of the UK – and we plan to go even further as we aim for Sustainable Food Places Gold status, knowing that creating a good food city is something for us all to be part of.”
