Local food marketing in Bristol and Oslo: Same but different
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•21 views
The presentation will give a brief overview of the 'UrbanFarmer' project and its various facets, including the integration of a cohort of Norwegian farmers and agricultural research organisations in the co-production of applied knowledge. The main thrust of the presentation will be to present similarities and differences in the way that food in short food supply chains is marketed through different farm enterprise business models, and different sales channels. Differences in policy backdrops and other, related, contexts which help or hinder urban marketing through short food supply chains concluding with some ideas of emerging recommendations will also be explored. Dr Anna Birgitte Milford is a researcher at Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, working on topics related to sustainable food production and consumption, including organic/pesticide reduced fruit and veg production, local sales channels and climate friendly diets. She was a visiting scholar at CCRI, University of Gloucestershire in autumn 2021 conducting field research on urban agriculture and local sales channels in Bristol. Dr Dan Keech is a Senior Research Fellow at CCRI, University of Gloucestershire. His research topics cover European urban and alternative food networks, Anglo-German cultural geography and trans-disciplinary methods which link art and social science.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Local food marketing in Bristol and Oslo: Same but different
Similar to Local food marketing in Bristol and Oslo: Same but different (20)
More from Countryside and Community Research Institute
More from Countryside and Community Research Institute (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Local food marketing in Bristol and Oslo: Same but different
- 1. Local food marketing in Bristol and Oslo: Same but different Anna Birgitte Milford, Daniel Keech, Frøydis Gillund and Matt Reed CCRI seminar 20th October 2022
- 2. Overview • Short introduction to the UrbanFarms project and partnership • Examination of joint work in Oslo and Bristol linked to local food sales channels What does this tell us about marketing opportunities and barriers in each city? Does this illustrate any distinctive urban contexts facing producers?
- 3. URBANFARMS – inter-disciplinary and international Research Geography – Economy – Agronomy – Sociology Practice 3
- 4. Farmers as project partners
- 5. UrbanFarms • 4 year project funded by the Nordic Research Council • Principal aim is to understand how to enhance added- value and sustainability through optimized use of urban and peri-urban farm resources • Sustainability aspects: – multi-criteria sustainability assessments of participating farm enterprises (linked to and augmenting SAFA criteria - labour conditions, economic performance, ecological perfomance...) – Soil sampling and compositing advice
- 6. Context - Land use in Norway (beware!) Of which: 45% is arable (SE and C) 45% is outfield pasture Close to settlements Illustration: The layout of mainland Norway. | Illustration: LA Dahlmann – Statistics Norway – CC BY-SA.
- 8. Sales channels for local food in Bristol and Oslo 1. How is local food produced and marketed in the two cities? 2. What are the motivations for promoting local food in the two cities? 3. What are the main challenges and barriers for increased direct sale of local food in the two cities? 4. How can these barriers be overcome? 5. What can the two cities learn from each other? Qualitative interviews with producers, sales channels and organisations, 16 in Oslo and 18 in Bristol, in the autumn of 2021
- 9. Interviews conducted autumn 2021 Stakeholder Bristol Oslo Farmers/food producers 6 5 Online food market/wholesaler 2 2 Farmers market/REKO 2 2 Independent shop 2 1 Organisation 5 2 Public authority 1 3 Total 18 16
- 10. Farmers Consumers Whole- salers Retailer Home delivery (Veg box, online shop) Farm shop, CSA, own delivery Delivery service Restaurants Farmers market, Reko Consumers who will buy locally produced foods Supply chains for local food
- 17. Motivation for local marketing • Environment (Food miles, pollution, food waste, packaging) • Food security • Transparency • Creating community • Educating consumers • Food diversity and quality • Counterweight to large scale agriculture and mainstream marketing
- 18. Marketing • Selling a story as well as a product • Lack of finance for marketing “For instance, say we get a particularly lovely new supplier, either they‘re local, they've got a really good story or there’s something really ethical about them, then we'll try and talk about them on social media. And then my team in the shop are quite good at maybe writing a blackboard about why we love a certain team producer.” (Independent food shop, Bristol)
- 19. Market potential • More demand from consumers would be «a great help», but there is also lack of local producers • Competition for both consumers and for local products • Market growth would generate more economies of scale opportunities • Is local food only for the rich, and for special occasions?
- 20. What does «local» mean? • Does the food have to originate from the soil nearby, or is it enough that the food product is processed locally, although the ingredients are imported? • And how far away from the market can the producer be before he or she is not local anymore? • What is better: Local or environmentally friendly production? • This understanding is complicated by Norwegian geography. Different sales channels have different criteria for what they sell and prioritise Some producers would like to sell closer to their farm, but there is lack of local demand Sometimes “national” is more important than “local”
- 21. COVID • Increased demand • Reorganising the supply chain from restaurants to consumers • Change in attitudes?
- 22. Barriers and opportunities Barriers Opportunities Competition with mainstream: lots of convenient and low-price shops/markets in cities Improved co-ordination between producers (esp. logistics, equipment) Ethical business is more work Large urban consumer-base, many don’t buy solely on price, ethical markets can expand Professionalisation of marketing remains limited (general vs specialism) COVID showed how on-line presence can make a difference Direct producer contact remains inefficient Direct producer relations remain import as a marketing ‘story’ and to build relationships Several support organisations – conventional networks are less interested in local/urban. Policy interest in urban food systems is consistent and some initiatives (UA strategy and BFN/GFG) trying to co-ordinate.
- 23. Some Bristol-Oslo comparisons Foto: Anna Birgitte Milford • Norwegian producers in the project tend to be small scale (as many NOR farmers). • In Bristol, even established producers have insecure tenancies (came out the study trip). • Differing attitudes towards supermarkets and the dominant global food system and high interest in food diversity (geography?) More ‘hostility’ in Bristol. • High environmental motivation in Bristol. Oslo: expectation the govt will sort it out. • Higher numbers of activists with diverse focus in Bristol. • Policy approach consistent, municipal and radical (BS). National, recent and multifunctional, including economic (NO). • Competition: Oslo there are voluntary and less professional initiatives that offer lower prices.
- 24. Urban particularities – the city as a food space Foto: Anna Birgitte Milford • Land is hard to come by • (Municipal) food strategies – good grass-roots engagement; public assets and infrastructure; how much leverage do they have? • Urban food infrastructure – an advantage but also exposes local producers to non- local competition e.g. global wholesalers. • Diversity – cities offer large, diverse populations and there are multiple opportunities to co-exist alongside more dominant outlets. COVID revealed the nimbleness of many local food businesses.
- 25. New projects? • Is it possible to have more collaboration on local marketing? • What do market gardens need in order to be succesful? • How can the resources of a city be used in food production, including market gardens? (practical barriers) Thanks for your attention – questions? anna.birgitte.milford@nibio.no dkeech@glos.ac.uk https://www.nibio.no/en/projects/urbanfarms
Editor's Notes
- Dan to start Introduce Anna joining on-line. Highlight Froydis and Matt – between us constitute WP2 (producers) and WP3 (consumers).
- The presentation is roughly in two parts. The first gives some contextual background to the UrbanFarms project (largely Dan) The second part (largely Anna) covers work to compare Oslo and Bristol using empirical data. We have structured this in two ways, to conform to a paper we are preparing. Firstly we’ll look at data that shows barriers and opportunities in relation to local food marketing opportunities in Oslo and Bristol. After that, we’d like to draw out urban particularities in this discussion. Is marketing local food into a city any different from other places?
- URBANFARMs is a project funded by the Norwegian Research Council and led by NIBIO (where Anna works) the Norwegian Research Institute for the BioEconomy. CCRI is also a research partner, alongside Norsok, the Norwegian Centre for Organic Agriculture. This is a transdisciplinary project and our practice partners include Organic Norway, the Norwegian Farmers Union and Bristol Food Network.
- In addition to institutional partners, here are some of the farms/ers in our project. 11 farmers (out of 12 originally) were recruited by the project. They receive a s]mall payment for taking part and have the change to receive specialist advice on sustainability performance and t participate in webinars and study trips arranged by the project. Two notable points that we will understand in the UK is that farmers are very busy and not always easy to engage consistently. Some have been more keen than others. A particular point of distinction about Norway is that some of the farmers work part-time, namely in the oil fields.
- Note the good performance of this farm – all in the project pretty much conform. The sustainability performance aspects of the project will not be covered today. Just an aside – we also adapted SAFA criteria in the FP7 Glamur project to devise multi-criteria food chain performance assessments for a number of European foods, if anyone want to know more please get in touch.
- The per capita availability of agri land is exactly on the median status gloablly, so this must not give a false impression of low levels of food securty or a reliance on meat and livestock farming. Plus yellow and light green segments also offers some seasonal grazing, for example. 10,000 km2 farmland in use (stable!) Further 145,000 km2 (45 % of national land area) suitable for outfield pasture 38,000 farm enterprises (decreasing) 9,400 (or 25%) between 10 and 20 ha Regional differentiation (subsidies) Strong history of national cooperatives Large differences in self-sufficiency dependent on products (high, meat and dairy; low fruits and vegetables).
- This map shows, on the right, the mixed and arable areas of agriculture in Norway. On the map left is the location of the farmers in our project. Today we’ll be talking only about work linked to two locations in the project, namely Bristol and Oslo. One of the foundational ideas behind UrbanFarms was that the co-location of farms and cities is often seen as rather threatening, for example through urban expansion into farm land. But in UrbanFarms, we examine how proximity can be a good thing, for example because cities offer dense markets, have good food infrastructures and innovative food networks, sometimes supported by local authorities.
- Having offered an overview of the project and its partners, we now turn to our recent study of sales channels for local food in Bristol and Oslo (i.e. not the Bergen part of the project). Olso and Bristol are useful comparisons because they are similar sizes (Oslo has about 150,000 more citizens) and are located on main regional transport nodes. Both cities have been associated with innovation in local food development and are headquarters to several alternative, organic or food policy networks. As the capital, Oslo also brings together, in the form of the Norwegian Urban Food strategy, several ministries. Bristol has for at least a decade piloted a range of policy support mechanisms for sustainable food.
- This diagram shows the range of sales channels covered in our study. Several of these are distinguished by being direct producer-customer relationships (on the left). Even those with some extended supply chain arrangements are not all that complex or unfamiliar. Now I’ll hand over to Anna, who will talk us through some of the findings. She and Froydis have prepared a really substantial report on the research outlined which should be ready for publication in a few weeks.
- In Norway – mainstream issue is that they sell boring things…
- Land – land is cities is expensive and may need to be made available by public landowners or temporarily. In Oslo some excellent farm incubation programmes exist but movement by new farmers into urban or peri-urban land is limited.