Continuing our ‘Learning Through the Land’ series, SFT Content Editor and organic grower, Alicia Miller, considers some inspiring initiatives happening in Wales that are opening doors to better, healthier eating through reconnecting schools and communities with the story behind their food.

As our diets in the UK are increasingly oriented around ultra-processed food, comprising over half of the calories consumed by adults and, more concernedly, over 65% of those consumed by children, there needs to be far more learning and engagement in what constitutes ‘healthy eating’. UPFs have become so dominant in our diets, taking up prime shelf-space and marketing budgets in the supermarkets for food that is inherently addictive. What is needed to counteract this is better education about what’s truly healthy and what’s not.

What can we learn by putting Wales under the spotlight? For several years now, change has been afoot and a range of varied projects across the country have been focused on ‘food education’, helping people – especially young people – to better understand where their food comes from, what the story of that food is and who grows it, opening doors to better, healthier eating. Alongside this, there has also been a push for more small-scale agroecological food production, which could be extended more broadly across Wales – while it’s still early days, there is wide interest in more localised, sustainable food production.

Food Cardiff to Welsh Veg in Schools

The work of Food Sense Wales and also Social Farms and Gardens has been a driving force in Wales from early on, focused on sustainable food production and healthy eating. These organisations’ presence and engagement, which started on a local level with a focus on Cardiff, fed thinking on a national level, with Food Cardiff seeding the wider work that is now beginning to expand across Wales.

Katie Palmer, Programme Manager, had been pushing Government to support a network of food partnerships across Wales to move towards local procurement. These efforts finally reached fruition with a pilot project sending Welsh courgettes into schools in Cardiff over the summer of 2023, as part of ‘Food and Fun’, a summer enrichment programme run in schools. To have opened a very heavy door – ‘local’ procurement is assumed to be almost impossible in schools across Britain – was a coup of sorts and the possibility of it being realised more broadly across Wales, is now closer than ever with the Welsh Veg in Schools project. Katie Palmer comments that “This year is really fundamental to us in terms of starting that process of building a movement [and] the movement is pretty big now.”

There is huge promise in Welsh Veg in Schools – with a focus on fresh organic produce, a big step forward has been taken towards healthy school meals. As Katie noted: “Organic is so central and key to this in terms of demonstrating and improving the benefits – especially in [relation to] biodiversity – of what we’re doing.” There are now seven local authorities participating in Welsh Veg in Schools which is currently focused on primary schools. Ceredigion County Council was coerced into participation by young students questioning why they weren’t getting the lovely carrots produced by the Sustainable Food Trust’s CEO and farmer Patrick Holden – nothing like a bit of agitating for tastier food from the young ones!

And the project continues to expand with a pilot in North Wales currently in development. It seems a sea change isn’t far off.

Small-scale agroecological farming sites with housing

Meanwhile, in Powys, there is also exciting work being done. A partnership, including Powys County Council, the Landworkers’ Alliance, Shared Assets UK, Cultivate (Powys Sustainable Food Partnerships), Lantra and a range of other organisations, are supporting the creation of four ‘micro units’ on a site in Sarn, Powys, under a 90-year lease agreement focused on local, agroecological food production. Powys has been lucky to retain a number of county farms, but farming isn’t a statutory asset in the county, so farms can be sold off when funds are needed.

Each unit is focused on agroecological food production in some capacity. Growers will be able to live on the land in off-grid homes (with generators) and are given access to six to eight acres each, which, crucially, they must farm in a way that benefits nature.

This is part of a bigger ambition that is being coalesced across Wales to have more ‘home-grown’ (so to speak), fruit and vegetable production spread across the country in varied locales, so improving access to healthy fruit and veg. In a country that is largely focused on livestock, it can be easy to forget the importance of local fruit and vegetables; a hundred years ago, almost every farm in Wales would have a patch of fruit and veg and some farmers would also have sales of these, off their land. Lantra has been doing a lot of work with farmers to engage them in growing fruit and veg – something that is also important for broader food security across Wales.

Getting people to eat their fruit and veg

At Bwlchwernen Fawr, where Patrick Holden farms, chefs Barny Haughton and Hazel Thomas, with funding from Ceredigion’s Shared Prosperity Fund, have been bringing farm-to-fork to life in meaningful ways. Across six weeks of sessions, they have worked to engage young people and their families, along with teachers and school cooks, to explore sustainable cooking and eating. This is about cultural change – introducing new foods and new flavours, like the surprising taste of a green bean off the vine.

So much has changed in school cooking, which is now mostly reheating and not cooking; food arrives pre-processed, pre-cooked and generally unpalatable. How do we reshape this into something delicious? For Barny and Hazel a key component is the story of food – there is an appetite, especially from young people, who are perhaps more interested and engaged than their parents, in where food comes from. The setting of the farm creates an essential connection in the farm-to-fork experience. The hope is that everyone who visits comes away with a deeper understanding of the story of their food, particularly the food they ate at the farm on that day.

The conversations at the heart of the sessions are really important and can sometimes be difficult, but this is how to change perceptions and get people to experience different foods which, hopefully, surprise them. That, in the end, is the way forward to healthier eating.

Beacon Farms

The SFT’s Beacon Farms programme is an ambitious project to engage farms across the UK to become literal ‘beacons’ of learning on food education. The farm experience is hugely important in connecting a wide public to the story of their food – whatever that may be. Farm visits and the conversations they generate can be transformative. At Bwlchwernen Fawr, Patrick and Becky Holden have brought diverse groups of people onto the farm to open dialogue across a broad range of topics and utilising the farm experience to enrich understanding of the value of healthy food and sustainable farming. These ‘hands-on’ experiences often resonate deeply through the people who have participated in them.

Food and farming education will continue to be a key component of the Sustainable Food Trust’s work in the coming years, with initiatives like those that have been underway in Wales serving as heartening example of what’s possible when it comes to inspiring people about the story behind what they eat.

Want to find out more about the Beacon Farm project? Click here to visit the project page.