Stakeholder Analysis for a Center for Nutrition and Agriculture

For around ten years, civil society organizations in Freiburg have been considering a center for food and agriculture (House of Food, HOF). With the founding of the Ernährungsrat Freiburg & Region e.V. in 2018, this association provided the central platform for promoting and further developing the idea. From 2019, the City of Freiburg, in particular the Municipal Environment Agency, was also involved in the discussions, as the objectives of the HOF overlapped with the strategies and objectives of the City of Freiburg. The core of the idea is to create a physical location that forms a central crystallisation point for the many players and activities related to a sustainable food system in Freiburg and the region. This basic idea has been fleshed out and enriched in many discussions and events over the past few years and written down in a concept paper. At the same time, the people behind the project were looking for a location where the ideas could be implemented and for financing options that would ensure the project was economically viable. In the summer of 2024, a HOF laboratory was set up in the front building of the FABRIK in Freiburg-Herdern as a pilot project, where formats of the planned HOF could be tested. In this project, an analysis of the existing landscape of actors and their fields of activity was undertaken, including a description of the existing links between these actors and the Freiburg Food Council and the activities surrounding the establishment of the HOF. On the one hand, to demonstrate the added value of the HOF and, on the other, to identify any gaps that could be filled by a corresponding project. Based on the stakeholder analysis, possible conclusions were drawn about the vision, mission and target definition of the HOF developed in the concept paper and thus also about the requirements of a suitable building, i.e. its facilities and equipment. As part of this study, the proposals were also discussed with the people driving the HOF project and their feedback was taken into account.

Furthermore, models and constructs were analysed that are similar to the concept of the planned Center for Food and Agriculture. With a view to these model projects, considerations were made as to how the city of Freiburg could participate in the development of a HOF in Freiburg.