The FUSILLI project in Castelo Branco aims to change the city’s food system towards greater sustainability, resilience, health and an emphasis on local products.

At the local level, the main beneficiary is the Municipality of Castelo Branco (CMCB), with two linked-third parties: CATAA and InovCluster (see details below).

Over the course of 3 years, there are several local FUSILLI actions that touch on essential points of the food system: production, consumption, distribution, governance and waste.

FUSILLI kicked off in January 2022 with the Product of the Month, an ex-libris action of the project and perhaps the most impactful to date. The concept is very simple and reminds us of a game: each month throughout the year is linked with a local or seasonal food, preferably both. The Product of the Month has been presented monthly at the municipal market with two main objectives: to attract citizens to the market to make this space more dynamic and to raise awareness of the importance of choosing to consume more sustainable products. Allied to this activity, CATAA has been developing new products based on the ingredient of the month. People start to get curious about what the next month’s product will be. To increase the impact of this activity, since September 2022 the FUSILLI team has been visited by several schools who tell a story or play alluding to the Product of the Month.

Several hundred students have already gone through FUSILLI activities: 

– school gardens that FUSILLI helped to implement or improve

– ludic and fun activities and games about healthy eating

– visits to Quinta do Chinco social gardens to learn how to grow and harvest food through ancestral practices and without the use of chemicals, 

– visits to CATAA to learn more about local foods, food innovation and science

FUSILLI also implemented new green spaces: vertical gardens in the municipal market and a hotel for pollinators in the CATAA/InovCluster building. FUSILLI also offered thousands of cloth bags with important messages about the food system, aiming to reduce the use of plastic bags.

Finally, the FUSILLI team has been associated with various events that take place in the city, whether promoting Children’s Day by offering fruit and healthy snacks to the little ones, which took place in 2022 and 2023, or participating in museum events in the city, as is the case of the MUTEX and Cargaleiro museums, which invited the FUSILLI project in 2023. In these museums, the team promoted activities related to pollinators, honey, local foods, food sustainability, among others.

Soon, already in 2023, composters will be distributed to the public for free. The users have to complete a formation workshop about composting and the citizens will be able to communicate the amount of waste produced in an online app, in order com create a profile and projection of how much they can reduce the waste invoice/taxes. 

To wrap up, the FUSILLI project has been an opportunity to implement important actions to improve the city’s food system. It is now important to sustain this progress far beyond the FUSILLI project. For this purpose, an instrument has already been created and is currently undergoing adjustments and exploration: the Food Policy Council. This council, created in December 2022, is constituted by various members representing several entities in the city, including ordinary citizens, and aims to advise and support the implementation of actions and policies to achieve a more sustainable, healthy, fair and resilient food system in Castelo Branco,

The FUSILLI project will run until the end of 2024. More news will be posted here.