Food Hubs
Local food systems are our playground!
SWITCH Food Hubs represent City Region Food Systems (CRFS), intended by FAO as “all the actors, processes and relationships that are involved in food production, processing, distribution and consumption in a given city region”. They are geographical regions that include one or more urban centers and their surroundings, peri-urban and rural hinterland, across which people, food, goods, resources and ecosystem services flow, encompassing all food system actors and activities.
SWITCH Food Hubs operate as living labs that engage a wide range of actors, including citizens, in a co-creation process of identifying, implementing and evaluating innovative activities to foster a dietary shift.
Project keywords:
Sustainability,
because it represents an added ecological and socio-economic value, to reduce the impact and ensure resilience of agri-food systems.
Meaningfulness,
because diets must be culturally and socially acceptable.
Health,
because sustainable diets need to be healthy for us and for the planet, following the One Health approach of WHO.
Socio-economic relevance,
because food systems are an asset for social inclusiveness and the economic prosperity of local/regional communities.
SWITCH explores the regional dimensions of well established healthy dietary patterns across Europe, from the Nordic Diet to the Mediterranean, valorizing their healthy and sustainable elements in the just transition towards a dietary change of the EU citizens. In the 6 Food Hubs, drivers and barriers of food choices are explored and tailored Action Plans detail approaches and solutions tested in real living labs.
