Watch our video from the Stirling Food Summit

More than 140 people attended the Stirling Food Summit last week, setting out a vision of Stirling as Scotland’s first Good Food Nation city.

The two-day event took place at the Forth Valley College campus in the city, with a focus on strategy on Friday 19 May and a community day on the Saturday 20 May.

Stirling Council Director of Localities and Infrastructure, Alastair Brown opened the event.

He said: “Bringing local communities, businesses, voluntary groups and public sector organisations to work together on food in the Stirling area is what true sustainability is about.

“The Council is delighted to be given the chance to do our bit to enhance the social, economic and environmental benefits that Stirling can derive from this.”

The summit was organised by local charity Forth Environment Link (FEL) and the Forth Valley & Lomond Local Food & Drink Co-ordinator in association with Stirling Council, Forth Valley & Lomond LEADER, Soil Association Scotland and Sustainable Food Cities UK.

Some of the recommendations coming out of the summit include increasing the availability of grow-on space for small food businesses, developing a local food wholesaler and making more spaces available for community growing.

Clara Walker, Director of Forth Environment Link said: “Stirling has the urban and rural resources to become an exemplar region that is good with food. We have enough land to produce much more of what we eat locally, just 10% of our arable land would be needed to produce 5 portions of fruit and vegetables for everyone in the area.

Scottish Rural Network attended the community day of the Summit to catch up with new Local Food and Drink Coordinator Ashley Robinson and some of the local food producers attending the event to show off their wares. Watch the video below.

Stirling Food Summit from ScottishRuralNetwork on Vimeo.