Ghent en Garde: Creating Structural Change through Local Food Policy
City of Ghent, a strategic partner of RUAF, was one of the first European cities to launch its own urban food policy (in 2013). Ghent’s urban food policy demonstrates the potential to transform the food systems at the local urban level. Ghent en Garde has been a leading example in and the city has regularly shared the methods and learnings from their local food initiatives with other Belgian cities, while its food policy has also been shared with cities all across the world. Ghent won the UN Global Climate Action award in the category Planetary Health.
Key Facts
- Over a two year period, Ghent en Garde’s programmes provided products or food baskets to 57,000 people in need.
- In 2009, the city of Ghent, together with the NGO Eva, launched “Thursday Veggie Day”, making them the first city in the world to officially introduce a vegetarian day.
- Around 7% of the population in Ghent is vegetarian, which significantly higher than the Belgian average of 2.3%
- Ghent has become the city with most vegetarian restaurants per inhabitant in all of Europe.
