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One hundred and forty delegates from local authorities, food campaigning organisations, Transition groups, academic institutions and community food enterprises attended the first Making Local Food Work conference. The idea behind the title, Communities Taking Control was that the event should focus on how communities can reconnect with and regain control of their food systems. Speakers were chosen for their profile and particular expertise relating to the four underlying discussion topics, which were:
1. Can food systems be changed from the bottom up?
2. The Recession: opportunity or threat for local food?
3. Is Social Enterprise the key?
4. How to make local food work.
The overall feel of the day was that urgent and radical changes to the food system were required, and that the assembled delegates were the best people to take the lead in engaging with both consumers and policy makers to inspire and enable these changes.
Download a copy of the programme and speaker profiles here
Plenary Session
The plenary session, chaired by Kath Dalmey from Sustain, heard from Professor Elizabeth Dowler of Warwick University about recent research into consumers’ motivations for reconnecting with their food and the alternative food supply schemes set up to facilitate this. View Professor Dowler’s presentation here. The study’s findings have been published in a book, Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food: exploring alternatives, Kneafsey, Cox, Holloway, Dowler, Venn and Tuomainen (2008) Berg: Oxford http://www.bergpublishers.com/?tabid=3929
The delegates were then treated to two inspirational case studies from people involved in community – led food schemes that form a direct link between producers and consumers in their local community. The first, Headingley Fowl and Pig Co-ops were set up recently in a suburb of Leeds. Residents formed two co-operative buying groups to bulk-buy chicken and pork from a local organic farm. By committing to buy a certain amount of meat at a certain price, the members benefit from organic, free-range and humanely-slaughtered chickens and pigs at competitive prices, whilst the farmer is guaranteed a market for her produce. Members can also visit the farm and see how their animals are raised.
The second case study was from Salop Drive Market Garden. Based on a housing estate in the former industrial borough of Sandwell, this scheme took derelict land and turned it into a thriving market garden, where local residents and service users of a disability charity run a successful fruit and veg scheme, selling bags to 80 local households who would otherwise have difficulty getting hold of fresh, healthy, local produce. One of the schemes featured in Professor Dowler’s research, this is a shining example of the additional social benefits that community food enterprise s can bring.
A panel debate was then held, with a panel consisting of: Rob Hopkins (Transition Towns); Joy Carey (Soil Association); Professor Elizabeth Dowler (Warwick University); Peter Cleasby (Plunkett Foundation) and Adam York (Unicorn Grocery). For detailed notes, please click here. The panel answered questions from the Chair and from the audience about what challenges to issue policy makers, how to galvanise communities and equip them to make a difference, how to educate the public and initiate a cultural shift, how to link with the environmental agenda, and how to get around class issues. The overall conclusion was that we should see the Recession as an opportunity to bring about change, but that we need to work closely with central and local Government to facilitate that change, whilst telling positive and inspirational stories to help people to ‘be the change’.
