Food links and inspiration

Inspiration and real action

New

An Inconvenient Truth About Food from the Soil Association, a report on Britain's food security.

Garden share

Totnes Transition's Garden Share Project.

Hugh Fearnley-Wotsit of River Cottage has got into garden sharing issues (his Channel 4 programme on this unfortunately clashed with the first food group meeting). A Landshare initiative is due to launch early 2009.

Another Guardian article - Meet the Urban Sharecroppers - gives more ideas on sharing gardens, toil and the resulting produce.

Seed swap and save

Seedy Sunday started in Brighton and Hove (2009: 1st Feb). Their ideas for community seed swap.

Herefordshire Seed Swap 21st Feb, St Owen St, Hereford.

Somerset Community Food seed swap notes.

Seed swaps online - Seedy People.

Lewes District Council have a 2 page Rough guide to seed swaps - pdf, 277KB.

Transtion Newent's food group recommends the seed saving info on Real Seed Catalogue site - the wider site is worth a browse too.

Fruit, orchards

Abundance project in Sheffield to harvest the seasonal glut of local fruit such as apples, pear and plums. Similar Abundance project in Manchester.

OrganicLea's scrumping scheme covered in The Guardian - "a small group of volunteers picked 12 tonnes of fruit that would otherwise have rotted, from gardens and street trees across the borough."

National Orchard Forum. PTES Traditional Orchard Survey.

Composting

Promoting Home Composting, from Garden Organic.

Community Composting Network

More community food

• Incredible Edible Todmorden aims to increase the amount of local food grown and eaten in the town. See Yorkshire Post news item. Also featured on River Cottage Autumn (Oct 08).
• Somerset Community Food.
• The edible playground (from The Guardian) A garden showcasing a scheme for growing fruit and vegetables in schools has won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show. Or see the Edible Playgrounds own website.
• Capital Growth launched November 2008 - if they can increase food growing in London, it should be a doddle in Malvern Hills area, surely!

General

• From a quick look, the River Cottage forum has some great discussions and information on food matters of all kinds.
• Guerilla Gardening isn't particularly about food growing, but still inspirational.
• Food Up Front - the urban food growing network.
• Eat the Suburbs - edible landscapes, an Australian blog.

Nearby food projects

• Stroud Community Agriculture.
• Herefordshire Food Links.
• Slow Food Herefordshire.
• Slow Food Worcestershire.

Resources

• Agroforestry Research Trust.
• Local Food lottery grants funds available for a variety of food-related projects to help make locally grown food accessible and affordable to local communities.

More general food growing sites

• National Allotment Gardens Trust
• Federation of City Farms & Community Gardens
• Garden Organic
• Soil Association
• Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming