Peer-learning in Pau: Local Action, Global Insight on Resilient Food Systems

Maarten Klop is community builder at Amped and from May 19th to the 21st he had the opportunity to visit Pau, France (overlooking the Pyrenees), as part of the CLEVERFOOD peer-learning program, organized by Eurocities. He joined a participant from Nilüfer, Turkey in a dynamic exchange of knowledge and practices on regional and resilient food systems. 

This visit to Pau followed Amped’s role as a guiding entity for the peer-learning program in April this year, when Cité de L’agriculture from Marseille and Cellule Manger Demain from Namur visited Amped’s EU4Advice living labs in Amsterdam and Utrecht. In Pau it was our turn to explore how the city is pioneering changes in the food system.

Maarten: “What stood out most was Pau’s bold, proactive approach to treating food not as a commodity, but as a human right and a shared public good. The city is not merely implementing food policy—it is embedding food into the heart of urban planning, social welfare, and ecological regeneration.”

This was exemplified through several inspiring initiatives:

The Central Production Kitchen – Operating with professional efficiency, this facility prepares 11,000 meals a day for schools, nursing homes, and public institutions. It was powerful to see a municipality take on this responsibility directly, without offloading the risks and pressures of profit to entrepreneurs.

Urban Redesign with Food in mind – Pau is actively redesigning neighbourhoods to make space for food sharing initiatives, reinforcing community ties and food accessibility.

The Green Belt Initiative – Perhaps the most visionary initiative of all, Pau—through a cooperative in which the city is a stakeholder—is purchasing farmland within a 50 km radius. They invest in vital infrastructure like tunnels, irrigation, and cooling, and then lease this land to young farmers eager to grow diverse vegetables. This model lowers the barrier to entry, offering aspiring farmers a tangible path forward while shaping the city’s long-term food and land strategy.

Nilüfer, Turkey
Joining this exchange alongside Mehmet Can Yilmaz (Healthy Cities project coordinator in Nilüfer, Turkey) added even more depth. Nilüfer’s municipality is similarly active in food and land management—with public cafés and kitchens, a soil analysis lab, and vibrant markets—all serving as tools to shape the food transition at a local level.

The insights from both cities deeply resonated with our own mission to cultivate just, robust, and regenerative food systems in the Netherlands and abroad. We saw firsthand how cities can be bold agents of change when they embrace food as foundational to healthy communities and ecosystems.

Cities leading food production
From local realities to global lessons, CLEVERFOOD’s peer-learning program shows us clearly: the reshaping of food systems is happening everywhere, all at once—and what a privilege to be part of this living, learning ecosystem of global-local action.

This aligns entirely with our expo program ‘Cities leading food production‘ (in partnership with Royal Jaarbeurs / VIV / HubOrange! / ROM Utrecht Region), which seeks to accelerate the ongoing development of robust, regional and regenerative food systems in cities and metropolitan areas worldwide.