By Annelie Sieveking

From the 10^th to the 12^th of November 2017, over 100 people from more than 40 cities came together in Essen, Germany to exchange ideas and experiences about food policy councils (FPCs, in German: Ernährungsräte). This was the first networking congress of recently created food policy councils and initiatives planning to do so in the near future in German-speaking countries and regions (Austria, Germany, South Tirol and Switzerland).

FPCs bring together diverse actors within the food system; they are often initiated by civil society and they try to shape food policies at different levels. As FPCs have been in existence in other countries for several decades, the congress organizers invited international guests from the United States, Canada, Brazil and the United Kingdom to learn from their experiences. In Germany, FPCs are a fairly new phenomenon with the first ones founded in Cologne and Berlin…