Annual Conference 2011
Making Local Food Work's Annual Conference 2011
Rooting community food in an enterprising future
Thursday 12 May 10am - 4pm
Making Local Food Work would like to thank everyone who helped to make Rooting community food in an enterprising future a great success! The conference drew together a wide range of speakers, from high profile experts and academics to those actually involved on the ground in community food enterprise to share their knowledge and experience with delegates from across the food and social enterprise sector. The day was a resounding success with 180 delegates attending for a day of inspiring workshops, debate and, of course, a fantastic lunch of locally-produced food!
Chairman of the day and Director of the Making Local Food Work programme, Peter Couchman, set the theme for the day by highlighting the success of the community and local food movement. He underlined the importance of developing enterprising skills in the community food sector and the role they would plan in ensuring a sustainable future.
He then welcomed to the platform Dr Charlie Clutterbuck, a Research Fellow of Dept. of Food Policy at City University London and one of the world's leading authorities on the environment. Dr Clutterbuck’s presentation, What can be learnt from the ground up to shape the bigger picture of the UK food system? looked at the importance of understanding the meaning of ‘sustainable food’ and its implications for healthier people and planet. His presentation can be downloaded from here.
Julie Brown, Director of Growing Communities, then took to the platform. She spoke about the way in which Growing Communities – a Hackney-based social enterprise – was structured to ensure a fair price for both farmers and consumers, and the importance of moving towards a greener ethos not just as individuals, but as producers, consumers and traders. Download Julie's presentation here.
Delegates then attended one of the following five workshop sessions:
The enterprising benefits of cross-collaboration
This session explored the many advantages that can be gained by community food enterprises when they work together. Tamara Schiopu and Nina Dales – Project Manager and Project Officer on the Making Local Food Work Local Food Systems project – were joined by leading researcher Tim Crabtree and Feeding Manchester’s Chris Walsh and looked at theory behind local food systems and how they work in a practical level. Their presentation can be downloaded here.
Simply Governance
The Simply Governance workshop looked at the practical tools needed to effectively run a community food enterprise. Co-operatives UK’s Mark Simmonds, Good Food Good Governance Field Worker for Making Local Food Work, delivered this practical session, which specifically defined ‘governance’ and its importance, highlighting the free tools available through his project whilst also signposting attendees to other support available. His presentation can be downloaded from here.
Getting your business right
Making Local Food Work’s Specialist Enterprise Support Project Officer, Richard Snow, was joined by Simon Michaels to look at some common business ailments encountered by community food enterprises and how they can be overcome through specialist enterprise support and sound business planning. The presentation can be downloaded from here.
A flavour of Sheffield
This session explored the ways in which food mapping and food strategies have worked together in Sheffield not only to create a vibrant local food system but to ensure locally-produced food has a place in the city’s food policy. The Campaign to Protect Rural England’s (CPRE) Thea Platt, Sheffield City Council’s Food Project Officer Jen Rickard and Sustain’s Food Co-ops Adviser Leon Ballin joined forces to explain the concept of mapping food webs, as well as exploring what lessons can be learnt in other cities from Sheffield’s success. Their presentation can be downloaded from here.
Making the most of volunteers
Feckenham Community Shop’s Committee Member Rosemary Wormington joined Making Local Food Work Field Officer Rebecca Unsworth and Look for Local adviser Charlotte Foster to look at the value of volunteers, and how they can be successfully recruited and managed to ensure motivation remains high. The presentation can be downloaded from here.
After a lunch of fantastic locally-produced food and plenty of time for networking and browsing the stands, delegates regrouped in the main hall for the afternoon session. This began with volunteers from Sheffield’s Loxley Valley Community Farm talking about the challenges and successes of setting up and running a community food enterprise. They talked about some of the challenges of securing land and funding, and how they overcame them to now be a large and beneficial enterprise in South Yorkshire. Their presentation can be downloaded from here.
The afternoon consisted of three debate panels:
Do you build food enterprises for food or for money?
This debate, chaired by Making Local Food Work’s Specialist Enterprise Consultant Maurice McCartney, looked at the important balance between business objectives and social motivation for community food enterprises. Tim Crabtree and Julie Brown were joined by Making Local Food Work’s Specialist Enterprise Consultant Simon Michaels to debate the following questions with the audience:
• Are community food enterprises best to focus on benefiting people as an impact of their activity or through direct involvement?
• Should community food enterprises continually strive to expand and have a wider impact, or should they focus on the immediate locality?
• Can you/should you franchise community food enterprises?
Buying food by the book
Jennifer Smith, Head of Programme Management for Making Local Food Work, joined Jane Stammers from Country Markets, FARMA’s Sue Thomson, Sheffield City Council’s Chris Shaw and Beechenhill Farm’s Sue Prince to explore:
• What support do small producers need to level out the playing field for small producers against larger companies?
• Does the amount of legislation reduce the survival rates and viability of small producers?
• Are/should consumers be confident in small producers?
• Do retail outlets/distributors perceive a greater risk when using smaller, local producers? Is this for the protection of the consumer and is this right?
Can community engagement challenge well-established consumer buying behaviour?
Plunkett Foundation Trustee Kate Braithwaite was joined by Sheffield Fruit CSA member Huw Evans, Defra’s Graham Russell and Dr Charlie Clutterbuck to debate:
• At what point does community become commercial?
• How do community food enterprises have an impact on the wider food culture whilst maintaining their original social motivations to establish in the first place?
• Should community food enterprises and supporting bodies actively try to influence wider food culture, or should they simply lead by example?
• Should we influence consumers, or food enterprises?
Peter Couchman then closed the day by inviting questions from the audience to the panel. The Making Local Food Work team would like to thank everyone for making the day a fantastic success, and we hope to see everyone next year for our final annual conference!
