Growing Food for London conference
In June 2008, London Food Link ran a sell-out conference at London's City Hall, called Growing Food for London. The event examined urban agriculture; food security for London; food's role in preserving the capital’s open spaces; improving the health of Londoners, and potentially reducing the distance that London’s food has travelled.
A detailed report of conference is now available on the Sustain website.
Through a series of presentations from British and international experts, including academics, growers, and other experts we explored what opportunities there are for producing more food and how this can be achieved in a sustainable way. Attendees included town planners, growers, architects, policy makers and many more involved in the capital’s food sector. This event was jointly organised with the London Parks and Green Spaces Forum, as part of the London Festival of Architecture.
Session 1 – Setting the scene
Session 2 – Making growing economically viable
Session 3 – Expanding growing to new spaces
Session 4 - The future of community gardens, city farms & roof tops
Edible Cities
This event follows on from the Sustain report Edible Cities (downloadable from www.sustainweb.org/publications), detailing the visit of London officials to urban agriculture projects kindly supported by the US Embassy.
The conference included an unexpected appearance from London’s major Boris Johnson who publicly announced his support for urban agriculture projects in the capital. He has since shown his support for the new Capital Growth campaign, which has grown from much that was discussed at the conference and many of the new friendships made.
