France’s territorial food programmes are an exciting example of what can happen when local communities have a say in their food systems. An open letter signed by a collective of more than 120 French mayors and local councillors of all political stripes, 19 organisations and 7 scientists, and published on Friday in Le Monde, calls for a systemic vision and state support to local authorities who are working to advance the agroecological transition and transform local food systems. Below is the English translation.
Lire la tribune en français dans Le Monde
Food concerns us all: we all eat every day. At the heart of many challenges, food also offers many solutions to help mitigate climate change and protect biodiversity, safeguard the health of our communities, create dignified and sustainable employment, and strengthen social cohesion.
Local action
As local councillors of all political backgrounds, representing rural and urban territories, we are committed to supporting changes in the agricultural and food sector to secure a sustainable future. Through projects such as territorial food programmes (projets alimentaires territoriaux – PAT), we are taking action from farm to fork on a whole host of issues: protecting farmland; supporting agroecological new entrant farmers; increasing the local and organic offering in public canteens; supporting farmers in moving towards acroecological practices; supporting infrastructure for local supply chains; establishing food democracy bodies where all voices can be heard; educating around food, and ensuring dignity, choice and sustainability in access to good quality food for all.
Systemic vision
At all territorial levels, we are working to allow our co-citizens to lead healthy, dignified lives in territories that respect people and ecosystems. To tackle current and future challenges, we are educating ourselves and our teams to better understand agricultural and food issues, and improving our skills, knowledge and methods to implement robust, coherent programmes. We need a systemic vision: we need to rethink our structures and ways of working to ensure more cooperation across sectors. To do this, we pledge to review our budgets to ensure coherence between our policies and our programmes for agroecological and food transition. We commit to cooperating with the state bodies working on agriculture and food.
Call for state support
In order to nourish our work at local level to transform our food system, we call on the French State to:
– Create a food remit to legitimise the role of local authorities to work, at all levels, for resilient, sustainable and fair local food systems (as outlined in this ministerial report and this bill)
– Sustain the budgets of local authorities, which are crucial to territorial dynamics. These local authorities must be funded to retain properly trained staff for the duration of our mandates;
– Legislate to allow territories to fast-track measures for transition, for example relating to agricultural land, limiting the use of plant protection products, or via a new framework for public procurement to support local and organic products;
– Strengthen ties between local authorities and decentralised state agencies and providers to ensure greater coherence and efficiency;
– Ensure a robust national policy for agroecological and food transition, such as a framework law to tackle the major social, environmental, economic and public health challenges. On this basis, France must stake out an ambitious position at European level, especially with regard to the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, and achieve greater coherence between the various policy levels.
The recent farmer protests, the impact of climate change on our territories, and the deteriorating living conditions of the most disadvantaged, all bear witness to the urgent need for action.
See the full list of signatories here.
This open letter is part of a broader dynamic emerging from initiatives such as the Nantes Declaration (2022). A further declaration is to be developed at the local convention for agroecological and food transition (Assises Territoriales de la Transition agroécologique et de l’alimentation), which will take place on December 2-3 in Montpellier, France.
A number of the councillors who have signed this open letter participated in the TETRAA programme (Territories in agroecological and food transition). TETRAA supported nine French territories from 2020 to 2024 with a dual objective: to accelerate their agroecological and food transition processes, and to document the obstacles and levers encountered by these players in order to bolster the transition infrastructure, via three types of support:
– Cofinancing of local projects and human resources to conduct them
– Creation and deployment of operational supports tailored to local needs (discussion groups, training courses, seminars, webinars, including networking and social events)
– Scientific support to analyse the obstacles and levers of these approaches.
TETRAA identified key points to enable local players – first and foremost local authorities – to successfully implement a robust, ambitious, democratic and sustainable agroecological and food transition policy. This programme was jointly created and steered by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation and AgroParisTech, with the support of Porticus.
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