How we might get there
The mainstream food system makes it increasingly hard to farm or produce food sustainably. The smaller organic farms and market gardens we need to have more of are exactly the kind of operations that struggle to survive in the mainstream food system. The food they produce often costs more as its production relies more on people power and natural processes than on chemicals and machinery and in a world of cheap and available fossil fuels, dominated by the supermarkets and agribusiness, it can be very hard to compete and raise food in a sustainable, ecological way.
Sustainable farmers and growers - urban and rural - now and in the future - need direct help to enable them to survive and thrive. Some of the things they need are:
- local retail outlets which will sell their produce at a fair price and enable them to make a living.
- help with pricing, marketing and product development.
- a sense that they are connected to and appreciated by those that buy and eat their food.
We do not believe the supermarkets and agri-business will or indeed can, by their very nature, provide farmers with these things. Individual consumer choices at the supermarket cannot be harnessed and focussed towards specific farmers and so cannot provide them either. Government could bring about change – but at the moment, they do not seem to grasp the scale and nature of the problem.
So where does that leave us?
Well, if individual consumer choices were targeted and focussed via collective community-scale action then we could start to transform the systems that feed us. We could start to use our collective buying power and skills to reshape the farming landscape – literally to change what it grown, how it grows and what farming look likes.
Our experience has shown that urban communities are well placed to provide farmers and urban growers with many of the things they need, by establishing alternative trading routes for those farmers and growers. Which is why community-led trade and the Growing Communities approach has the potential to make a real difference here.
Through community-led trade we can reach out and support those farmers now and in the future who struggle to farm sustainably and make a decent living. And in the process we can create sustainable and meaningful work for ourselves, while providing our communities with good food.
This approach of getting on with creating a viable alternative to the current food system is in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller who said: “You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
We know that what we are doing is tiny in the grand scheme of things but if we can find people willing and able to set up community-led box schemes using the the Growing Communities model and match them up with farmers and growers willing to take a chance with those communities then we could start to make a real difference.
That’s why we launched our Growing Communities start-up programme in 2009.
>> Find out more about how to get involved
