Milano Food Policy

The City of Milan’s Urban Food Policy.
The Food Policy is a tool designed to support city governance, developed through mobilization, dialogue, and the active contribution of a wide range of social, economic, and institutional stakeholders to enhance the quality of life and make the city of Milan more sustainable, starting with issues related to food.

The City of Milan and the Cariplo Foundation have looked beyond EXPO 2015 and, with the technical and scientific support of Economia e Sostenibilità, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to implement the city’s Food Policy. This is an innovative project aimed at systematizing policies that address food-related issues from various perspectives: the local area, social welfare, education, the environment, well-being, and international relations. Addressing these issues at the urban and metropolitan levels, while drawing on the best international development policies, is crucial for building a more sustainable world, starting with cities, where the issue of “food” takes on significant importance, as it is a critical factor with cross-scale effects.

Overall, the city—through its universities and research centers, as well as in the worlds of commerce, production, and consumption, and in the social, educational, preventive, and cultural spheres—already demonstrates knowledge and expertise regarding healthy, good, fair, and sustainable food for all its residents. The combination of these issues, research, data, and public and private stakeholders is crucial for helping to ensure the sustainable development of food production and consumption—an issue that is becoming increasingly central to residents’ concerns and within public debate.

Furthermore, the interconnection of the “food” issue with all other spheres of sustainability—from the institutional to the environmental, social, and economic—ensures that it plays a key role in all metropolitan policies. With a view toward transitioning to a context that is more resilient in every aspect, taking an integrated approach centered on the “food system” increases our ability to address risks to the population and the environment—both at the local level and by responsibly participating in exemplary action on an international scale.

Finally, as is well known, in 2015 the city will host the international Expo 2015 event, titled “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life,” which centers on the theme of food, offering an opportunity to develop a genuine institutional strategic proposal that involves all stakeholders and is ready to engage in international debate. Integrating all these dimensions requires a specific governance framework that allows us to capitalize on these concerns and the many existing initiatives, transforming them into a unified institutional strategy: the “Guidelines for Milan’s Food Policy 2015–2020.”

Milan’s Food Policy was conceived as a process to be developed over the medium to long term, and in 2015, its development intersected with Expo 2015, themed “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life.” This provided an opportunity to create an international forum for discussing the approaches and content of Milan’s Food Policy within the context of various international debates.

The project was carried out thanks to the collaboration of Guido Agnelli, Chiara Demaldè, Camilla De Nardi, Chiara Ducoli, Giuseppe Galli, Ettore Gualandi, Andrea Magarini, Marta Maggi, Alessandro Maggioni, Marco Marangoni, Alessia Marazzi, Loris Mazzagatti, Alessandro Musetta, Mario Paris, Enrico Pastori, Alice Rossi, and Cécile Sillig.