Highland Council serves up detailed response to Holyrood's consultation on boosting local food use
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
THE affordability of local food is currently a disadvantage to its use according to Highland Council in a draft response to a Scottish Government consultation on its local food strategy.
And the council has challenged Holyrood to go further in its commitment to reduce the barriers to local food for those on low incomes or experiencing food insecurity.
The response was being considered by the council’s climate change working group on Wednesday October 21
The council response states: “Financial support to local authorities to enable local food and support to local growers is vital. Highland Council are committed to our community food growing strategy and in providing support to the allotments and community growing projects and have created a time-limited staff post to do this. The amount of money currently committed to support community food growing is very small.”
The consultation invites contributions about how everyone involved in food in Scotland could work together to build a food system based around quality local production and short and circular supply chains, to make high quality Scottish produce available to all.
The consultation also seeks views on learning from Covid in relation to local food and also examples of good practice in relation to local food provision.
The council cited Inverness Botanic Gardens’ partnership with Inverness Foodstuff and the Crown Cupboard food larder. The Botanics switched from growing flowers to growing food for the local foodbank and larder during the first wave of the pandemic, and the partnerships are ongoing and developing.
The council said: “People are far more aware of the fragility of supply chains and therefore have greater interest in the availability of locally provided food.
Nairn Academy, Tarradale PS, Inverness High School were mentioned in the council’s response as examples of good food practice.
The Scottish Government asks for comments under three pillars' outlined below with Highland Council’s response:
*Connecting people with food:
The council urges financial support for community food growing, as well as making it easier for councils to reduce costs to groups seeking planning permission.
It calls for more support for food education, and backs the government’s aim to make food education part of the national curriculum.
The council said: “It is important that we grow and nurture the next generation of farmers, growers and producers and food is such an important part of all children’s health and wellbeing. We need children growing, preparing and cooking in school from age 5, all the way through the system. In the way that PE is essential, so should food education.
*Connecting Scottish producers with buyers:
The council urged support to farmers to diversify the use of land to meet local needs in balance with export needs, and incentives for local food production.
Improve local processing facilities and highlight the loss of abattoirs in Highland from 11 to one since 2006.
The council said: “Regulations around abattoirs etc are prohibitive and have discouraged many local operators, which also has a knock-on impact on local meat production and consumption, thus having a drastic effect on the carbon intensity of meat consumed.”
Bring in levers for local authorities to better enable farms shops and in-town purchasing options for local food; refer to other countries that could aid our development of better supply models.
*Harnessing public sector procurement
Give support to public sector to streamline procurement processes that enable local suppliers to provide local food, and highlight the need for this work on local food to work in tandem with education so that young people can forge futures in local food production.
