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Transition Penwith Food Group took part in this funded Skillshare Study Visit as part of the Specialist Enterprise Support Strand of Making Local Food Work. The visit was facilitated by Nick Weir for Skillshare.

Specialist Enterprise Support objective: to enable 200 community based food enterprises across England to develop and thrive.

Background
Transition Penwith Food Group consists of 6 community food enterprises who are part of the new MLFW local food systems project.   Their aim is to develop cooperative working practices and increase local market share. The group is made up of the following community food enterprises:

* Bosarvern Community Farm, St Just . * Food for the Future: (RIO, Plan-it Earth Eco Project, Soil Association).* Healthy Boxes. * Higher Keigwin Farm, Morvah. * Lowarth Brogh. * West Cornwall Farmers' Markets. 

Hosts:
Keveral South East Cornwall Growers  .

Bill Knight and Sean O’Neill
 

Riverford Field Kitchen:

              Guy Watson

Real Food Store Exeter 
11 & 13 Paris Street, Exeter, EX1 2JB

Sarah Collier

Visitors:
Traci Lewis (Transition Penwith)                                                                   
Deb Pepper and Hugh Taylor (Bosavern Community Farm),
Tim Andrews (West Cornwall Farmers Markets),
Dax Ansell (Food for the Future, RIO), Lisa Guy (Higher Keigwin Farm),  Dylan Keating (Lowarth Brogh), Louise Reynolds (Healthy Boxes ).

Original Objectives of Visit:
These objectives were set in advance of the visits:
• To learn more about cooperative working practices, organic veg box production, marketing and distribution, community food hub (distribution, retail, marketing)                                                                                                                                          

• To learn and be inspired from other enterprises who have successfully developed cooperative working models for local and sustainable food production and marketing.                                                                                                                                              

What the visitors said they would like from the day:
• To explore ways we can work as a co-operative
• To find our roles in the group
• To understand more about how growers can work together
• To see a box scheme working
• To hear the story of how these businesses have developed
• To find out how they raised start-up funding
• To understand the governance structures of the businesses
• To find out how to make our co-op triple bottom-line sustainable
• To explore how to raise public awareness in a broad range of target customers
• To find out how to build a brand

Summary of the Visit : The group was welcomed to Keveral farm at 9am by the Keveral hosts and Nick Weir.  Nick asked the participants to outline their objectives for the day (see above) and to clarify their motivation in being part of this group.  This is a summary of their responses to this second question;
• I want to find ways to share the work of building a small local food business
• I think my business will be more successful if we co-operate together
• We can achieve more by working together than any one of us can achieve if we compete.

Bill Knight and Sean O’Reilly gave a very detailed account of the background to the Keveral co-op.  They then gave us a quick tour of their growing facilities.  These are the questions and answers that arose during the discussion:
• How do you deal with conflict?  We decided to separate our growing plots so that we were not trying to work with people we are living with.
• How do you make the business work on such a small scale?  By joining forces and sharing all the admin work of the box scheme (total 47 hours per week) between 6 of us so that we all still have enough time for growing.
• Is it profitable and how do you share the profits?  Yes, we keep a tally of admin hours worked and then share the profits pro-rata based on number of hours.
• What material are you using for mulching?  Bioroll -  a crepe paper-based mulch.
• Why are the salads growing so densely?  So that we can pick some of the leaves small and sell them as micro-salads and leave the rest to grow on for salad bags.
• What equipment do you use?  Sean showed us some equipment that he had commissioned specifically to suit his small tractor and small-scale production.

We visited the Riverford farm shop and then went on to the Riverford field kitchen, where we toured some of the veg production fields, then had lunch with Guy Watson.  Nick gave Guy a summary of what participants wanted from the day.  Guy then gave a brief presentation addressing these points and then answered these questions;
• How did you co-operate with other producers?  I led the project and others joined in
• How would you do it differently if you were to do it again?  If I wanted to set up a co-op, I would start with a more equal power base and ensure that all members we’re starting form the same place and going towards a common vision.
• What did you do when sales dropped in 2007?  I visited customers to find out how we could improve.  They told me that they wanted cleaner veg and less packaging.
• What is Riverford’s vision?  Good food, good farming and good business.

We then visited the Real Food Store in Exeter, browsed the shop (newly opened that day) and then had tea with Sarah.  Nick gave Sarah a summary of what participants wanted from the day.  Sarah then gave a brief presentation addressing these points and then answered these questions;
• How did you choose this site?  It was in a good location and a poor state of repair so we could get a good deal on the lease and improve it to suit our needs.
• Are you competing with other outlets?  There is no-one else providing such a wide range of local produce.  The farmers’ market is only once a week.
• What is your relationship to local producers?  Some of them are members.  Ohters simply a business relationship.
• Can we have more details on turnover projections?  Yes – download the business plan from the website.

Most valuable elements of the visit: 

• Seeing other projects
• Sharing ideas of different models
• How projects developed, evolved and are still sustained
• Hearing about;
  The evolution of co-operative working at Keveral
  The importance of values at Riverford
  The inspiration behind the real Food Store
• To see how people have developed relationships within a business and learnt how to work together
• 3 very different businesses with different objectives
• Discussion about how individuals/groups/projects organised themselves and their aims
• The challenges they faced
• How they worked in partnership with other producers
• Talking to knowledgeable, experienced people first hand
• Great tips and sharing of successes and failures
• Nick’s minibus stories of Stroud CSA and the food hub
• The range of enterprises and different structures and strategies around the same idea – local food to local people
• Seeing and sensing atmosphere and environment of these different businesses
• Learning about other projects and people’s experiences
• Seeing how they operate on the ground

Actions committed to:                                                                                       • Researching legal structures
• Assessing in more detail the options for us working together
• I am going to get us to develop our mission statement and principles on the way home!
• Continue to develop our community farm
• Engaging local community in all aspects of growing and cooking local food and land-based skills
• Take steps towards formalising our relationships and start putting in place the building blocks of our co-operative project.
• Reading business plan of real food store
• Checking out Stroudco food hub software for application in local farmers’ market.
• Develop aims and ethics of our group
• Establish focus for our group – why and how we work together.

Impact against original objectives:   
The consensus was that all objectives had been achieved with the following provisos;
- We needed more time at Keveral to get the full value of their experience
- We have a lot more work to do to build our co-operative and today has raised as many questions as it has answered.  This is a good thing because it has made us think more deeply about lots of important areas we had not considered previously.