Research Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Food (SURF)

The Research Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Food (SURF) carries out world-class research into food geographies - with a special attention for the role of cities and regions.

It builds on the interdisciplinary expertise of our long–established food research community at the School of Geography and Planning and Sustainable Places Research Institute to promote research, teaching and post-graduate training in the area of sustainable urban and regional food systems.

Aims

• To design and take forward interdisciplinary and path-breaking research on urban and regional food systems.
• To provide a focus for the School’s already extensive policy, advisory and stakeholder engagement activities from global (FAO, European Commission, WFP and UN-HABITAT) to national/local (DEFRA, Scottish and Welsh Government) work.
• To disseminate research that contributes to meet today’s grand challenges about food security, sustainability and justice.
• To support the training, career development and funding of researchers working on sustainable food systems.

Projects

Events

Visit the School of Geography and Planning Events page if you're interested in related topics.

Food Mapping

The Cardiff University Food Research Collective, together with partners, is running a series of workshops to collaboratively transform the Welsh food system and launch the Wales Sustainable and Just Food System Network Survey. This work aims to support a better understanding of the people, organisations and partnerships across Wales, who are working towards a sustainable and just food system, as well as highlighting where there are well-linked activities and where gaps might exist (geographically, in policy terms and with respect to resources). The results of an online survey will inform the development of a Wales Sustainable and Just Food System Network Map, which will be an open resource that anyone can interact with to support their activities.

This first workshop marks the start of a 12-month period of collaboration between food system stakeholders to create and enact an action plan for building a just and sustainable food system in Wales. After participating in this first workshop, we hope that you will join us in this process. This will include a further three workshops, occurring every three months, with some ongoing activities between workshops to continue to progress decided objectives. As a key stakeholder working towards food sustainability, health and/or food justice in the Welsh Food System, we would value your collaboration. The workshops will cultivate discussion and collaboration on topics such as: partnership building across the food system network; developing action plans according to collectively identified priority themes; applying for funding to support these action plans; and enacting action.

Past events

Appetite for Change

In October 2019 WISERD co-hosted a collaborative workshop with the Sustainable Places Research Institute and the Wales Governance Centre to discuss the environmental and social justice considerations of food systems in Wales. The event brought together a range of experts – including policy makers, civil society activists and other stakeholders to assess the major challenges facing current food systems, and to identify pathways towards creating a more sustainable and socially just system in Wales and beyond. The event was recorded by our fantastic visual facilitator Laura Sorvala.

Brexit and the future of food and farming

This event examined the impacts and possible future scenarios arising from Brexit in the food and farming sectors.

Since June 2016, the process of leaving the EU has highlighted the complex ways the farming and food sectors are connected to Europe through markets, regulation and policy. Brexit will require new systems of rural development, agricultural subsidies and ecosystem services, and new rules to address the sector's reliance on overseas labour.

Based on research with key stakeholders within the food and farming sectors over the last year, School of Geography and Planning's Professor Paul Milbourne, Professor Kevin Morgan and Dr Gareth Enticott and Dr Rebecca Sandover (University of Exeter) examined the key challenges facing food and farming, the potential future directions for food and farming and the views of overseas labour on Brexit currently working in the UK.

Big Hunger

In Big Hunger, author Andrew Fisher argued that many key anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential element of the problem: economic inequality driven by low wages. His research finds that efforts to end hunger, reduce obesity, and reform farm subsidies are compromised by corporate interests.

Andrew Fisher has worked in the anti-hunger field for twenty-five years, as the executive director of national and local food groups, and as a researcher, organizer, policy advocate, and coalition builder. He has led successful efforts to gain passage of multiple pieces of federal food and nutrition legislation. Andrew Fisher was joined by a panel of practitioners and academic experts, including Katie Palmer, Food Cardiff, and Eleanor Sanders, Trussell Trust Cardiff, to discuss the challenges facing the anti-hunger movement in the UK and the opportunities for building a progressive food justice movement.