The Joint Office for Sustainable Food: a year of building relationships and coordinated initiatives between administrations
Efforts have jointly been made to promote the first cross-cutting projects between administrations, but above all, to build knowledge and generate trust between teams, and to create a shared working culture.
Although for some years the various administrations have been working within their own spheres on the road towards a more sustainable food model, the creation of the Joint Office for Sustainable Food (OCAS) was created to coordinate and strengthen the strategies aimed at achieving a change in the way we eat.
Supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya (Department of Climate Action, Food and the Rural Agenda – DACC – and the publicly-owned company PRODECA), Barcelona City Council and the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan (PEMB), in its first year of existence the organisation has laid the foundations for its internal functioning, and embarked on specific projects that provide a glimpse of what sustained action over time will look like.
A new way of working with multiplier potential
A great deal of work has been done on building knowledge and generating trust between teams, the integration of a shared work culture and the creation of structures and protocols for internal operations and communication that have made it possible to launch this innovative governance tool when tackling shared challenges.
Also, most of the projects planned have been set in motion, and the results obtained even at these early stages indicate the potential of partnerships and cooperation when it comes to enhancing the effectiveness of each administration’s strategies: the Food Strategy of Catalonia (DACC), the Barcelona Healthy and Sustainable Food Strategy 2030 (Barcelona City Council) and the Barcelona Metropolitan Region Food Charter and the food mission of the Compromís Metropolità Barcelona Demà 2030 (PEMB).
Along these lines, the 2023 report draws together the different learnings and intangible achievements gained by this new way of working, as well as details of the specific actions carried out in areas as diverse as sustainable food systems, the connection between the urban and rural worlds through gastronomy, local production and marketing, food education and the right to sustainable food.
A tool to bring rural and urban areas closer together
The most ingenious and beneficial solutions are often found where there is an efficient means of communication between the parties, and in this sense the OCAS has served as a bridge to reconcile interests and find collaborations between the different actors involved in the transformation of the food system. Overall, this has highlighted the mission at the heart of the work done by OCAS: the promotion of urban-rural links as a central feature in the transformation of the food system.
Some examples of these connections are the contacts between the world of production, local commerce seals, the Generalitat’s organic agricultural production label (PAE) and Barcelona’s municipal markets to start work on a joint promotion campaign; the opportunity for producer groups to obtain a stall in Barcelona’s municipal markets; the working group focused on drawing up recommendations regarding public procurement; the revitalisation of the Metropolitan Region Food Charter, encouraging closer links between economic, educational, cultural and political stakeholders, and coordination on food waste, by presenting the guides that have been drawn up to stakeholders in education and the catering industry.
Future challenges
Once the technical and operational structures have been established, OCAS intends to continue working on the management of this innovative organisation in terms of the way in which it is governed. Nevertheless, the foundations are already in place for further development of the different areas of work that have already been set in motion.
While within each of the projects specific objectives have been defined for the second year of the organisation’s existence, in all of them there is a commitment to extend the reach of dissemination and awareness-raising work through new campaigns, to support and promote municipal markets as points for the commercialisation of local products, to stimulate and support the consolidation of the various collaborative work groups, and to set up pilot tests for twinning projects between farmers, schools and restaurants, as well as other initiatives.
