Social enterprise as a catalyst for sustainable and healthy local food systems

改变英国食品体系以促进健康、社会正义和环境所需的变革规模，需要新的想法、组织模式和合作方式，以便有意义地让个人和社区参与进来。应对可持续粮食供应和饮食挑战的现有自上而下的办法未能解决饮食健康状况不佳和可持续粮食生产的危机。我们拟议的研究将侧重于社会企业作为更多样化体系组成部分的独特作用，探索并增强其对更具包容性、更可持续和更健康的食品体系的独特贡献。社会企业是以社会和环境为核心目的进行交易的组织，占商业人口的9%。项目组和合作伙伴的初步工作揭示了社会企业及其社区如何通过各种活动参与粮食和福祉，包括社区种植空间和分配计划、休闲和健身中心、儿童托儿所和其他以社区为基础的服务。这项拟议的研究将考察这种建立在当地理解、网络和能力基础上的“自下而上”的方法在多大程度上进一步发挥了让不同社区和其他组织行为者(私人、公共和民间社会)参与的潜力，从而促进整个英国可持续和健康的当地食品体系的扩张。为此，我们的跨学科团队由理解可持续繁荣中心的研究人员领导，汇集了自然、社会和政策科学的专业知识，以及社会企业、可持续消费、营养和环境生命周期评估方面的专业知识。该团队将与英格兰、苏格兰和威尔士的六个合作伙伴社会企业和六个支持/政策组织合作，所有这些组织都在所有阶段为研究设计做出贡献。这将确保最大限度地发挥对政策和实践产生转型影响的潜力。研究将包括以下主要内容：-分析社会企业参与发展当地食品系统和将人们与种植空间和其他绿色地区联系起来的范围和类型。-检查供应链、环境和营养干预措施的科学可衡量结果，并确定衡量这些影响的良好做法。-社会企业案例研究侧重于粮食和社区福祉，以审查它们如何参与社区、它们的所有权/治理结构、伙伴关系和创新做法、它们面临的挑战和它们的支持需求。-探索不同社区对可持续食物和饮食的不同理解。-绘制每个案例研究地点的更广泛的食物网络、关键利益攸关方和支持性生态系统。-探讨如何通过扩大社会企业活动和政策变化来实现转型。这项计划的核心是我们的社会企业合作伙伴、他们的员工和社区成员的积极参与，特别注重发展他们的研究技能和能力，以及学术研究人员的研究技能和能力，使他们能够参与研究。研究成果将用于共同设计资源和工具包，以支持扩大或推广成功的模式和创新，并在全国范围内分享良好做法。这并不是没有挑战，该项目将审查各种障碍和制约因素，以及如何最好地解决它们。除了为全国各地的社会企业和其他组织编写良好做法指南外，还将编写政策简报，重点放在地方、区域和国家政策制定的不同层面。

The scale of change needed to transform UK food systems for health, social justice and environment requires new ideas, organisational models and collaborative approaches that can meaningfully engage individuals and communities. Existing top-down approaches to the challenge of sustainable food provision and diet have failed to tackle the crisis of poor dietary health and sustainable food production. Our proposed research will focus on the distinctive role of social enterprises as an integral part of a more diverse system, exploring and enhancing their unique contribution to food systems that are more inclusive, sustainable and healthy. Social enterprise are organisations that are trading with a core social and environmental purpose, and make up 9% of the business population. Initial work by the project team and partners reveals how social enterprises and their community engagement around food and wellbeing can occur through a variety of activities, including community growing spaces and distribution schemes, leisure and fitness centres, children's nurseries and other community-based services. The proposed research will examine the extent to which such 'bottom up' approaches that build on local understandings, networks and capabilities have further unrealised potential to engage diverse communities and other organisational actors (private, public and civil society), and thus catalyse the expansion of sustainable and healthy local food systems across the UK. To this end, our transdisciplinary team, led by researchers who are part of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, brings together expertise from the natural, social and policy sciences, with specialisms in social enterprise, sustainable consumption, nutrition and environmental life cycle assessment. This team will work with six partner social enterprises in England, Scotland and Wales and six support/policy organisations all of whom contribute to the research design at all stages. This will ensure the potential for transformational impact on policy and practice is maximised. The research will include the following main elements:-Analysis of the range and types of social enterprise involved in developing local food systems and connecting people to growing spaces and other green areas.-Examination of the scientifically measurable outcomes of the interventions on the supply chain, environment and nutrition, and identification of good practice in measuring such impacts.-Case studies of social enterprises focused on food and community wellbeing to examine how they engage their communities, their ownership/governance structures, partnerships and innovative practices, the challenges they face and their support needs. -Exploration of the different understandings of sustainable food and diets within diverse communities.-Mapping the wider food network, key stakeholders and supportive ecosystem in each case study locality. -Exploring how transformational change can come about from scaling up social enterprise activity and policy change.Central to the project is the active participation of our social enterprise partners, their staff and community members, with particular attention to developing their research skills and capacity, as well as those of the academic researchers to enable participatory research. The research findings will be used to co-design resources and toolkits to support the scaling-up or replication of successful models and innovations and the sharing of good practice across the country. This is not without its challenges and the project will examine the various barriers and constraining factors and how they can best be addressed. In addition to good practice guides for social enterprises and other organisations across the country, policy briefings will be prepared, focusing on the different levels of local, regional and national policy making.