Oxfordshire has been recognised as a national leader in food sustainability after receiving a prestigious Sustainable Food Places Gold Award – with the county’s achievement reflecting years of collaboration between organisations across the local food system, including researchers at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI).
The Gold Award is the highest level of recognition in the Sustainable Food Places (SPF) programme and is held by just seven places across the UK. Oxfordshire’s award recognises work bringing together local government, communities, farmers, businesses, public health teams and researchers to build a healthier, fairer and more sustainable food system.
ECI’s Food Systems Transformation Group has worked closely with Good Food Oxfordshire (GFO), the county’s food partnership, on a number of research and knowledge-sharing initiatives over many years.
ECI researchers collaborated with GFO through the BeanMeals project, which explored opportunities to increase the consumption of pulses and support more sustainable food systems.
GFO has also contributed to the ECI’s IFSTAL programme, which has been building food systems knowledge and skills across the university and beyond since 2015.
Roger Sykes, Food Systems Programme Manager at ECI, said:
We have worked with Good Food Oxfordshire for many years, including through research projects such as BeanMeals and the IFSTAL programme. Bringing researchers and practitioners together is an important part of understanding the challenges facing our food system and developing solutions that work in practice.”
The Gold Award recognises Oxfordshire’s wider efforts to create a more sustainable and resilient food system. Among the initiatives highlighted by GFO were OxFarmToFork, which connects local agroecological producers with institutional buyers, and the Oxfordshire Living Lab (FEAST), which uses community-led research to explore barriers to healthy eating.
The award reflects the strength of Oxfordshire’s food network and the value of bringing together research, policy and practice to address complex food system challenges.
Chloe Smee, Sustainable Food Places Partnership Lead and one of the SFP Gold Award assessors, said:
Good Food Oxfordshire has shown what a mature, trusted food partnership can achieve. The sheer volume of care they have invested in building participative, cross-sector governance is immense.”
ECI’s Food Systems Transformation Group continues to work with partners across Oxfordshire, nationally and globally, to support research and learning that can help drive transformation towards healthier, more sustainable food systems.