Food System Innovation and Sustainability – Interview Transcripts From UK-Based Business and Practitioners Talking About Sustainable Innovation in the Food System, 2021

The SIRIUS project is an international and interdisciplinary research project that studies innovation in (and for) sustainable urban food systems. The project is doing so by exploring regions in China, one region in the United Kingdom and one in the Netherlands. For this data set, we have conducted 17 interviews in the UK on innovations in the food systems. Together, these will allow us (and any other users of this data set) to explore the role of sustainable innovations in urban food systems. The interviews were conducted with organisations, companies, start-ups, NGO’s, or civil groups which we believe to be innovative with respect to food system change. Innovation can be understood as a range of novel alternatives: e.g. a new practice, a novel process, a new network formation, a new technology, or a new understanding or discourse. In the interview guide, we have used the concept [organisation] to describe all earlier mentioned actors: organisations, companies, start-ups, NGOs, and civil groups. In our experience, the interviews last between 40-60 min.

Sustainable urbanisation is coupled with the sustainability and resilience of 'glocal' food production and consumption. Economic transformation and climate change have brought complex and dynamic challenges for urban food systems, while new urban economies and social innovations are emerging in various countries to tackle food problems. However, identifying and assessing transition pathways of future urban food systems remain primarily neglected in studies on urban sustainability. Local planners and policy-makers seek scientific guidance and learning opportunities about mechanisms to navigate towards sustainable urban food systems. This project will develop interdisciplinary methods, innovative understandings, and practical managerial insights bridging socio-spatial contexts in China and Europe. It will shed light on trends of urban food production and consumption in Chinese and European cities, and identify the natural and societal factors that will influence the vulnerability and resilience of urban food supply chains. This project will reveal how new business models, social entrepreneurship, and other innovations in the urban food sector are evolving locally. Our research outcomes will enhance the governance capacity in transitioning urban food systems, and establish learning arenas that illuminate similarities and differences of urban planning and decision-making on urban food system governance in China and Europe. The UK team will specifically be responsible or closely involved in two work packages (WP2 and WP4). WP 2 will look into the changing patterns of global supply chains of specific categories of food products in each case city. The project team will work with the leading global food brands and local suppliers/vendors to extract food supply chain data at the city level. Based on the business-level data sets, the team will apply GIS-based data monitoring or processing to track the food flows among place of interests (POIs) in city regions. This will establish a solid foundation to estimate the potential impact or even disruptions on those supply chains due to natural climate change and socioeconomic transformation, globally and locally. To be more specific, collected data will be overlapped with Remote Sensing data sets wherever appropriate to track urban food flows (e.g., processing, packaging, grocery, household, waste) geographically. WP4 will empirically examine how the case study cities (intend to, or not yet recognise to) govern the transformation towards a sustainable urban food system. It will initiate a critical science-policy discussion on whether the cities currently have the necessary capacities, or whether new governance arrangements might be required to address the sustainability challenges and transformation demands of the urban food system as identified in WPs 1-3. We will explore the histories, presents, and outcomes of urban food governance and policy implementations, in particular, to analyze the governance of urban food systems in the four case cities. This will provide a trans-local understanding of the mechanisms through which urban food policies are mobilised and altered in various places and how these processes shape food systems in cities. we will then analyse how actors in the case cities translate urban food policies into concrete practices to initiate changes in the urban food system, and how food sustainability, resilience or innovations are prioritised politically (or not). Based on multi-level governance theories and content analysis of institutional documents on governance strategies, the vital urban actors in the public sector and their strategies (e.g. leapfrogging, experimental governance) and concrete practices of implementation will be studied.

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