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Hello and welcome to the Spring issue of the Making Local Food Work newsletter. This is
the first of our quarterly newsletters, which will serve to keep you informed of the most
relevant and up-to-date information on the Making Local Food Work programme.

Making Local Food Work aims to use community enterprise to reconnect land and people through
food. These community enterprises fall into six categories: Community Supported Agriculture;
Food Co-operatives and Buying Groups; Local Food Networks; Co-operatively-Owned Farmers’
Markets; Sustainable Models of Home-Produced Food and Local Food Shops. These six project
areas are supported by four underpinning activities in the areas of Governance and Structures,
Enterprise Support, Food Webs and Mapping, and Information, Communication and Evaluation.
Each quarter, we will send out this newsletter with the latest information about our activities in
each of these areas, as well as updates on our research findings and wider policy engagement.
In order to help us update you with the information that you want, we would be grateful if you
could take a minute to answer the seven questions in our online questionnaire.

Please excuse the primitive formatting this quarter. From next quarter we will have a fully-
branded, all-singing, all-dancing, full-colour newsletter, in line with our new-look website!
Many thanks
The Editor

Community Supported Agriculture

The Soil Association is leading the CSA strand of activity, which specialises in communities
supporting their local farms by investing either their time or a small amount of money or by
committing to buying directly from the farm. The latest developments in the CSA strand are:
• We have our first training event at Stroud CSA in Gloucestershire on 30 April with over 30
people attending all very keen to develop local CSAs from Kent to Cornwall;
• Transition Town Maidenhead CSA project is having a public meeting on 1 May to take forward
the development of a CSA smallholding;
• A small group of growers and consumers in Wakefield/Barnsley have secured a loan to buy a
nursery which the current owners are selling and aim to set up a CSA;
• We are working with the new RDPE local action groups in the north of England to explore ways
that CSA can be a useful model in their work on local food;
• There is a huge amount of interest in CSA with many people contacting us for information on
setting one up and many events are being planned by groups of local people keen to establish a
CSA in their area;

For information on CSA and organic buying groups, please visit www.soilassociation.org/csa or
contact Amanda Daniel.

Food Co-operatives and Buying Groups

Sustain is co-ordinating the Food Co-ops and Buying Groups strand of the programme, which
aims to identify and share best practice in order to support the successful implementation of food
co-ops and organic buying groups across England. This will include producing case studies and
toolkits, and also organising exchange visits and conferences for people involved in running food
co-ops. Initial work will mainly focus on learning from existing work particularly in London,
Somerset and the North East, and this will be followed in further years by supporting new
initiatives, where possible attempting to link producer groups with consumer groups.
We are working in partnership with a number of other organisations including Somerset
Community Food, Food Chain North East CIC, London Food Link, Newham Food Access
Partnership, Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency, F3 and the Soil Association. Our
partners are helping to develop guidance on different areas such as volunteer support, IT,
finance, governance, distribution,financial models, education and awareness and needs
assessment. As part of the project we are currently carrying out research to try to determine how
many food co-ops and buying groups are already running across the UK and to find out a bit
information about how they operate. So we would be very interested in hearing from any local
authorities, PCT's or community-based organisations that are involved in running food co-ops or
similar initiatives such as bag deliveries or veg box schemes.

Please get in touch with Maresa Bossano if you would interested in finding out more about the
project and our future activities.

Local Food Networks and Distribution

The Supply and Distribution Strand is working with projects around England to increase and
improve the supply and distribution of local, sustainable food. The project will also share good
practice in building sustainable local food supply and distribution chains.
All the projects in the strand are working to broaden their customer base and increase the
number of local producers they work with.
Here are some of the exciting developments in the strand so far:

• Local Food Links in Bridport are delivering school meals to 8 primary schools. Over 70%
of the content of their meals is locally produced;
• Food Chain North East CIC in Newcastle and Organic Lea in Waltham Forest, London,
are developing market stalls and box schemes as new outlets for local food;
• Community Food Enterprise based in Newham, London, are developing a strategy to
market a “Fruit at Work” scheme to local businesses;
• East Anglia Food Link are expecting to launch their Certificate of Provenance scheme
within the next couple of months;

Co-operatively – Owned Farmers’ Markets

Farmers’ markets have been running in the UK for more than 10 years and have helped farmers,
producers and growers bring fresh, local, seasonal food to communities throughout the country,
but there is much greater scope for launching new markets and increasing the frequency of
existing markets.
The Farmers’ Market project within the Making Local Food work programme plans to help set up
farmers’ market groups for the benefit of the producers, as well as consumers. The project does
not allocate grants, but will provide a package of support for groups of farmers’ markets
interested in creating co-operative organisations to run farmers’ markets
Specifically the programme can offer groups running farmers’ markets:
• Guidance through the process of establishing the new legal and organisational structures;
• A full Support Package to help create and establish a co-operative to run a group of farmers’
markets. This support will cover topics such as how to run a co-operative effectively, business
development and planning, finance and marketing.
For more information, please email Ceinwen Lally.

Sustainable Models of Home – Produced Food

After some initial hiccups, the Project Team is complete now and raring to go! The team are busy
talking to producers and advisors who are interested in increasing their involvement in making
local food work and are beginning to build a toolkit to enable our producers to start selling their
products into retail outlets. The next few months will see us designing a labelling system, writing
guidance for the producers on every aspect of the new business including getting to grips with
food labelling legislation and designing packaging and promotional material for use in the shops.
We are also developing a training package to roll out to the advisors we are recruiting, who will be
ensuring that the new process runs as smoothly as possible, and we will be working closely with
our project partners, especially ViRSA, FARMA and Sustain to ensure that our high quality, home
produced food will reach even more of our discerning customers. There is a lot to prepare and
many questions to answer but the team are looking forward to reporting back on a successful
entry into an exciting new market.
For more information, please contact Jane Stammers.

Community Shops and Local Food

The aim of this project is to enable community and village shops to stock more and sell more
locally produced food and drink. Work will be done to develop a "toolkit" approach to this and
shops will be able to use this resource in conjunction with support from a local adviser, which the
project will also be putting in place. The toolkit will recognise that support is needed on both sides
of the equation. Sometimes sourcing local producers and suppliers, and especially those that are
able to meet the needs of small customers like village stores, can be difficult. It can also raise
other practical questions such as storage, display and legal requirements. Lastly, but perhaps
most importantly, on the communicating and marketing the local produce to their customer base,
and this will be supported with the development of a simple brand or identifier, materials,
templates and guidance, ideas and suggestions for ongoing promotion and development.
There will be a pilot phase with 12 shops and by the end of the project in 2012 there will be over
200 shops involved in the project. The Project Officer is now in place so work is beginning on the
initial planning, research and design stages of the project, with the toolkit ready and pilot starting
by the beginning of October 2008.
For more information, please contact Erry Lilley.

Governance and Structures

Co-operativesUK, responsible for the Governance strand of the MLFW portfolio, has now recruited
a Project Coordinator, Sarah Alldred and a Field Officer, Mark Simmonds. Sarah started work
with Co-operativesUK in March, whilst Mark will be in post at the beginning of May.
The core of the work involves: i) improving the understanding of the need for good governance
and its impact on the sustainability of social enterprises involved in local food; ii) increasing the
skills, knowledge and confidence of development workers/intermediaries through training
programmes; and provide a central advice resource, through a dedicated website and helpline; iii)
improving the existing resources and developing new tools and reference materials.
In the development phase, Co-operativesUK will be networking with portfolio partners to learn
about their work and specific governance requirements, and subsequently developing robust
training and information resources to help the sector to thrive.
For further information, please contact Sarah Alldred.

Enterprise Support
Plunkett Foundation will be responsible for the project ‘Enterprise support for community based
food enterprises’ within the Making Local Food Work programme.
The overall goal of this project is to support community enterprises involved in local food sector to
gain access to knowledge and support to ensure their future viability and to support the
enterprises in their current situation. Specialist consultants will be used to deliver specific,
targeted advice to groups. Groups can also request mentoring support to learn and absorb
information from individuals with similar background or experience.
For further information, please contact Sylvia le Flohic.

Food Webs and Mapping

Local food is significant in underpinning the local food economy, the national food economy and
the traditional grazed landscape surrounding the market towns and nearby villages. Local food
networks are also important to the social wellbeing of an area as well as its environmental health.
There is a need for information to enable people to influence the policies and decisions which
affect their supply of local food. CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England) with the support of
Sustain will work with volunteers and community groups in documenting, assessing and
promoting local food in 24 discrete areas across England. The project aims to equip local
community groups with tools to survey, assess and document their local food webs; to facilitate
and support the mapping process; and to disseminate their findings to local communities, to local,
regional and national policy and decision makers; to secure local food networks for the benefit of
local communities through the promotion of policy change.
If you would like to know more information regarding this work or how to become involved, please
contact our programme office.

Information, Communication and Evaluation

The ICE Strand supports the delivery projects by publishing and circulating information, by co-
ordinating publicity and communications such as this newsletter and by evaluating the wider
impacts of just what we will achieve over the next five years.
Work has begun on developing the new website, which will be launched at the end of June. We
are also pleased to be working with the New Economics Foundation to define and begin to
‘measure what matters’: the impact of our work.
If you would like to know more about the ICE Strand or about Making Local Food Work in
general, please email Jan Trefusis or call 01993 814 386.

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