Glorious foods
Speech in the Senedd on 12th February 2025
The Universal Free School Meals policy is a progressive policy we can be proud of.
As well as feeding children, how can we leverage it to develop the Welsh food system?
This is a key opportunity for foundational economy thinking. How do we harness our spending on wellbeing critical goods of services to also benefit local grounded firms?
Only about 6% of the fruit and veg used by the Welsh public sector is made up of products grown in Wales. We’re buying and transporting food from other countries. Schoolchildren and hospital patients are routinely eating apples from France, tomatoes from Spain, courgettes from Chile.
What’s stopping us from supporting Welsh farmers and buying local?
Well we don’t grow enough veg for a start.
We talk a lot about lamb but not about veg.
There’s an opportunity for farmers to embrace horticulture to create new sources of income.
There’s also a challenge of what’s called aggregating demand.
The Fresh Local Produce for Schools feasibility study commissioned by the Vale of Glamorgan Council showed that buyers find it hard to deal directly with growers of horticultural produce.
Coordinating with multiple different producers. Washing and peeling the veg. Bagging it, and arranging for the distribution to the school kitchen is all too difficult.
The study highlighted the potential cost-benefit of an investment in a central facility to wash/peel/ and distribute the Veg to the standards required by customers.
Investment in technology and automation could allow local suppliers to compete with the big international firms who currently dominate.
There’s good work being done by the charity Food Sense Wales to look at how to scale up local supplies.
The Welsh Veg in Schools project benefited from the Welsh Government’s Backing Local Firms Fund, working with growers across three local authority areas and supported by coordinators from the local food partnerships in Cardiff, Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire.
They’re now onto the next stage with funding from a range of sources, working with Councils, farmers and growers and the wholesaler Castell Howell, the largest distributor of Welsh origin produce, to addresses the disconnect between supply and demand for locally-grown horticultural produce.
The focus is on giving growers and farmers a new or alternative key income streams - as connecting us as consumers of food with nature and farming through a richer understanding of what good food is, where is comes from and the multiple benefits of a sustainable food system.
We should use the public sector as an anchor client.
But when you add it together the value of public food procurement is the equivalent to the annual turnover of just one large supermarket store.
What we really need to do is influence the private sector?
There’s a really promising example in Hirwaun where Authentic Curry and World Foods are developing commercial products using local food. They are leading providers of ready-meals for retailers and caterers.
Now chard and kale may not be on my shopping list but they are both excellent sources of nutrients, and can be grown very successfully in Wales.
How do we get them onto menus, and into products, that people will buy to create viable levels of demand?
A programme of new product development at Authentic Curry is showing how this can be done for both public and private sector retail markets.
They have shown how they can add value, and increase the shelf life, of vegetables through further processing and cooking to multiportion meals. Welsh tomato sauce pizza bases, cauliflower cheese and Welsh beef bolognese have already been successfully developed and this highlights a route to market where Welsh produce can form the basis of menus that are healthy, cost-effective and climate-friendly.
How can we scale this up?
We need products that customers want to eat
The Universal Free School Meals policy is a progressive policy we can be proud of.
As well as feeding children, how can we leverage it to develop the Welsh food system?
This is a key opportunity for foundational economy thinking. How do we harness our spending on wellbeing critical goods of services to also benefit local grounded firms?
Only about 6% of the fruit and veg used by the Welsh public sector is made up of products grown in Wales. We’re buying and transporting food from other countries. Schoolchildren and hospital patients are routinely eating apples from France, tomatoes from Spain, courgettes from Chile.
What’s stopping us from supporting Welsh farmers and buying local?
Well we don’t grow enough veg for a start.
We talk a lot about lamb but not about veg.
There’s an opportunity for farmers to embrace horticulture to create new sources of income.
There’s also a challenge of what’s called aggregating demand.
The Fresh Local Produce for Schools feasibility study commissioned by the Vale of Glamorgan Council showed that buyers find it hard to deal directly with growers of horticultural produce.
Coordinating with multiple different producers. Washing and peeling the veg. Bagging it, and arranging for the distribution to the school kitchen is all too difficult.
The study highlighted the potential cost-benefit of an investment in a central facility to wash/peel/ and distribute the Veg to the standards required by customers.
Investment in technology and automation could allow local suppliers to compete with the big international firms who currently dominate.
There’s good work being done by the charity Food Sense Wales to look at how to scale up local supplies.
The Welsh Veg in Schools project benefited from the Welsh Government’s Backing Local Firms Fund, working with growers across three local authority areas and supported by coordinators from the local food partnerships in Cardiff, Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire.
They’re now onto the next stage with funding from a range of sources, working with Councils, farmers and growers and the wholesaler Castell Howell, the largest distributor of Welsh origin produce, to addresses the disconnect between supply and demand for locally-grown horticultural produce.
The focus is on giving growers and farmers a new or alternative key income streams - as connecting us as consumers of food with nature and farming through a richer understanding of what good food is, where is comes from and the multiple benefits of a sustainable food system.
We should use the public sector as an anchor client.
But when you add it together the value of public food procurement is the equivalent to the annual turnover of just one large supermarket store.
What we really need to do is influence the private sector?
There’s a really promising example in Hirwaun where Authentic Curry and World Foods are developing commercial products using local food. They are leading providers of ready-meals for retailers and caterers.
Now chard and kale may not be on my shopping list but they are both excellent sources of nutrients, and can be grown very successfully in Wales.
How do we get them onto menus, and into products, that people will buy to create viable levels of demand?
A programme of new product development at Authentic Curry is showing how this can be done for both public and private sector retail markets.
They have shown how they can add value, and increase the shelf life, of vegetables through further processing and cooking to multiportion meals. Welsh tomato sauce pizza bases, cauliflower cheese and Welsh beef bolognese have already been successfully developed and this highlights a route to market where Welsh produce can form the basis of menus that are healthy, cost-effective and climate-friendly.
How can we scale this up?
We need products that customers want to eat
We need a regional infrastructure that develops the supply chain - that’s facilities for collections, distribution and storage
We need technology and innovation for economies of scale
We need to aggregate demand
And we need an approach to public procurement that recognises the social value to supporting a sustainable food system - that involves investing in a professional workforce, and building confidence
Let me end on a note of optimism, they are some good people doing good things. People like Professor Kevin Morgan, Katie Palmer, Simon Wright, Edward Morgan. And many others in the Welsh good food movement.
Our Universal Free School Meals policy is an incredible foundation stone. So let's build on it.
Lets put booster rockets under our Community Food Strategy.
Lets look at Scotland’s Good Food Nation Act
Lets encourage the farming community to embrace this opportunity
Lets harness the networks of good people doing good things in the good food movement
This is the Wellbeing and Future Generations Act thinking in action.
We need technology and innovation for economies of scale
We need to aggregate demand
And we need an approach to public procurement that recognises the social value to supporting a sustainable food system - that involves investing in a professional workforce, and building confidence
Let me end on a note of optimism, they are some good people doing good things. People like Professor Kevin Morgan, Katie Palmer, Simon Wright, Edward Morgan. And many others in the Welsh good food movement.
Our Universal Free School Meals policy is an incredible foundation stone. So let's build on it.
Lets put booster rockets under our Community Food Strategy.
Lets look at Scotland’s Good Food Nation Act
Lets encourage the farming community to embrace this opportunity
Lets harness the networks of good people doing good things in the good food movement
This is the Wellbeing and Future Generations Act thinking in action.
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