Growing & Food

SusWoT encourages people to keep food local. Food is pretty much one of the most basic needs of all of us, and it’s very enjoyable too.

The idea of local food is to think strategically about encouraging people to get as much of their food as possible from as close to home as possible.

We have 3 main themes:

Growing
Cooking and Preserving
Supply Chain

Growing

First of all, the food must be grown! Anything we can produce for ourselves will obviously have zero food miles, with added satisfaction and joy of watching it grow. We have two ongoing projects which relate to growing food – Get Growing and the Library Garden. By supplying young plants and helping to educate the population in growing skills, we hope to help more and more people to be able to grow some crops for themselves.

What other issues could we address? One problem for some people is land availability. There are always long waiting lists for allotments and an allotment is too big a commitment for some people. Can we make sure untended allotments are re-allocated promptly. Can we match up householders who are unable to maintain their gardens with people who would like some growing land?

Cooking and Preserving

Can we help people to cook more seasonally and locally? Many people who have embarked on veg box schemes will have had the experience of wondering “What is that vegetable and what can I do with it?”. Eating seasonally means dealing with gluts, which is where preserving skills come in, as well as using up leftovers.

Supply Chain

Where does our food from?
- Encourage people to support local markets and other suppliers of locally-grown food.
- Audit the food-buying of Westbury and encourage local alternatives.
- Educate people in the source of different foods.
What and how much of it do we buy?
- Encourage people to plan meals and only buy what they need.
How much do we waste?
- Collect fruit from domestic and public fruit trees that would otherwise go to waste using the model of Sheffield Abundance.
- Say bog off to bogofs! Buy-one-get-one-free offers mainly encourage people to buy more food than they can use, then end up throwing it away