Catalan schools will be an educational space to promote local, healthy and quality products

28 January, 2025

The Minister for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food, Òscar Ordeig, has presented the Food Strategy of Catalonia 2025-2028 as a “great transformative tool” to promote a sustainable, healthy, competitive, quality and local food system. “We want to go into the kitchens of schools to make them an educational space for all children and promote local, healthy and quality products”,

One of the axes of this new Strategy, which will make possible actions such as food education, will be the development of the Food Law of Catalonia, which the Department expects to have ready during the first half of the year. The Law will become a new regulatory framework with a transformative vocation that will have a comprehensive approach to the food system of Catalonia, which must ensure the right to food. Specifically, the Law will include chapters such as public food procurement, which must promote the inclusion of local products, food education in primary and secondary school curricula, food sovereignty, Catalan food heritage and the comprehensive sustainability of the agri-food chain.

In this sense, Ordeig has argued that it is “essential to promote food education to implement a new gastronomic culture in future generations that validates the good work done by producers and producers of Catalonia”. The minister also highlighted the fact that the implementation of the Law will allow “50% of the public food supply to be made with local, seasonal and sustainable products”.

In addition, the Food Strategy focuses on reducing food waste per capita by 30% by 2030, between food distribution, catering and households, compared to 2020 data. At the same time, it promotes the administrative simplification of the authorization procedure for biogas plants and wants to reduce costs and facilitate access to resources and technologies that can simplify processes for small producers through shared food infrastructures, such as workshops and low-capacity slaughterhouses.

A roadmap for food

The Strategy, therefore, articulates its objectives through four key dimensions: sustainable, transformative and based on the circular bioeconomy; own and rooted in the territory; fair, equitable and cohesive, and healthy and trustworthy. Based on these four main work axes, a total of 131 specific actions have been planned until 2028, which include 14 transformative actions, which are the following:

Catalan Food Law: this 2025, a new regulatory framework will be presented for the comprehensive sustainability of the Catalan food system and the right to healthy and sustainable food.
Food education: a new program will be created to train students in healthy food decisions and knowledge of the Catalan food system.
Shared food infrastructures: systems and spaces for food production.
Innova 2030 Plan: innovation strategy in the agri-food sector.
Technological and digital transformation of the agri-food system: promotion of technologies to improve the agri-food sector.
Organization, structuring and sizing of the sector: improvement of the organization of the sector.
Financing of the Catalan food system: specific for agri-food companies.
Agri-food generational succession: support actions to create and consolidate a new agri-food generation.
Comprehensive sustainability of agri-food companies: promotion of sustainability from the triple environmental, economic and social aspects.
Smart digital labelling: new program that aims to offer truthful information to the consumer that implies more sustainable and informed consumption decision-making.
New advisory model: response to technical needs of the sector.
Rural and environmental agri-food observatory of Catalonia: data governance tool for the agri-food system.
New business models: promotion of new business models with added value.
Balance of the agri-food chain: actions to achieve equitable development of all links in the food chain.