A Food Revolution

A food revolution is complicated, and it’s slow. There are setbacks and compromises, but gradually a painstaking knitting together of tiny links to build an alternative system, working out what’s missing and somehow supplying it, can drive change. Hopkins agrees: “It’s really understated. They’re just quietly building these relationships and connections.” Currently, Liège has lots of “small things that offer a real alternative”, as Jonet says. That could lead to big things. But can they scale up? And how, especially right now, when the cost-of-living crisis is squeezing the whole network?

We talk about this a lot, Jonet, Gruie and I, in the car. We talk, too, at the Food Belt office in the brand-new “logistics hub”. It’s an impressive spot, where the Food Belt team works and trains entrepreneurs with sustainable food ideas. The plan is for a second building next door to create another of the “missing links” in their network: a plant to wash, store, prepare and possibly bottle the network’s produce. That would help secure supply over leaner months and ensure school canteens can also get their veg through the network.

The Hub Is Important

The hub is important because it demonstrates what happens when you can get public authorities involved, a key strategy for scaling up this experiment. They were initially reactive, not proactive. Now, though, the city and region are a potentially powerful catalyst for change (current anxieties around food security and food sovereignty have doubtless helped). Certainly, without them the school projects would not have happened, or the hub, and funding the Food Belt’s continued existence has become easier with official support. That increased public sector buy-in gives Jonet hope for the future: “Those alliances between co-operatives, citizens and public authorities will help us get through this difficult stage. But there’s still a lot of uncertainty.”

I have only seen a fraction of the network – to see it all would take days, weeks even (the Vin de Liège vineyard co-op raising €2m would make a business school case study all by itself). But the picture is clear – these are vocations not jobs, and they’re hard work, undertaken with conviction and considerable joy, but in 2023 (click here), they are harder than ever. For now, Jonet has another meeting. “I do a lot of networking,” he says, with characteristic understatement. “We know everyone in the ecosystem. Our job is to connect people, to transmit good ideas; sometimes just talking about an idea in the network can mean someone else takes hold of it and it happens.”

It’s been nearly 10 years since the “big bang” as Jonet calls that ambitious, if rather drily worded, statement of intent. Where are they now? “We’re always being asked, ‘So, are you on the right path?’” he says. “And the answer is ‘no’. I reckon we’re at about 5%.” That’s no Hollywood ending, but I warned you it wouldn’t be: this is real life, this is 2023, this is Liège. “It feels like this is a make-or-break moment,” Jonet adds later. I really hope they make it. I think they will: a structure you build slowly and carefully, with love and conviction, has a good chance of surviving a storm, surely. But even if they don’t, they’ve shown us what’s possible.