Thinking about food within the system.

As the Stuttgart Food Policy Council, we are partners in the EU project FOSTER food systems. A key question here is how the agricultural and food system in urban areas such as Stuttgart can be made more resilient, regional and climate-friendly? In view of the upcoming reorientation of EU agricultural policies, how can solutions be proposed to policymakers and administrators?

These questions were the central theme of the FOSTER summer school, which brought together food initiatives and academia last week at the Kulturinsel Stuttgart. Many thanks to Joachim Petzold for his hospitality; the Kulturinsel is a fantastic venue for conferences! Many thanks also to Tanja Goldstein for her hospitality at Heaven’s Kitchen during the sensational closing dinner (see photo).

Together with our four allied civil society food initiatives in Barcelona, Novi Sad (Serbia), the Netherlands and Hungary, we at the Stuttgart City-Region Food Policy Council are well on the way to addressing the requirements for a resilient, sustainable food system at various policy levels and contributing to recommendations for future EU agricultural funding. A big thank you to our network partners Jan Kohlmeyer and Sabine Weick from the City of Stuttgart’s Climate Protection Department, who, with their presentation ‘The City as a Catalyst in a Climate-Friendly Food System’, provided an insight into the city’s climate protection tools.

Together with the around 50 participants at the international summer school, we discussed how bio-regional food in canteens can create regional value and bring about transformation. From agricultural production in the fields, through processing in mills or fresh-cut facilities, and bio-regional wholesale, right through to motivated kitchen staff in commercial kitchens.

The FOSTER network, in which we have key sparring partners in researchers from the universities of Oxford, Wageningen and Amsterdam, as well as the team led by Junior Professor Verena Seufert at the Institute of Agricultural Social Sciences at the University of Hohenheim, serves as an important pillar of support and source of inspiration for the Food Policy Council in shaping our future strategic direction and substantive work.

The international guests of the FOSTER summer school were also taken to vibrant sites run by ERS network partners: one destination was the site of the Iba 27 project ‘Agriculture meets manufacturing Fellbach’, where we were given a guided tour of the fields and the industrial estate by Iba 27 project leader Grazyna Adamcyc-Arns. Fellbach was once known as Stuttgart’s market garden town. On the tracks where the light rail now runs, fresh vegetables used to be transported daily to the wholesale market in Stuttgart Wangen, back when there were no daily lorryloads of fruit and vegetables arriving from southern Europe. Urban sprawl, leisure traffic and the dwindling availability of land for growing vegetables are now crying out for new, modern solutions for an integrated system that combines the cultivation of food for local consumption with the needs of recreational spaces, housing and industry. There are inspiring designs from landscape architecture firms and students at regional universities. Unfortunately, the IBA 27 Fellbach project is currently on hold, meaning that the plans will unfortunately not be implemented in time for the 2027 festival year.

Together with our academic and industry partners, we are confident that, as the Food Policy Council, we can achieve a strengthening of urban-regional value creation. In the agriculture and food sector, we want to continue to set a good example of how a shift away from the traditional food system – dominated by powerful food retailers and national caterers – towards a self-reliant urban-regional system can be achieved. This also requires appropriate funding instruments that place greater emphasis on the complex and intensive food system in urban areas. Further discussions on this are scheduled for July at EU level.

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Photo Headline: Closing dinner at Heaven’s Kitchen in Stuttgart

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