Results of the Seminar on Local Food Systems and Urban Agriculture

Submitted by laborate on Fri, 22/02/2013 - 19:13 GMT.

Last Friday 15th of February at 19:00 h civil servants of the Provincial Council and members of local NGOs, the Rural Development Group of Lugo, students and researchers of the University of Santiago de Compostela and other organizations and individuals who were interested, attended a seminar at the Interpretation Centre of the Biosphere Reserve Terras do Miño which was organized by students of the Master in Sustainable Land Planning (MTT) of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). The event was aimed at disseminating the results which were obtained in an international workshop on local food systems that took place from the 22nd to the 27th of October, where the students of the MTT participated with students of the Dutch university of Van Hall Larenstein.

Resultados do Seminario sobre Sistemas Alimentarios Locais e Agricultura Urbana, foto 1

During the event, the students made two presentations: the first one was oriented to introduce local food systems and their importance by the time of facing the challenges related to food safety and sovereignty that nowadays socioeconomic situation imposes. In the second one the students showed the results of their works with the Dutch students in the international workshop. These results were based on four scenarios for the city of Lugo.

Both presentations were accompanied by a series of group dynamics, oriented to encourage the audience to reflect on the concepts and ideas which were exposed and on how these concepts could be used increase the sustainability of Lugo city and its surroundings.

The dynamics started with a formulation of wishes from the attendants on how they would like the future of Lugo to be. These wishes were grouped around 5 main ideas:

  • A greener Lugo
  • A Lugo with a higher life quality
  • A Lugo where agriculture and land uses are more integrated
  • A Lugo with a higher food sovereignty
  • A more sustainable Lugo

Later, some strategies were proposed to obtain theses five objectives, taking a s a basis local food systems. The attendants assessed these strategies upon their feasibility on the short (1) medium (2) and long (3) term. The strategies which received most of the votes where:

  • (1) Foster Praza de Abastos market
  • (1) Use organic waste to make compost
  • (2) Create new vegetable gardens inside the urban core (including the area inside the wall), create selling points next to the vegetable gardens with flexible timetables
  • (2) Make awareness rising campaigns in schools
  • (3) Increase institutional support to urban agriculture by making planning modifications which allow locating new vegetable gardens in unused land
  • (3) Recover local ecologic traditional agriculture and make training campaings so that everybody will be able to grow their own food

Finally, these strategies were used so that attendants could produce a vision for the future of Lugo. To this end, four groups were made which plotted their ideas on a map of the city.

Resultados do Seminario sobre Sistemas Alimentarios Locais e Agricultura Urbana, foto 2 Resultados do Seminario sobre Sistemas Alimentarios Locais e Agricultura Urbana, foto 3

The four plans foresaw to increase the greenbelt of Lugo and to create green areas with vegetable gardens inside the city. The vegetable gardens would be accompanied by areas to trade and exchange the food that was produced in them, as well as by a composting network with a series of processing points located in areas with a higher production of organic waste (near shopping centres and large green areas). Furthermore, it was proposed to modify the public transport network to better connect urban and rural areas. In addition, it was proposed to create a bicycle lane network which would integrate and communicate the vegetable gardens and green areas with the rest of the city. It was also proposed in one of the groups to plant fruit trees in parks and gardens so that people could take advantage of their yields.

Downloads:

  • verslag_student_workshop_lugo.pdf
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