Demand For Local Food Making An Impact

In France at least 25 per cent of food in supermarkets across the country has to come from local suppliers. That is what the French housewife demands when she goes into a supermarket, because usually, she has the choice of a local market as well.

Here we already have a growing network of farmers markets, but now there has been a £10 million local food initiative backed by the Big Lottery Fund. The money has been spread among five different organizations to oversee how to better the means of linking local communities with locally produced food.

Among those receiving financial backing is the Soil Association and the Cooperative movement.  The six delivery strands earmarked are Community Support Agriculture (CSA), food coops, buying groups, cooperatively owned farmers markets, community shops, local food and sustainable models of home produced food, distribution and supply.

The Oxfordshire based Plunkett Foundation has been put in charge of orchestrating the initiative. With a consortium of partners, they aim to bring lasting benefits to a range of  communities;, from isolated rural areas where commercial retail is not considered viable, to urban communities where people do not currently  have sufficient access to local healthy food. The aim of the programme is to reconnect people and land through issues of food.

Significantly Tesco have just launched a local food initiative, where they plan to focus on the county and farm where food is produced. It means a great boost for the smaller producer because they will not have to provide supplies nationwide, only to their local store.

Tesco have divided the country into six regions and they have been told by the boss of Tesco Sir Terry Leahy that he expects them to increase the current £3million turnover in local produce to £1billion by 2011. Sir Terry is a great believer in his stores being consumer led.  And it us the consumer who have asked for local produce, just as in the past Tesco enlarged their organic shelves, because of demand.

Quentin Sandall, senior buying manager for local sourcing in the South East tells me that she can see this approach growing.

“As soon as we introduce a local variant that is the one people buy. They like supporting producers in their own county and neighborhood. The cry for local product is getting bigger and bigger, and it helps in the controversy over food miles and reduces the carbon footprint.”

“We have uncovered wonderful fruit juice producers. Last week we introduced two new vineyards in the New Forest, an ice cream manufacturer, and a local sausage supplier. It is harder to find local producers in the South East than elsewhere in Britain. For example, all our stores in the West Country will in future only sell meat produced in the West Country.”
The biggest result has been in the backing of micro breweries, especially in the Midlands, where 38 new local beers have been unearthed, and up to seven crates or more will be put on sale in local stores every week.

The Soil Association, who certify and represent Britain’s organic growers, gets £1million of the Big Lottery funding to explore the potential for a range of local food through ‘community and social enterprise.’ They say that social enterprises are concerned with the need to deliver financial, social and environmental benefits.

What interests the Soil Association under this new scheme is Community Supported Agriculture which is about taking responsibility for how our food is produced and how it gets to the table.

As the Soil Association says: “It is a direct relationship between the people who eat the food and the farmer who produces it. The term Community Supported Agriculture was coined in America and encompasses a broad range of partnerships between consumers and producers. Each CSA is unique.”

There are already several examples of Community Supported Agriculture and that could be the way forward for urban dwellers. The Sedlescombe Vineyard in Sussex runs a Rentavine scheme. Rentavine, which means what it says, gives members discounts on organic wines, fruit wines and ciders. Members may also visit the vineyard for leisure, wine tasting or help with the work.

Dragon Orchard Cropsharers in Hereford is a 22 acre orchard in which the members pay for a share in the yearly harvest and products made from them. In Kent there is Goddard Farm’s biodynamic box scheme where supplying 20 local households who commit in advance to the coming season’s crops Customers provide six post-dated cheques.

Bookmark with:

• Delicious
• Digg
• reddit
• StumbleUpon

Don’t know what this is?

Read the 50connect Guide To Social Bookmarking.