We submitted Our response to the draft London Food Strategy on 5th July 2018. In this blogpost, we point you in the direction of why we said what we did.
We sent earlier versions of our response out for review to over 30 people (17 responded) and we took on board most of their suggestions. There were, however, three significant areas where we beg to differ, and have written three blogposts explaining why:
In this blogpost, we explain why we didn’t use the words sustainability or resilience (or their grammatical forms; instead we talk of How to KEEP London’s citizens fed and fed well.
***
In this blogpost Giving civic leaders information they need . . . or switching them off? we explain our thinking behind where our response is along a pessimistic-optimistic continuum.
People switch off if they get too much bad news, so tales of impending doom are easily dismissed. Yet the picture we put forward is grim, and the info in the supporting endnotes deeply concerning.
Our take, however, is that potentially difficult-to-handle food system events will soon be affecting the UK. Thus it’s better Sadiq Khan and other leaders like him have a glimmer about what’s on the radar before any crisis unfolds.
In a different context (an Observer interview with Andrew Rawnsley about her recently published book Fascism: A warning) Madeleine Albright said: Some say this is alarmist. That is the purpose. I’m concerned about complacency. This is a very deliberate warning.
Yup, those words echo in what’s we’re saying on the not unrelated matter of food supplies to the world’s urban populations.
***
In this blogpost, we explain our decisions about where to focus the attention of civic leaders in this blogpost: The status quo, vested interests and a simple metric in the light of other hefty responsibilities on their agenda.