Know what you eat and grow it yourself
Read Julia Wesselink's strategic food advice for Sustainable Utrecht 2030
On January 30, intern Julia Wesselink presented her strategic advice with which we can make a switch to organic food with a small budget in Utrecht. The first goal is to bring organic food within reach of people with little money. To do this, we need to formulate clear goals, such as 'within 3 years, we will work with at least 3 organic shops, 3 urban farms and 30 low-income households in a purchasing cooperative in which participants save together and buy affordable sustainable products'.
Furthermore, the website duurzaamutrecht2030.nl must become clearer, and we must formulate more achievable goals. Instead of waiting for the municipality of Utrecht to change the rules for U-pas so that people can use the credit to buy organic food, we can ask retailers who sell organic food to give U-pas holders a discount at their own expense. Julia also suggested to investigate how sustainable the range of popular Turkish and Moroccan shops is, where many people with less money already do their shopping.
In the city of Utrecht, Julia recommends that we work with partners to raise awareness and strengthen the influence on the quality and production of daily food in 3 years: 'Know what you eat, and grow it yourself'. Julia has summarized her recommendations in the poster Malsch, I., & Wesselink, J. (2025). Strategic advice poster DuurzaamUtrecht2030. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14801518
