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Let's talk about food: the conference at Urbact city festival 2022

Edited on

20 July 2022
Read time: 1 minute

From 14 to 16 June 2022 at La Cité Fertile in Pantin, Greater Paris, the URBACT City Festival returned in live format. This edition was inspired by European cities’ actions for climate and sustainable integrated urban development. This year’s edition was the first carbon-neutral URBACT programme-level event.

The participation to this event has involved several Urbact projects, and for Next Agri network, our Ad Hoc Expert Andrea Patrucco shared the Milan experience with other cities on the issue of public procurement and urban agriculture.

The Festival hosted three plenary panel discussions on:

  • Cities in the front line of the climate emergency;
  • Sustainable, human-centred digital transitions;
  • How gender equality creates sustainable cities.

Therefore, sixteen parallel thematic sessions were organized in the different creative spaces of La Cité Fertile on topics as diverse as rehumanising cities, implementing the SDGs, food, sustainable tourism, greening, just transitions and many more. 

Here you can view the videos from the livestreamed panels and sessions, and  here you can find the presentations from the parallel sessions.

The City of Milan with Andrea Patrucco as ad hoc expert of Next Agri, with the City of Mouans-Sartoux (Gilles Perole), Coimbra intermunicipal Region (Jorge Brito) and Eurocities (Anja De Cunto) participated actively to the panel “Let’s talk about food: bringing EU and local policies closer to each other”, moderated by Marcelline Bonneau.

The panel shared concrete insights of activities carried out by cities and supported by international organisations for the transition towards more sustainable food systems within these complex realities. 

The participants joined the discussion to agree and disagree on the current state of the art and the future regarding the role of food systems in addressing the climate emergency, the relevance of the Farm to Fork strategy and the crucial issue of procurement in food.

The main conclusions are:

  • the need to actually promote the transition toward sustainable food systems;
  • the promotion of horizontal (across silos) and vertical (multi-level) integration;
  • the focus on landscape planning and rural-urban connection;
  • the importance of canteens and healthy diets.

The panel was also an opportunity to promote a petition promoted by the Municipality of Mouans Sartoux for a Food Expection in Public Procurement. 

Written by Andrea Patrucco, ad hoc expert Next Agri

Cristina Sossan's picture Submitted by Cristina Sossan on