Sustainable food education centre

Since 2012, town-run canteens in Mouans-Sartoux (FR) have been fully organic, with vegetables supplied by a local municipal farm. This shift was in response to health and environmental concerns surrounding food.  

In 2013, a survey of parents found that nearly 80% of families in the town were starting to change their eating habits towards a more sustainable diet, in line with the canteens. To support and amplify these changes, the town council created the Sustainable Food Education Centre / Maison d'Éducation à l'Alimentation Durable (MEAD) in 2016. It runs awareness-raising campaigns and educational activities for residents and businesses.  

An assessment of MEAD’s impact over five years shows that local residents have profoundly changed their eating habits, such that they have reduced the climatic impact of their food choices by 26%. 

After receiving an URBACT good practice label award for its organic canteens in 2017, Mouans-Sartoux set out to encourage people to engage in a local food transition. To this end, its Sustainable Food Education Centre has focused on five key areas:  

1. Agricultural land: The agricultural land area in town planning documents has increased from 40 to 112 hectares, with support made available for organic farming projects.
2. Accessible sustainable food: The town has several organic food shops, a market and producers' shop, an organic fair-trade grocery, a producers' basket scheme, and a social grocery to give sustainable food to people in need.
3. Education about sustainable food: Awareness about sustainable food is raised through organic canteens, the municipal farm, classes for schoolchildren, a food challenge for families and businesses, community vegetable gardens, chicken coops and an apiary, and events, debates and exhibitions.
4. Research: Academics are engaged to evaluate the project, and drive its innovations.
5. Sharing knowledge: The town shares its experience with other French and European cities to amplify a wider food transition.  

MEAD’s good practice has a positive impact across the three key aspects of sustainable development: 

• Economic: It strengthens local trade, creating jobs in shops specialising in organic food retail and short supply-chain food production, while supporting farmers’ jobs with fair wages. 

• Environmental: By promoting a more local, plant-based organic diet, the project helps combat global warming, conserve biodiversity, and maintain water, air and soil quality. This type of diet uses less land, water and fossil fuels, reducing overall climate and environmental impacts. 

• Social: Many local residents support more sustainable eating habits, forming a supportive community for the project. Through MEAD’s activities, 48% of residents have met new people, often from outside their usual social circles. The social grocery supports low-income and socially-isolated residents, while the foundations have been laid for a pooled-supply food project where people pay according their incomes. The ‘citizen feeds the city’ initiative develops solidarity by encouraging residents to share some of their home-grown and home-made produce with the social grocery.  

The Sustainable Food Education Centre’s steering committee comprises over a hundred people from diverse backgrounds, including local councillors and municipal staff, financers, teachers and researchers, food distributors, members of farmers’ organisations, environmental and social association representatives, and citizens. Together, they guide and monitor the Mouans-Sartoux food project. 

An impact study showed that 30% of residents taking part in the activities felt that they were actively involved in the town's food policy, 81%  felt involved in decisions about food within the municipality, and 23% felt strongly involved.   

In addition to the steering committee, meetings between the various kitchen garden citizen’s groups provide input for democratic decisions on the direction of the project. 

The Mouans-Sartoux food project connects with other food projects at departmental, regional and national level. To date, 800 French and European local authorities have shown an interest in the Sustainable Food Education Centre, engaging with it in various ways, such as webinars, visits, and through networks or university courses. 

In addition, the Sustainable Food Education Centre has helped establish a new farm and identified more land for classification as ‘agricultural land’ in future land planning documents, building on the work already done to increase the agricultural land area from 40 to 112 hectares. As a result, the town’s shops offer sustainable food options well above the French average. 

Since 2018, Mouans-Sartoux has shared its sustainable food experience with cities across Europe, receiving a 2022 award from the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) in recognition of this. The town has led two URBACT BioCanteens transfer networks, helping to transform canteens in several European cities. 

The good practice aligns with the European ‘Farm to Fork’ policy, and the new food theme of the Urban Agenda for the EU. Mouans-Sartoux is also working at European level to create a new European public procurement framework for food, and is a partner of IPES FOOD on its report ‘From the plate to the planet’ for COP28 that highlights actions taken by towns and cities to tackle climate change. 

Food is a universal issue, and national context is no obstacle to the transfer of the practice in France, or in the EU as it aligns with European policy on agriculture and food. For instance, all local authorities in France have canteens that must meet objectives relating to climate and resilience.  

Lessons learned from the Sustainable Food Education Centre have been shared in networks of French cities, and via the university diploma in Sustainable Food Project Management created by Mouans-Sartoux with the Université Cote d'Azur.  

The practice is also transferable to cities in any other country, though each city will tailor the practice to their specific characteristics.