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London Food Links
A new project launched by Sustain, aims to help producers, consumers
and retailers make a positive choice for sustainable, local food.
This means better access to affordable, high quality and seasonal
food, shorter supply chains and campaigning for policies that promote
a thriving local food economy and culture.
London Food Link intends to:
- establish a local food network for London
- foster active partnerships to develop within this network
- support new and existing food projects
- advise local and regional authorities on supporting the growth
of a local food sector in London
- administer a grants scheme to assist the development of community-led
local food schemes
For more information or to become a member see www.londonfoodlink.org
Organic Targets set by government - 29th July
Government organic action plan welcomed - but campaigners call
for action timetable
Friends of the Earth and the Organic Targets Campaign have welcomed
today's commitment by the Government for British organic producers
to supply 70% of the domestic market - the same level as conventional
producers. Many of our farmers tell us that they'd like to go organic
but they cannot afford the costs. Hopefully these funds will see
a real increase in the number of organic farmers in Britain and
fewer imports.
For further information see www.sustainweb.org
where you'll also find information on Urban Agriculture, Sustainable
Food Chains, and Food Poverty.
The Curry report - a change in agriculture or
more of the same?
The report from the Policy Commission on the future of food and
farming was published on the 29th January. The report discusses
in depth many of the problems with agriculture in the UK and makes
positive sounds about local food sourcing and farmers' markets.
But it fails to come up with any coherent plan to help farmers'
markets succeed or how to help farmers' that want to sell at them.
It also talks of more small farms closing, which is exactly what
we don't want, as it is the smaller farms that supply farmers' markets.
National Association of Farmers' Markets launch
certification scheme
Certification was launched to NAFM member markets in June 2002.
This is an independent verification scheme, ensuring markets are
working to the recommended criteria, see below. It will become a
condition of NAFM membership from January 2003. The rules we enforce
at London Farmer's Markets are stricter than those laid down my
NAFM's new certification scheme. We hope that NAFM's certification
will eventually become stricter to weed out producers and Farmers
that do not play by the rules.
Guidance Criteria
- NAFM has developed a set of criteria with which Farmers' Markets
that wish to be members should comply. Individual circumstances
will however be taken into account when considering their application.
- Where a market fulfils the criteria, the National Association
of Farmers' Markets will recognise the market as a Farmers' Market.
More tightly defined criteria may be applied to fit local circumstances
where this strengthens the philosophy behind Farmers' Markets.
- These criteria have been kept as brief as possible. While they
must be followed closely, not all circumstances have been provided
for and exceptions will be considered where a case can be made.
Each exception must be agreed by NAFM.
- The National Association of Farmers Markets (NAFM) exists to
promote farmers' markets and to maintain standards. All of London
Farmers Markets are NAFM members and abide by the criteria that
NAFM set down. In fact we have higher standards than those set
by NAFM. See the NAFM website for a list of farmers' markets across
the UK.
- The interpretation of the criteria will be at the discretion
of the market applying these guidance notes. NAFM will assist
with any local disputes where a producer considers she or he has
been unfairly excluded, or that other producers have been allowed
by the Market to flout the Criteria.
For more information see www.farmersmarkets.net
Background to the Health Promotion Scheme that
ran at Three Mills
The farmers' market health promotion scheme based at the Bromley
by Bow Healthy Living Centre benefited local residents by offering
a healthy-eating discount on home-grown produce sold by regional
farmers. Supported by a new Farmers' Market Club, members of the
community registered for vouchers. They could also have their shopping
done for them or be taken to the market itself by volunteers.
This was the first healthy-eating promotion scheme attached to
a farmers' market in the UK. In the US some 10,000 farmers selling
at 1,500 markets in 36 states receive coupons from 1.4 million customers.
Food stamps worth $75 to $100 million flow through farmers' markets
under the scheme annually. The program increases sales to farmers
without distorting subsidies. Above all, the farmers' market nutrition
programme greatly increases access to farmers' markets in low-income
neighbourhoods.
The vouchers could be spent with a minimum purchase in a set time
period and stall- holders were reimbursed for the value of the coupon.
As soon as a voucher is spent, more could be obtained from the club.
Existing food and health project activities supported the scheme
by offering information on healthy eating, nutrition and exercise
and through continuous outreach work, in which the centre has a
high level of experience and success.
The vouchers were offered to 150 local people.
Whats wrong with farming today and what are the
solutions? Some thoughts from Nina Planck the founder of London's
first farmers' market
WHAT'S WRONG with the food and farming business in Europe and the
UK? Plenty. Despite its impressive yields, intensive agriculture
harms the environment and concerns consumers. Farm policy has direct
and hidden costs: the Common Agriculture Policy swallows nearly
half of the E.U. budget, while import restrictions and set-asides
distort supply and prices. The National Consumer Council reckons
the CAP costs the average family £28 per week in higher food
prices and taxation.
Food travels too far from farm to kitchen in too much packaging,
polluting the environment and wasting energy. Less tangibly, the
global farming and distribution system alienates us from the food
we eat. Farming resembles a remote, high-tech industry more than
gardening. How many people know where their food comes from, how
it's grown and when it's in season?
Nor has the Green Revolution been an unqualified success for farmers
themselves. Not only are farmers dependent on costly inputs such
as fertiliser, hybrid seeds, pesticides and equipment. They are
also victims of their very efficiency: overproduction, falling food
prices and rural job losses are the price paid. Even as they stagger
from crisis to crisis (BSE, drought), farmers are vilified as backward
and reliant on subsidies.
Instead of sniggering when French and Spanish peasants march on
Brussels, pitchforks in hand, perhaps we should accept that farm
policy is failing consumers and farmers equally. What is to be done?
IN BRITAIN, the adjective 'American-style' often implies new-fangled
or over-commercialised. But American-style farmers' markets have
a fine reputation here, and with good reason. Farmers' markets are
a low-cost, local and tangible response to farmers' woes and consumers'
worries. In the past 25 years, farmers' markets have burgeoned in
the U.S., increasing the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables,
renewing urban neighbourhoods and saving family farms. Farmers sell
more than $1 billion in fresh produce at 3,000 farmers' markets
annually. The state of Massachusetts alone population 6.1 million,
smaller than London's supports 100 weekly farmers' markets.
These markets are strictly defined. Farmers sell their own fruit
and vegetables, eggs, cheeses, flowers, honey and other farm products
directly to the public. No one may purchase produce for resale,
and all farms must be within a defined regional area. Most markets
occur weekly on a public site, such as a car park or school yard.
Who benefits from farmers' markets?
- Farmers. There is no middleman. The farmer takes the
full retail price often three times the wholesale price. Unlike
at the lonely farm gate, customers are concentrated in time and
space at markets: thousands of shoppers may pass by during a four-
to six-hour market day. Small and medium-sized farms, which are
most threatened by the rise of agri-business, benefit because
farmers' markets absorb their uneven supply unlike large distributors
and supermarkets.
Farmers' markets are good farm policy: they raise farm income
without subsidy and keep the countryside economically productive
without recourse to tourism. Part-time and casual farmers become
full-time and family farms hire more workers. By getting to know
consumers, farmers counter public ignorance about agricultural
issues.
- The Environment. Food miles are reduced and packaging
is minimal. Markets are a fine example of just-in-time delivery,
the goal of every inventory manager: produce doesn't languish
in warehouses, so less is wasted. Although markets seldom require
farmers to use environmentally-friendly methods, consumers push
growers in that direction. Farmers who might otherwise hesitate
to switch to organic production, for example often because conversion
is costly have an immediate, local market.
- Consumers. Shoppers have access to fresh, local food
and they can ask farmers directly about how it's grown. In food
shopping, most consumers are at the mercy of powerful, remote
actors large farms, distributors and retailers control the market.
But at farmers' markets, the farmer/retailer is responsive to
consumer demands. It is common for farmers to plant new crops
or change practices simply because shoppers request it.
Local supply also increases consumer choice. Paradoxically, the
year-round global food industry has reduced the variety of fruit
and vegetables on offer at supermarkets. Three pear varieties
account for 94% of the pears grown in Britain, although the National
Fruit Collection in Kent grows 550 varieties. Our apple choice
is dismally familiar: next to the few British apples are French
Braeburns, American Red Delicious and New Zealand Galas. The farmer
who sells locally rediscovers varieties the big growers, distributors
and retailers have rejected as inconvenient (e.g. the shipper
wants bruise-resistant fruit; the retailer demands uniform size).
Such rediscovered varieties have old-fashioned virtues, such as
flavour. Fruit that tastes good: how novel.
Prices are often lower at farmers' markets, because there is no
middleman, there is plenty of competition at each market and overhead
costs are low. But unlike the rest of the agriculture industry,
it's also a free market. When food supply and prices are not distorted
by government interference such as the CAP, farmers grow the crops
consumers want to buy not the ones that are subsidised and sell
them at a price consumers will pay.
Finally, fresh, seasonal produce tastes better because it's fresh
and seasonal. Ordinary produce is picked unripe, jostled by sorting
machinery, stored, shipped, stored again, and artificially ripened.
Along the way it is waxed and sprayed to prevent wrinkling and
rotting. The average supermarket pear is stored for one to nine
months. At farmers' markets, eggs are two days old, not two weeks,
and apples and spinach haven't lost their Vitamin C and folic
acid. Why eat rock-hard Israeli tomatoes or watery California
strawberries when you could wait two weeks for the English crop
and eat them one day old?
- Communities. Farmers' markets revive market towns and
run-down urban centres. Often despite initial resistance, local
shop owners find that markets increase their business. Greater
Washington, D.C. (population 3 million), already supports more
than two dozen weekly markets. And still, more communities want
markets than there are farmers to supply them.
Nor are markets merely a middle class phenomenon. In neighbourhoods
ill-served by supermarkets, they greatly improve access to fresh
produce. The U.S. runs two schemes to increase fruit and vegetable
consumption by the poor and by women and children who are nutritionally
at risk. These sums are not small: the poor spend $75 to 100 million
a year in state-issued 'food stamps' at farmers' markets. In 1998,
the women and children's schemed added $12 million to farmers'
market sales. Such policies improve public health and increase
farm income without distorting food prices or supply.
MOST MARKETS are organised by some combination
of private individuals, local authorities and farmers. Local authorities
can offer a free site and help with publicity and administration.
But everyone should know that farmers' markets cost little to start
and still less to administer. Once a weekly market is established,
publicity takes care of itself.
The growth in farmers' markets in the U.K. is astounding. In March
1998, the Bath council's farmers' market was the lone market in
Britain and a great success. This year some 80 markets are scheduled,
mostly in market towns. (For a complete list, call the Soil Association
on 0117 914 2425.)
And farmers' markets are still multiplying in the U.S. Between
1994 and 1996 they grew by 40% and in 1998, by another 10%. One
major difference between the U.S. and the U.K. is worth noting.
In the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the chief goal was
to bring farmers and consumers together to buy and sell fresh produce.
Only later did the farmers' market movement make explicit links
to other agriculture-related goals, such as reducing food miles,
encouraging sustainable farming and supporting a viable rural economy.
The year-old farmers' market movement in Britain began with these
broader goals to the fore. Nothing could be better for farmers'
markets.
Nina Planck grew up on a fruit and vegetable farm
in Virginia. Nina was the founder of LFM and set up the first farmers
market in London in 1999. The Plancks still sell their produce exclusively
at 17 farmers' markets in Greater Washington, D.C.
This article appeared in the April 1999 issue of
EG, a Westminster University environmental newsletter.
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