Agroecological Food Production for Health and net zero: exploring implementation pathways for an Agroecological Urbanism (PAU)
The PAU project aims to address institutional barriers to agroecological food production, by raising the profile of the ways in which it can address climate, health and other challenges faced by local and national decision makers. It is a one year scoping study, involving the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University, the Permaculture Association, the Urban Agriculture Consortium and the Landworkers’ Alliance.
PAU addresses the capacity of city region policy communities to drive agroecological transitions, increase local food production, achieve carbon reduction and improve health outcomes. By applying the Food Zones model and Agroecological Urbanism approach in two city regions (Bristol and Leeds), we will identify a selection of diverse “agroecological actors” (farms, market gardens, food distribution hubs, caterers and landed community kitchens), that offer prototype agroecological models, potentially scalable to urban and peri-urban areas across the UK. Together with them, we will build a ‘portfolio of evidence’ illustrating the multifunctional benefits of agroecology, and barriers to expansion. The evidence will be at the centre of an interactive and multi-sensory on-farm event in each city in March 2025, where we will bring policy makers (the “institutional actors”) together with the “agroecological actors”, to deepen the understanding of the systemic benefits of (and barriers to) shifting to agroecological food systems.
Following the on-farm event, we will continue to work with all participants online, to co-develop ways in which barriers could be overcome. Potential outcomes include training for civil servants, toolkits, policy development and an action-research project to test implementation pathways in and beyond the two city regions. Each institutional actor will be interviewed before and after the on-farm event and codesign process about how the project has influenced their views. We will explore their attitudes and needs around their own role in creating the conditions for agroecology to thrive and the benefits to their landscapes and communities and their food and climate strategies.