Reflections From Lucy Scullard on Mapping the Local Southampton Food System
This post was written by Lucy Scullard, who worked on this project as an intern supported by Centre for the South’s New Things Fund.
Mapping the local food system in Southampton was a joint venture between the public health team at Southampton City Council (SCC) and the University of Southampton to carry out mapping of key food system activities across the city by undertaking a workshop with local stakeholders and drawing on publicly available data sets to quantify the distribution of economic value, and the environmental, social and health impacts and influences of the local food system in the city.
I have been delighted to be part of this work focussing on improving the knowledge of the Southampton food system and highlighting gaps. The catalyst behind this study was a Scrutiny Inquiry into tackling Childhood obesity in Southampton which recommended “improving the knowledge and understanding of the food environment across the city with the aim of developing policies to meet the local needs” [1].
We know that as of 2022/23, 40.5% of eleven year olds across the city were classified as having excess weight and 26% or being obese this is higher than the average values for England (36.6% excess weight, 22.7% obese) (Figure 1). However, we also determined from evidence collected that the local food system also impacted and exacerbated childhood dental decay, levels of diabetes, and years lived with disability. Highlighting the far-reaching impact poor diets have on the city’s health.
Figure 1: Year 6 Obesity and Excess weight Southampton and England trend: 2016/17 to 2022/23
In addition, and unsurprisingly, the food system has environmental implications with 30% of total CO2 are reported to be linked to the Food industry. In 2019 Southampton City Council declared a climate emergency and published a Green-City charter with key priorities to create a greener, healthier and more sustainable city all, a shift in the established food system can contribute too but there are gaps in the knowledge of the environmental impact of the Southampton food system, my evidence gathering has shown that a large proportion of the food entering the system is estimated to not come from the local area which will lead to increased emissions.
The food industry is one of the biggest contributors to employment and taxation across the country. Across the city almost a third of business are involved in the local food system employing 6709 people, predominately within the city the majority of enterprises and as such employment is in the service industry. However, the spread of business isn’t even across the city affecting access to a healthy reliable source of food. Access to healthy food in the UK can be affected by many factors including household income, distance to shops and having the knowledge and skills to budget and cook a balanced diet. A quarter of the city’s population is more than a half an hour return walk away from a shop classified as selling healthy food at an affordable price (Figure 2).
As part of the project, I helped coordinate a stakeholder workshop in April 2024 where attendees were asked for their opinions on the biggest problems in the local food system, food system effect on health and sustainability, the sectors influence on business and what requires change at a local and national level. The workshop was insightful for me: for example an attendee stated that “It's (access to food is) also a financial issue, it's not necessarily a food issue… it's about what's in the persons pocket, how they can budget”; this is supported by the fact that an estimated 900,000 meals are served in Southampton by aid groups each year.
Figure 2: Travel distance to food outlets in minutes (Southampton Data Observatory 2024). More than 1 in 4 homes in Southampton are further than 16 minutes (one way) walk from a health food outlet.
The workshop was very insightful and was the basis for generating a number of important recommendations:
1) Strengthening local food procurement by raising the standard that is expected of suppliers in terms of healthier products and social value.
2) Systematically up-skill local people to enable better food and nutritional security by influencing the affordable and accessible food environment.
3) Make the most of and support existing groups and individuals working to reduce food insecurity and waste, and plan to become a sustainable food place member.
“Most cities’ public procurement is massive and if public procurement work together, you know, schools, prisons, hospitals, it’s often more than 50% of the food environment in the city and it's quite a powerful driving force.”
- Workshop attendee
We also developed a model for future scenarios based on sustainability and healthy food for the Southampton food system using Guy Poppy’s expertise in this area [2]. We examined four options that could be applied and asked stakeholders for their viewpoints:
1) a “business as usual” approach where no change would be implemented;
2) implementing health and sustainability changes equally across the system;
3) implementing changes focussing first on sustainability measures;
4) an option focussing implementing health measures initially.
I was pleased to see a mixture of ideas from the stakeholder groups: one group thought a focus on health first would work best and that sustainability would follow by identifying ways to educate about healthy lifestyle and encouraging businesses to provide affordable and healthy food as part of their corporate responsibility. A second group suggested an initial focus on sustainability could be used to engage businesses and suggested the vision for a “zero food waste city”. Whilst a third group felt that both health and sustainability could go hand in hand and a vision would need to be used for groups to buy into such as the a “Southampton pound scheme”.
As a conclusion whilst this work has allowed us to increase our knowledge in some areas more work is required to understand the effect of the food system particularly on the environment. The challenge is now to build on the momentum from this project to influence the local food system to ensure a healthier and more sustainable future local food system working in partnership with Southampton City Council and multiple stakeholders from Southampton.
What has been inspiring for me has been the engagement with stakeholders which has allowed the input and bringing together of individuals representing a diverse range of groups from charitable food aid organisations, public health representatives, food waste groups, sustainability and businesses involved in the food sector. Representatives have been brought together to form a Southampton food partnership with the aid of working towards becoming a sustainable food place and leading to change in the local Southampton food system to work towards making it more sustainable, accessible and secure across the city.
Lucy Scullard is a postgraduate research student in Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton and worked on this project as an intern funded by the Centre for the South New Things Fund 2023/24.
For more information please find our policy brief document below:
References:
1) Tackling Childhood Obesity in Southampton, Southampton city council 2019/20 https://www.southampton.gov.uk/media/j40nnlg4/tackling-childhood-obesity-in-southampton_tcm63-430655.pdf
2) Poppy, G.M., Baverstock-Poppy, J.J. & Baverstock, J. Trade and dietary preferences can determine micronutrient security in the United Kingdom. Nat Food 3, 512–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00538-3