As part of the Big Lottery funded ‘Making Local Food Work’ programme reports, mapping local food webs in 6 locations in England, have been produced by CPRE – the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Kenilworth was one of the locations studied and Canalside features in a case study, with quotes from our two Kenilworth veg members.
This is the summary of the report. To download it as a PDF, copy and paste the link below to go to the CPRE website.
Kenilworth, a small, relatively prosperous market town, demonstrates a promising, yet not too extensive, food web. Recently, redevelopment of the town centre introduced the first Waitrose in Warwickshire alongside other national chain shops and food outlets. These co-exist with a variety of small, traditional outlets including a butcher, greengrocer, baker, delicatessen, farm shops and a weekly retail market, which offers some local food. Over 30 outlets are servicing public demand for locally sourced food coming from over 75 producers. Many of the independent outlets selling local food were found to help raise awareness among customers of where their food comes from and how it is produced. Food outlets provide valuable local jobs with, we estimate over 175 jobs at outlets in the study area and a further 580 at local suppliers supported by sales into the town. Local food sales in Kenilworth amount to an estimated £3.2 to £7.5 million annually.
http://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-do/farming-and-food/local-foods/update/item/1660-our-new-research-shows-the-value-of-local-food-webs
Canalside member and fellow blogger, Elizabeth, recently forwarded on the below link about the new ‘Food Safety & Modernization Act of 2009’ that was introduced in the USA in February this year. This new proposal (as it still is) seeks to set in place heavy bureaucratic hoops for small producers to jump through, leading to the very likely destruction of small-scale and truly sustainable food production systems such as farmer’s markets and CSAs. Cynics will certainly pick up on the point that the woman behind this Act, Rosa Delauro, is married to a political consultant who has worked with Monsanto in the past – need I say more?
We are not in America, so this may well not affect us now, but who’s to say this draconian proposal won’t find its way across the pond at some point…?
HR875 – The Death of Farmer’s Markets, CSAs and Local Food