Growing Communities in North London is a best practice model for sustainable local, organic food production. We speak to co-founder and director, Julie Brown.
Programme produced by Phil England for Climate Radio. http://climateradio.co.uk Please drop me an email to let me know if you rebroadcast this programme: phil [at] switch-online.co.uk
Growing communities is a social enterprise based in Hackney, North London which has cut through the multitude of environmental and social costs incurred by our globalised, supermarket-led food system and set up community led models for a more sustainable future. The project represents a model of best practice that is ripe for replication across the capital and across the country. Their organic box scheme was the first in London and now supplies 300 households in Hackney with their weekly fruit and veg for as little as ̣̉6. Most of the salad leaves in the boxes are actually grown in Hackney in Growing Communities' own urban market gardens - which is the only organically certified growing land in London. And their farmers market in Stoke Newington is the only weekly, fully-organic market in the UK. They employ 13 part-time staff, a large team of volunteers and two apprentice gardeners on a project that supports farmers who are producing food sustainably. The Low Carbon Show met up with co-founder and director, Julie Brown. With the sun beating down on their Allens Gardens plot we talked about food swaps, seasonal feasts and edible orchards....
LINKS/REFERENCES: Growing Communities http://www.btinternet.com/~grow.communities/ Community Orchard, Butterfield Square http://www.shakespeareneighbourhood.org.uk/?page_id=9 Community Supported Agriculture http://www.cuco.org.uk/index.php?page=3 Community Farm Land Trusts http://www.communitylandtrust.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=34&Itemid=53 London Farmers' Markets http://www.lfm.org.uk/ National Association of Farmers' Markets http://www.farmersmarkets.net/ F3 Local Food http://www.localfood.org.uk/ Soil Association Local Food Works http://www.localfoodworks.org/ Sustain - Alliance for Better Food and Farming http://www.sustainweb.org/
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