Making Local Food Accessible to All: Ten things we heard

It was standing room only at Lewes Climate Hub’s event exploring how we make local seasonal food accessible to all – part of October’s ‘Love Local Food’ season. Here are some of the key points that came out of the afternoon – including recommendations for action from the People’s Assembly.

It’s been estimated that out of the average UK weekly grocery shop, only 2% on average is food that’s been grown or produced locally.[1]

Many of us are aware that buying local, organically-grown food has a wealth of benefits – from being more nutritious than food that’s been shipped overseas, to providing a boost to our local economy, to improving the resilience of our food supply chains.

So what are the challenges to getting more of us to buy locally grown and produced food rather than heading to the supermarkets, which control an estimated 90% of the UK’s food supply?

To find out, Lewes Climate Hub welcomed three local passionate food champions to talk to our audience about their work and participate in a People’s Assembly on making local food accessible to all:

Collette Haynes of Ashurst Organics, which has been growing organic veg and running a local veg box scheme from their farm in Plumpton for 30 years.

Robin Walden, managing director of local retailers Seasons Wholefoods and a passionate advocate of supporting local, sustainable and organic food.

Nancy Wilson, part of the management team of Lewes District Food Partnership (LDFP), which aims to bring people, communities and organisations together to create better food systems for everyone.

Plus Climate Hub supporter Susan Mumford reported back from the Lewes Friday Food Market on stallholders’ perceptions of the public’s attitude to local food.

Here are some of the key points that arose in the afternoon’s discussion:

  1. We need to educate about the true value of food – One of the biggest issues that emerged was the challenge of how we all perceive the value of food. According to Robin Walden, in the UK we spend about 7% of our disposable income on food; 50 years ago, it was 40%. “We’ve lost trust in how food is made and what good, nutritious food really costs to make and grow,” he said. “And that’s going to take a lot of re-education – starting in schools.”

To that end, Nancy Wilson says one of LDFP’s key priorities is to help develop a food culture that asks what it means to value food and how we can increase the spaces in which people can engage with food positively.

  1. But buying locally doesn’t necessarily mean more expense than the supermarkets – One of the key reasons for people not using Lewes’s food markets according to Susan Mumford’s findings was perceptions around price – with people saying markets are too expensive and the supermarkets are generally not only cheaper but also offer special offers and discounts. But Robin Walden says that in terms of organic produce, 70% of fruit and vegetables sold at Seasons are cheaper than the supermarket equivalent, while the dry goods in its refill dispensers tend to be up to 10% cheaper. Collette says that Ashurst offers the lowest-cost veg box scheme available locally.

Perhaps just as important, although organic seasonal produce may sometimes be more expensive, it can be more nutrient-dense and free from harmful chemicals. So pound for pound, people are paying for better, more nourishing produce. Which brings us back to the issue of culture and what we value spending our money on.

  1. Organic food should be the default – it’s the non-organic stuff that should come with a warning – If people understood the processes used to make cheap, mass-produced food, would they value locally-produced organic food more? asked our speakers. “Why should organic food have to pay for certification to say that’s it’s safe and clean to eat?” asks Robin Walden. “Shouldn’t non-organic food instead have to carry labelling – like tobacco does – to say that toxic pesticides were used in its production?”
  2. Eating locally and sustainably requires some compromise on choice – The big appeal of supermarkets is that you can buy most produce all year around – that’s not so easy if you’re trying to be sustainable. “In terms of seasonality, 30-40% of our food can be local in the summer months,” says Robin Walden. “But it can drop to 10% in the winter. We talk a lot within our business about whether or not we should stock things out of season. It comes back to what shoppers are willing to buy.” As Collette at Ashurst says: “Do you really not want to be able to eat courgettes, tomatoes, cucumber in winter? Would you really be happy just eating beetroot, cabbage and leeks? It’s a very hard sell to a lot of shoppers.”
  3. Young people don’t want to eat just ‘beige’ food – Despite the prevalence of chips, pizza and pastry in school and college canteens, the Lewes District Food Partnership says their research indicates a big appetite among young people for healthier food. LDFP is therefore encouraging youngsters to develop positive and nourishing connections around food such as empowering youth voice in the procurement of catering contracts.
  4. But we also need to ask how local does food need to be? – Working out food’s environmental impact involves more than just looking at its food miles. Collette at Ashurst Organics suggests it’s more important that food is genuinely sustainable and organic than ultra-local – given the limitations on what can be grown on our doorstep. Seasons has worked out that some produce imported from Europe in a responsible way can have a lower carbon footprint than UK-grown food because it doesn’t require heated greenhouses.
  5. People want to connect with local food – but the system isn’t set up to support that – A number of comments during the afternoon pointed out that our social systems aren’t set up to make time and space for good food. That can range, as Nancy observed, from schools and colleges only giving pupils time to grab a highly-processed panini for lunch, to people being encouraged to see themselves primarily as consumers and in need cheap food so they can spend their money on other things. “Our economic system is set up so that people always want to eat cheaply because someone else always want to sell you stuff,” says Collette.
  1. If we want more people to shop local then the culture has to change – As Susan Mumford pointed out from comments from Friday Food Market stallholders, the approach to food in the UK is very different from other countries in Europe. For example, we don’t have a culture where people shop daily for fresh food but instead focus on a weekly supermarket shop or supermarket home delivery. In fact, says Susan, shopping at local food markets is seen as a very middle-class activity given the perceptions of cost and time involved.
  2. There’s not a shortage of local producers – there’s a shortage of local shoppers – Declining support for venues like Lewes Friday Food Market is not due to the lack of produce or potential stallholders, reports Susan Mumford – but the lack of footfall and customers as people favour convenience and the (perceived) lower cost of the supermarket. In many cases, that will be down to the cost-of-living crisis and a need to spend as little as possible (which is partly why Lewes District Food Partnership is looking to encourage great links between local food producers and communities, including in the provision of ’emergency food’ through food banks and other outlets). But in other cases, it’s again down to culture and what people prioritise in their lives.
  3. But Covid showed how vital local producers are to our food resilience – Collette at Ashurst Organics says that during the Covid pandemic, their veg box customers doubled from 300 to 600 as people scrambled to find an alternative/supplement to the supermarket. Friday Food Market stallholders also saw a strong uptick in footfall as shoppers viewed it as a safer way to shop. “It felt like we were on the frontline. As food growers we had power and worth. But all those people have now gone back to the supermarkets,” says Collette.


LDFP is looking to create a stronger local food infrastructure through the Grow-Pick-Eat network to enable local buyers and suppliers to get together, and to work out what’s missing from our food supply infrastructure and how to fill those gaps. But clearly, lots needs to be done to get more people to appreciate and use local producers –not just during an emergency such as Covid.

 

People’s Assembly – suggestions and recommendations

In short, getting more people to shift at least some of their shopping from supermarkets to local markets and suppliers requires some big cultural shifts and a lot of education.

At the People’s Assembly that followed our local food speakers, two discussion groups formed. Over an hour’s facilitated conversation they came up with the following actions that people would like to see or pursue:

  1. Support more local food growing at schools and in more outdoor spaces
  2. Support loyalty schemes for local outlets and producers
  3. For school meals, provide better labelling and pricing and join up with cookery lessons to encourage good food choices
  4. Lobby ESCC to use local suppliers for school and college meals
  5. Set up a local growers’ system to co-ordinate distribution of what is grown and help avoid waste
  6. Provide local food in pre-school settings – e.g. kindergartens, child-minders and parent/baby groups
  7. Produce and distribute a simple list of bullet-point ‘positives’ and ‘negatives’ of organic vs non-organic food (pesticide effects etc) so people can understand its benefits
  8. Improve local education and communication for all ages about the benefits of sustainable and locally-grown food
  9. Speak to Harvey’s about their yard being used to hold the Lewes Farmers’ Market to make ‘market days’ much more of an event in town
  10. Lobby government for subsidies and improve planning laws to support local food growers and market gardeners – highlight and support the Landworkers Alliance’s work in this area.

All these recommendations have been fed back to Lewes Town Council, Lewes District Council and Lewes District Food Partnership – and we’ll keep you posted on progress and initiatives that come out of this event. If you’d like to get involved email .

[1] https://www.sustainweb.org/good-food-enterprise/local-food-retail/