Landed Community Kitchens in the North of England (LCKs)

Context: The food system we know has been designed as a mechanism to bring large amounts of food from rural areas around the world to large urbanised consuming centres, with devastating consequences on resource extraction, livelihoods, climate change and food knowledge. A large part of current research on food system transformation is looking into attenuating these consequences, by creating better links between urban centres and their rural interlands (rural-urban linkages) or retrofitting food production into the city by promoting urban agriculture. We believe these won't be sufficient to bring the change we need because they neither stop the ongoing destruction of farmland and marginalisation and of farmers in ever expanding cities, and neither aim to change the profit-oriented logics of new emerging urban food growing/green economies. Farmers continue to disappear, farmlands are lost to urbanisation, people continue to lose food growing/cooking/foraging skills, and urban diets remain overly dependent on whether people are priviledged or not, with rising levels of food insecurity.  Our project wants to go beyond this: instead we contest the very logics of the way we urbanise, manage resources - like land and soil - which are essential to all forms of life, and make healthy food accessible to all.

The Landed Community Kitchen project is nested in (and is an excellent first entry point into) a the Agroecological Urbanism approach. Agroecological Urbanism offers a holistic, systemic and paradigmatic change in the way we look at the role of farmers and soils in the organisation of society and the management of urbanisation and its spread into peri-urban hinterlands. Our key standpoint is that we cannot transform the food system unless we rethink and change the whole way that urbanisation and urban lifestyles impact on food producers, land and soil management, and people's food knowledge. 

Urbanisation needs to stand the test of caring for the soil and the soil carers (the farmers), and we offer a conceptual and practical tool to begin rethinking urban life from the centrality of farmers' livelihoods. It is a potentially powerful new narrative for the agroecological movement, and for city planners seeking (and struggling) to find new pathways for change. 

Landed Community Kitchens are one of eight building blocks of an agroecological urbanism: the building blocks are eight areas where we need to redesign the social relations between farmers and urban communities. 

Project phases: 

The project is broadly organised around three phases: 1) forming/strengthening regional coalitions; 2) deepening knowledge, nourishing the visions for landed kitchens through knowledge exchange; and 3) implementing, reflecting and scaling out. 

Phase 1 - The first phase of the project begins to map actors and projects (in each of the eight areas) that can be agents of that transformation, mobilising them around the development of landed community kitchens and sowing the seeds for the other building blocks. 

The project is also innovative because it will strengthen the movement in the North of England, an area where levels of food deprivation are extreme, and where the agroecology movement is less articulated and diverse. The mapping phase of the project, and the deepening/knowledge exchange phase, will be beneficial in weaving stronger connections among food sovereignty and agroecology actors, as well as weaving the foundations for the landed community kitchens to emerge. These networks will act as incubators of future AU initiatives and will be a tangible entry point for decision-makers and policy-makers too.

Phase 2 - The project aims to prototype a range of landed community kitchens based on diverse alliances between farmers, food processors and citizen-consumers. In doing so, the focus will not be simply on expanding markets for farmers, or supporting food aid, but rather on nourishing different ways in which the political, emancipatory, anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal visions of the kitchens will be the glue to build new economic models in which all food labour is valued as a commons. At a time when food insecurity, and the use of surplus food extracted from exploited farmers overseas, is normalised, we will offer pathways to build unique alliances and solidarity between all farmers, food processors and citizen-consumers, bringing the many-faceted social and equity aspects of agroecology to life.

Phase 3 - The third phase of the project will consist in the implementation of the eight prototype landed kitchens, reflecting on their unique models, key challenges, elements that might need tweaking/change, and possibilities to scale them out.

Key aim: with our partners from eight nascent regional kitchen-farmer coalitions, we want to startup the implementation of an Agroecological Urbanism as a new approach to agroecological transitions, beginning with the development of eight prototype Landed Community Kitchens (LCKs) in the North of England, by linking agroecological farmers and food-sovereignty-oriented urban community kitchens.

Milestones:
1) The 8 building blocks of Agroecological Urbanism become familiar and are mapped in each partner's location. How they relate to local needs is explored and understood.

2) The knowledge exchange between international and UK farmers and kitchens generates a range of experimental pathways to build LCKs in northern England.

3) Eight operationally diverse and economically viable prototype LCKs articulate their models and begin operating, inspiring other coalitions to emerge across UK regions.

The eight regional coalitions are currently at an early stage. The list below includes the organisations that attended a foundational workshop in Leeds in February 2024, and some additional partners that have since expressed an interest in being involved. As we proceed through the project, these regional coalitions will have a lead partner and a larger number of partners. 

• (Newcastle area): REfUSE CIC + Mick Marston

• (Leeds): Meanwood Valley Urban Farm, Kirkstall Valley Farm, Hyde Park Source, (and tbc Food Wise, Otley Food Pantry)

• (Calderdale): Calderdale Ecological Land Trust and Calderdale Food Network

• (Greater Manchester/Oldham): Northern Lily CIC

• (Lancaster) LESS, Eggcup (tbc)

• (Hull and Humber): Cooperation Hull, Rooted in Hull, Slow Circular Earth

• (Sheffield): Regather and other regional farmers/kitchens , 

• (Lincolnshire and Nottingham): Lincolnshire Food Partnerships, Ecoworks

Watch this space: from spring 2025 we will be organising a series of knowledge-exchange online workshops and produce podcasts for dissemination