"The organisation that I work for, the umbrella organisation is called Burnley Food Links. It's a not for profit company, and it was set up in the 2004 to link producers who produce with consumers more effectively on a local level. The current project is Pennine Crop Share and that that is a vegetable bag scheme, organic vegetable bag scheme that supplies that sort of crosses the Yorkshire Lancashire divide really which has always been a bit of a sort of red line that nobody crosses. We're quite pleased that we still deliver our bags to Burnley and Pendle. Because actually, one could say, arguably that there has been greater need in terms of access to affordable organic vegetables."
The project crosses the Yorkshire – Lancashire divide, which has always been sort of a red line that no one crosses.
Okay, so can you please briefly summarise, your role, and your organization's role in our community of Calderdale?
“Right. Well, the umbrella organisation I work for is actually called Burnley Food Links. It's a not-for-profit company, and it was set up in 2004 to link producers of food with consumers more effectively on a local level. We set up as a company, because it preceded the new community companies like community interest companies. We've debated whether to be a charity, a cooperative, or company and it was literally easier at the time to set up as a company, and it seems a bit strange that we were set up in Burnley but it's due to my background. Initially, I worked in Burnley as a dietician/nutritionist, so my background was in food, and the community I worked with at the time was in Burnley. Burnley Food link is still our umbrella organisation, but we've run a number of projects around food, since 2004.
So, basically the current project is Pennine Cropshare, and that is an organic vegetable bag scheme that supplies veg locally and crosses the Yorkshire Lancashire divide, which has always been a bit of a sort of red line that nobody crosses. We're quite pleased that we still deliver our bags to Burnley and Pendle because, one could say, arguably, that there has been a greater need in terms of access to affordable organic vegetables.
We don't we don't deliver door to door because of environmental factors and to keep the costs down for people, so we deliver to community hubs. The reason for bags is important actually, rather than boxes that is, because they can be picked up by hand and carried easily, whereas boxes, you really have to go back to a car. We are really very aware of the environmental impacts of what we do.”
People need to have food cooking skills which is the limiting factor in most people's diet
“The way that we run the business is by buying in organic vegetables from as local producers as we can. Supply is a real problem because there aren't that many local growers. And it's once you get to do this work that you want to support local growers and you realise that, unfortunately, it's such a hard job that they're not there to support in any great numbers. There are outlying farms that do have the economies of scale to produce field scale crops. We also buy from two depots if you like, one is Organic North which is a cooperative that gathers produce from all the local farmers and distributes it to people. This is a kind of a wholesaling effect, where they act as a bit of a hub for the local farmers. We did try to go and collect directly from farmers but you spend your life crisscrossing the country trying to collect food and it's just not feasible. Organic Pantry, based in North Yorkshire is another wholesale type place. They're a farm themselves, so a lot of the stuff comes from their own farm, but they also act as a depot for surrounding farms, and they deliver to us. So we have those two main deliveries every week. And we also try to engage with what we've got locally.
Interestingly, due to the COVID crisis, our customer base increased from about 100 to 300 so that was quite big. You know, we had to scale up quite drastically and we found that there was lots of doubt about whether supply chains were going to hold out, where the drivers would get ill, or the packers would get ill, or the farmers would get ill. We felt we really could rely so much more on the very local resilience and the local supply chain was much stronger, and that's what we want to build.”
I think you've touched on so many things. I'd love to spend a whole conversation just unpacking what you've just said. Do you want to add anything to that?
Well, I should say something about my own background of working initially in a hospital. I was at Manchester Uni and, after that, I was studying a science subject, and then I got together with a group of people and set up a whole food shop in Manchester. This was a cooperative called 8th Day. I'm a founding member which I'm very proud of it because it's certainly been a sustainable business and served the community very well. That was what got me interested in whole foods, which were very new at that time, and it was very much a vegetarian ethic and finding new ways of cooking.
However, laterly, and for 10 years, I was working more in the community as a nutritionist which got me into community development and working with allotments and cooking skills in a deprived community of Burnley, mainly the Asian area. So, that's how I met people that we eventually set up Burnley Food links with. And so, my reason for concentrating really on distributing and encouraging more vegetable growing at affordable prices to people is because I basically feel, from the health angle, that people don't eat enough vegetables, and a lot of people constantly make excuses they can't get hold of or use. I’ve been heavily involved in the five-a-day-programme trying to encourage, particularly children and families., to eat more fruit and vegetables. People need to have food cooking skills which is the limiting factor in most people's diet. You know they're lacking in vitamins and minerals with not eating veg, so that's where I'm coming from really. With Pennine Crop Share, as well as supplying bags to the pickup points or people, we are doing a newsletter every week with a recipe, explaining to people how to use the vegetables that are in the bag. Sometimes they're quite unusual and people haven't cooked with them, and even if it's a familiar vegetable like kale, people want multiple ways to use them or they get sick of it.”
We want to make jobs for people that are worthwhile, not bureaucratic, and where everybody feels it's really a worthwhile thing to be involved in.
“The other strand to what we're doing at the moment is the crop share book. You'll know from coming to visit us that we've got a team of people who mainly work on a Thursday and Friday. We do the packing on Thursday in private, and delivering on Friday. And it's been really nice to have quite an informal team development; very informal. It's changed over the years, and at the moment it's working really well. It's non hierarchical, and it's a pleasure to work with people. And it also gives some people the opportunity to earn a living, not perhaps a full time living, but a living to supplement what they like doing, which might be some form of art. Issie, for example, is an artist, Mel is an artist. Cathy also. In fact, they're all artists. And it's quite hard to earn a living from just that. And so it's one of the other things that we wanted to do; make jobs for people that are worthwhile, not bureaucratic, and where everybody feels it's really a worthwhile thing to be involved in even though the work itself; the weighing, the packing and the distribution in is quite mundane it feels very worthwhile. And we haven't been successful so far; really it’s been about getting more local growing. But as we are doing better and continue to do better financially, then the ultimate aim has always been to reinvest in getting more growing locally.. And that is the big goal. More, more, more, more produce grown locally. And I think our producer that lives between Hebden and Tod has shown what's possible. You know, they are quite high up in these hills, but with the help of polytunnels etc things are working.
We’ve also got an offshoot group collaboration group now, which includes us and Valley Organic.
Food sustainability for Calderdale is where we are going to struggle if we go through more lockdowns and our food security is changing with Brexit. Localised production has always been very difficult, but it's not impossible. It just takes a different type of growing. It takes a much more coordinated approach. It takes a lot more training on specific growing techniques. And I think it's a really interesting story for Calderdale.
We know some techniques to regenerate farmland because that's a big part of the issue. It's not just the weather, it’s the land. It's so compacted, or it’s rocky, or moorland, or damp round here. There are lots of techniques we need to teach and invest in. If there is compaction, we need to put heavy mulches down and organic matter on and encourage the worms to come up and through to aerate. Coupled with taproot plants it can actually change the soil very readily for growing. I think it's funny because that could have been teaching more about, so people can grow in stage effect, which is different to how most growers perceive vegetable growing where the produce is decided first.
If I could go back to just tell you something that I found quite inspiring from the London lot, the Hackney people. Well, one of the things they do is they don't have a problem with supply of organic veg because the farms in the southeast and south of England are all driving big lorry loads of stuff. But because they want to encourage the greening of the city as well, they subsidise a grower to work just in London in Hackney, and they've collected bits of land, like a patchwork farm.
Food growing has often been tokenistic and this is an unsuccessful business model.
Yes, bits of allotments, bits of parks, bits of derelict land. They have a grower who then grows and they concentrate on and specialise in Hackney salads. And so they grow all year round with different salad leaves, but even that there's a lot involved in it. You, as a grower will know that, with rotation you can't grow the same things again and again. And so they really go into knowing what leaves to grow at what time of year to make a good salad bag and they rotate it all around every week or so. That means the organisation is supporting urban growing, and the local community can get involved. So that's something we've also thought about, plus we've been offered a little bit of land here and there, but they each won't produce massive quantities. But, if you collected a few you could do something like that.
I once went to a conference, which was organised by the Soil Association. several years ago now. The Soil Association and the Federation of Community Farms and Gardens and what they were looking at is how do we marry these two principles, organic farming to scale and bringing the community into it. I was involved in a community farm in Burnley, mainly centred on allotments. It was absolutely brilliant for the community participation, and as I said, mainly in the Asian areas, which is really a good way of engaging people, particularly the women out of the homes and it felt I was able to do stuff that was really valuable work, but it wasn't producing on any scale.
So, obviously there is a middle road. So Cath who works with us, you know Cather Baker. Well, she is part of the growing group, but she really wants to do therapeutic gardening. That's her thing, just the process of gardening and getting in touch with the earth and producing things therapeutically, in lots of ways. And I so agree.
But you know I've met people who've been into therapeutic gardening who’ve said “well it doesn't matter if we don't produce a radish”. As long as people enjoy being there, but actually we want to produce more radishes!”
I think the thing is, veg production can be therapeutic, but you can't rely on volunteers and people undertaking therapy to create a product. That can’t be the primary goal. They can be married together and that's very much my interest. But I think there are different levels of engagement with therapy and production. So, you've got people who come and it's much more about nature connection and mindfulness, and then there’s people who are involved in productivity. Both can be therapeutic but they are different. Another level would be learning enterprise skills and that can be very therapeutic as well and at the same time help people vocationally, which has a knock on effect for autonomy.. But we have to be clear of the goal for ourselves as organisations, and with the people accessing the project.
I think in Calderdale, and you know this is a national issue too, growing food has often been tokenistic and an unsuccessful business model, and therefore has fallen into this health and well being category of supporting people to get better. Whereas I think we really need to define our terms, and that there is meaningful and purposeful activity, but with the clear goal of making an income. I think that is a very big step for us and I think, across the board in Calderdale there is a massive movement within food and we're all very aware that we need to make things a lot better so that we are sustainable and we can support people in all these different areas of their health.
The trainees didn’t want to eat any of the things they had grown and nor did the families
“I think it works on a more community supported agriculture model, where customers take more responsibility. Some weeks people would get more in their bags and other times, they'd get less, depending on what was available. So that's one way you could possibly go, and on the whole customers are really sympathetic, but others are critical because they go by supermarket standards. It's hard appeasing people and explaining to people. Like this week is a case in point right. We had celery, and this celery was all leaf, it was green celery, all leaf. It wasn't the celery that is forced. And so, one bloke wrote he said "lovely bag, except for the celery which is all leaf and no stalk" so I have to sort of explain that the sort of celery that this farmer, a particular farmer grew was grown, mainly for the leaves and green celery, which is really nutritious and you do different things with it, you know. So I suppose I'm saying it's also a lot of education about what can be expected.
Where we were based in Burnley was called Freshfields and it just said it was a horticultural project. Mainly a lack of outdoor space, mainly polytunnels, but it was the equivalent of Manor Heath. You know, it was a council site that was let to the project to train people with learning disabled adults. So they grew in there, but the trainees didn't want to eat any of the things at all, nor did the families. It was occupational therapy for them really. There wasn't anywhere for the produce to go, which is one of the reasons why we started the Veg Bag scheme there to sort of find a way of distributing what was grown and improving what was growing in there”
We haven't mentioned the words, 'inclusivity and diversity' very specifically, but you have pulled that into the conversation. We have definitely stated how you address inclusivity and diversity, spanning across Burnley and the Calder Valley. And actually, upper and central Calder Valley too, which we know is one of the issues; that they've become quite separated. You've also talked about making work accessible for people part time farming type-model in your organisation. You’ve stated it's not just about being the person selling the food on, it's also about recognising that you need to support producers in the process, and that you can't be without the producers. We’ve touched on working with different groups, about specifics like race or age or physical abilities, but in addition that it’s actually about people's choices. That this is as much a part of diversity in terms of how people eat vegetables, how they engage with foods. Is there anything specifically you want to pull out in relation to this and the terms inclusivity and diversity.
“I find that hard to be specific actually because it sort of permeates everything you do really. I mean, I suppose, when one thinks of diversity, you know one tends to think of it as you said, race and culture.”
I think you’ve already covered it. It's not just about these physical forms of what inclusivity and diversity means it's actually how we think and how we act and that can span food, it can span health, it can span how we engage with the environment. And I also think you've said something that we will follow up on next year: how do we include the environment in the processes of our work? How do we change the landscape, so our environment is right, and how do we use pieces of land to grow food on, that can support people for their health and well being in the mental and physical sense?
People really want the security of being able to pick up fresh food without relying on supermarkets.
So, how have things changed during COVID? Obviously you've grown massively because of COVID and people have been buying more food, more bags. Is there anything else that's changed?
“Well, in terms of business we had to. We had to move, right in at the beginning of COVID, into a bigger unit, which was a risk because it was a much bigger rent. So, we couldn't really function in the small unit that we had. So that's one thing. When we originally came to Hebden bridge we were using the Nutclough Housing Coop, but we outgrew that we've got our own unit, but it's quite a small one for Windsor Works, where you came to to take photos. Now we’re in a bigger unit, it's got a lot of capacity but it’s taken a bit of a risk because we didn't know how COVID would play out. I think everybody has gotten more excited about the importance of what we do to get food. People really wanted to have the security of being able to pick up fresh food without relying on the supermarkets. So again that’s how things have changed, for the better.
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