Campaign to promote city veg consumption

Fourteen cities have received funding to run Veg Cities campaigns, and Glasgow and Nottingham are launching their campaigns this month

Veg Cities is a campaign by Sustainable Food Cities, led by Sustain in partnership with the Peas Please initiative, with the aim of supporting local action to increase the availability and consumption of vegetables. The initial 14 Veg Cities are Aberdeen, Bournemouth and Poole, Brighton and Hove, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Hull, London Borough of Lewisham, Luton, Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Oxford and Sheffield.

Glasgow is launching its campaign at a community growing event. The city already has around 90 community gardens, but the Glasgow Community Food Network is advocating for more. Veg City Glasgow will work to get food-growing recognised in the City Development Plan so that more land is released, establish a Growers’ Cooperative, and organise pop-up markets, Meet the Grower events and a Chef Challenge to create the best local food dish.

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Alongside food-growing and social eating spaces, the Nottingham Good Food Partnership is organising a Children’s Veg Power! Festival where hundreds of children will be able to taste local seasonal vegetables and take home their own decorated pot of veg to grow. This event will be followed by a Travelling Veg Show going into primary schools, festivals and community markets, and food events to tackle holiday hunger.

Some Veg Cities campaigns will concentrate their efforts in areas of higher deprivation, setting up veg stands, organising cooking classes and promoting Healthy Start Vouchers, which subsidise vegetable purchases. Others will be more focused on growing, working towards getting more locally-grown veg into local supply chains.

To find out more and get involved go to https://www.vegcities.org/

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Steve Ott

Steve Ott is editor of Kitchen Garden magazine and started his career as a professional grower, producing everything from cut flowers to vegetables. He has been growing fruit and veg all his life and spends most of his spare time in his garden in the East Midlands. He loves to experiment with crops and varieties he has never grown before and when he isn’t gardening is to be found out in the countryside bird watching and walking his dog Ted.