How Can Purbeck Expand Local Food Production?

PEAT held a very successful ‘food themed green drinks’ at the Square and Compass in mid February- over 40 people squeezed into the cosy pub to talk about local food issues. Below is a summary of the outcomes from one of the topics ‘expanding local food production’. A lot of these actions need people signed up to them, so go out there and do them if you can and please do get in touch if you want to talk more about anything food related…. please contact James on peatfood@googlemail.com

Community Supported Agriculture

·         Finding suitable land is an issue

·         Potential to engage local community and school groups in projects (‘field trips’)

·         Community farm and community orchard suggested

·         Possibility to use small hubs in a co-operative way if one larger area of land is not available

Actions:

• Enquire with local landowners about suitable land to use (Encombe Estate? Renscombe? National Trust?)
• James M and Tim K to attend training event about setting up CSA projects on 18^th March, more free training is available all year if anyone else is interested

 

Allotments and Growing Your Own

·         Swanage allotments might be threatened

·         Need to create more allotments

·         Holton Lee to provide up to 1 hectare of allotments to local residents in need

·         Allotment surplus produce is not allowed to be sold for money

·         Run courses and workshops to encourage people and teach them skills to grown their own

·         Landshare schemes are a good idea to bring those with no/spare land together

Actions:

• Petition local councils to create more allotments and not close existing ones
• Approach local landowners to see if they would be open to the idea of giving up some land for allotments, churches might have land available?
• Set up a swap shop for surplus produce, online or in local food outlet
• PEAT to distribute information about growing courses, this can also be promoted via the forum/website that will be setup
• Check out landshare websites to look for land to grow on or register as having spare land available

 

Food Forum/Website and Awareness Raising

·         Creating an online area where people can come together to exchange ideas and information about local food projects and events could be hugely beneficial – link to it from PEAT site and maybe give it its own identity as well

·         Creating a Top 10 list of why to buy local to raise awareness of the issues

Actions:

·         James M and Tim K to discuss setting up an online forum but input from others would be gratefully received

·         Need to gather ideas for the Top 10 list

 

 

Food Outlets

·         Local supermarkets and markets do not seem to stock a great deal of locally produced food

·         Purbeck Producers run 2 markets every month that could be better attended

·         Market profit from meat sales can be the same as selling direct to wholesale or abattoir

·         A local producer or co-operative shop idea has not previously been met with much enthusiasm although we do have a good local food outlet in Wareham: The Salt Pig

Actions:

·         Pressure local supermarkets and markets to stock more local produce

·         Go to local food producer markets and meet the producers, learn about their products and buy them

·         Buy from local food outlets such as The Salt Pig

 

School Food

·         DCC is getting a lot of school dinner food from Nottingham. Bridport has a good model for supplying schools with local food from a local hub

·         Engaging school groups to teach them about local food production would be beneficial

Actions:

·         Talk to local schools, especially if you have children there, and ask them about their food supply policy and see if they would be interested to learn more about local food production

·         Speak to DCC about why they are not using local suppliers for school food