Harvesting ideas at Scotland’s National Veg Summit

Tony and Jackie from our Community Food Team represented Greener Kirkcaldy at Scotland’s National Veg Summit recently. They share their reflections in this blog.

Although it may sound strange, we were both pretty excited and intrigued about attending an event all about vegetables! Along with 250 delegates, we went to Nourish Scotland’s National Veg Summit. This event looked at making it easier to eat veg in a Good Food Nation.

At Greener Kirkcaldy, we see moving towards a plant-based diet as a way to reduce our carbon footprint (or foodprint!) in the current climate crisis. There are also huge health benefits to eating more seasonal and local vegetables. So there’s every reason for us all to try to get our five a day!

The summit was a chance to exchange ideas, visit stalls and see what other groups are doing. We learned about local veg growing projects, cooking classes and community meals where people can try tasty veg.

The summit also brought together a huge range of groups from all over Scotland. These included veg growers, large scale producers, community gardens, market gardeners, health professionals, climate activists, educators, cooks, local authorities feeding schools, hospitals and care homes. It was inspiring to hear so many people talk about eating more veg and ways to make it more appealing to our communities.

We split up into small groups of people from different sectors. We heard from speakers who invited us to have discussions around several topics. We talked about how to encourage and enable more people to have access to, (and enjoy!), a variety of vegetables in their diet.

Some of the suggestions we came up with focused on changing government policy, as well as collaboration with local community groups and producers. Partnership working is definitely the way forward. To bring more vegetables to the table we all need to work together. The statistics around current vegetable consumption in the UK are not great so we have a lot of work to do and minds to change and palettes to inspire.

We shared recipes, saw displays of beautiful veg and enjoyed a delicious, plant-based lunch. We both came away motivated to try some new ideas here at Greener Kirkcaldy.

You can read a report about Nourish Scotland’s National Veg Summit online.

Jackie Arreaza and Tony Perkins

Find out more about our Community Food projects, including our weekly Community Meal (https://www.greenerkirkcaldy.org.uk/what-we-do/food-growing/)