• After Expo 2015, Milan promoted the Milan urban food policy pact, which today counts over 260 cities around the world. The aim of this network is to build connections and provide concrete tools to local administrations seeking to implement an urban food policy on food and water issues.
• Ensuring healthy food for all, combating waste and food poverty, encouraging urban horticulture, and better managing water resources: these are some of the priorities Milan has set for itself in its city food policy, coordinated by deputy mayor Anna Scavuzzo.
• From 2015 to 2021, thanks to changes in school menus, where plant-based proteins were prioritised, Milan calculated a 42.89% cut in CO2-equivalent emissions.
• Milan's Food waste hub project — five anti-waste centres where food surpluses from businesses and supermarkets are redistributed — is considered an effective model and won the Earthshot Prize in 2021.

Through the lens of food, much of a city's life can be told. Because food enters the daily lives of all those who inhabit it, from those who produce it, to those who trade it, to those who consume it. The supply of healthy food and drinking water will become crucial in cities suffering the consequences of the climate crisis and growing ever faster (by 2050, it is estimated that two thirds of the world's population will be living in urban areas). This is why several cities are choosing to adopt an urban food policy — that is, a set of public policies, actions and programmes relating to these issues.

Even before Expo 2015, Milan had begun a journey to become a recognised example of good policies and thinking on the subject of food. With Expo, it then promoted the Milan urban food policy pact, which today counts over 260 member cities around the world, around twenty of which are Italian (among them Bergamo, Bologna, Bari, Cagliari, Trento, Turin). This pact is a concrete tool that mayors or their delegates use to compare notes and exchange good practices on areas ranging from food distribution to combating food waste.

Holding the threads of these policies together, in a city often seen merely as one that "consumes" without contributing anything to the food system, is deputy mayor Anna Scavuzzo, delegated to food policy. It is she who explains the priorities Milan has set for itself with this policy (ensuring healthy food for all, promoting sustainability, educating people about food, fighting waste, supporting scientific research) and the concrete tools through which Milan seeks to achieve its objectives, from promoting allotments and urban agriculture, to work on school menus, through to the Food waste hub — an effective model for collecting and redistributing food surpluses that won the Earthshot Prize in 2021.

Eight years after these policies began in Milan, why is it becoming urgent for all cities to adopt an urban food policy?
Because these are complex challenges that can only be addressed by starting from a shared reflection and with institutional coordination that puts the public interest at the centre. Over the years, the City of Milan has managed to bring together trade associations, businesses, third-sector organisations, neighbourhood groups, and we have come to understand that this is the only way to act effectively on the issue of food and water. It is not about putting a few isolated projects into practice, however good they may be: the city chooses what to focus on and asks each of these actors to contribute in a more organised way. When the pandemic arrived, for example, we immediately got in touch with the other cities of the Milan urban food policy pact. We had understood that we were about to face an enormous challenge in terms of food supply, with schools closed, people unable to move around, and inequalities that would become more pronounced. In some moments of exchange — many of them deeply moving on a human level — cities in lockdown explained to those about to enter it what problems had arisen. Those cities, which already had open discussion tables on food issues, were able to respond more promptly and in a coordinated manner.

Do cities need to reforge a connection with food production, both in a philosophical and a concrete sense?
Certainly to consolidate this connection, of which we are nonetheless more aware than it might seem. That is why education in schools is at the heart of our food policy — to strengthen not only the bond with the land but also with those who process and produce food. A large city like Milan is also able to influence food education through concrete choices when it comes to public procurement. The company Milano Ristorazione prepares 85,000 meals every day, across schools, day centres and residential homes for the elderly. We are engaged in an important reflection on health promotion and disease prevention, because the food issue encompasses not only food scarcity but also requires us to think about the various forms of malnutrition typical of urban areas, which lead to obesity and cardiovascular disease. For instance, we have chosen to remove salt from the cooking water for nursery school meals. We are talking about 8,000 children who are thus getting used to a different level of saltiness and who, potentially, will use less salt in the future.

How can an urban food policy act to help tackle the climate crisis?
I always think of public procurement: for example by reducing meat consumption — and red meat in particular — in favour of plant-based proteins. It is a choice that scores well both from the perspective of CO2 production and of health. The cornerstones of the so-called planetary diet are by now well known, and in this way children are being introduced to soya instead of beef, to pulses instead of pork, to wholegrain cereals in place of refined flours. Through the Cool food pledge project, together with the World Resources Institute, we have calculated that these menu changes resulted in a 42.89 per cent reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions between 2015 and 2021. Acting on food when you have high numbers, as in the case of Milan, means making a significant contribution.

What lessons does the experience of the Food waste hubs teach us — the five neighbourhood centres against food waste that redistribute food to those in need after collecting surplus from companies and supermarkets?
They are, first and foremost, a great exercise in coordination and collaboration. The most delicate moment was moving from the pilot project — the first hub opened in Municipio 9, in the north of the city — to a scalable and replicable model. We understood that it was not possible to create a "franchise" of identical experiences. Every neighbourhood, every organisation that had to manage the hub, every new party involved had to be free to put their own stamp on it, which is why today the Food waste hubs are each different from the other. This has also allowed the idea to serve as an example for cities very different from Milan: today the concept of an anti-waste hub is feasible from New York to Riyadh. This is what we want to show when we welcome the dozens of delegations from foreign cities that visit every year — a model they can apply themselves.

What are, on the other hand, the positive examples coming from cities abroad?
There are certainly many. I have been struck by the extraordinary evolution of African cities on these issues. We are talking about megacities of 10–12 million inhabitants, where Milan is a grain of sand by comparison. Since 2015 we have seen the changes that cities like Dakar have managed to bring about, for example in the promotion of micro jardins, urban allotments. I don't think it's a coincidence that this year the Milan pact award, the prize awarded annually to a city that is a member of the Milan urban food policy pact, was won by an African city, namely Addis Ababa. Starting from scratch, they managed to implement a school meals system — which they didn't have — for thousands of primary school children, by joining forces with international organisations present in the city and creating kitchens run by mothers, thus also incorporating work to tackle female unemployment. When I look at American cities, they are all working in interesting ways on the themes of circularity, recovery and a culture of healthy food.

And at a European level, how much awareness is there on these issues?
The process of building a so-called Sustainable food law is under way — a kind of food policy for the European Union. Together with other cities from the Milan urban food policy pact and the Eurocities network, we took part in a series of in-depth exchanges with the European Commission, where we were able to bring ideas and proposals. A sign that local practices and the well-known pragmatism of mayors are of interest in Brussels too.

What future challenges will be central to manage at urban level on the themes of food and water?
Food supply, a primary need, is a planetary-level issue: how we will feed ourselves in the future, and what food we will consume and produce, are questions we should be asking ourselves right now. And also how we will manage inequalities in access to healthy food. Moreover, the water crisis represents a double problem for cities.

On the one hand we have domestic food consumption and that required for agricultural production; on the other, the lack of water has a significant impact on the entire irrigation system and on reforestation projects, which are fundamental to the issue of urban warming and the very liveability of cities.