LOCAL FOOD – YOUR HELP NEEDED

A public meeting will be held on Thursday 2 July at 7pm at St Johns Methodist Church, Bodmin Road, St Austell, PL25 5AE (click here for map) to launch the project in the town and to recruit volunteers to join an active team in leading the research locally. Anyone interested in finding out more about the project is welcome.

For more information contact Jenny Gellatly, South West Regional Co-ordinator for the Mapping Local Food Webs project, Tel: 01803 220667 or email jennyg@cpre.org.uk 

An exciting new project is set to bring people together to explore the benefits of local food in and around St Austell.  The project, part of a national initiative led by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) [1], will support the community in investigating their own local food network or ‘food web’ [2], and its impact on the community, and the economy and countryside of the area.

Jenny Gellatly, CPRE’s South West Regional Co-ordinator for the project, said:

‘This project provides a fantastic opportunity for the people of St Austell and the surrounding area to meet with shopkeepers and farmers to explore local food issues. It has the potential to build links between local people, food outlets and producers, and to discover new opportunities to strengthen the local food network in and around St. Austell.

The Mapping Local Food Webs project [3] will help to bring people together. Getting the community involved and making the most of local knowledge are central to the project.  We hope that people from all walks of life will take part.’

Tasha Davis, Town Centre Manager, and one of the founders of Fairtrade St Austell, said:
 
‘These are exciting times for St Austell.  This project will complement existing work happening in the town and will help to raise the profile of St Austell and of local food in the area.’

Brian Chapple, Manager of Cornish Quality Meats in St Austell, said:
 
‘Local foods are an important part of local economies, supporting jobs and services, keeping communities alive and helping farmers care for the countryside.  Our butchers offers a place to obtain fresh local produce, provides jobs for local people and supports a wide range of producers from across Cornwall.  I am delighted by the prospect of this project raising awareness about local food in the area.’ 

Katie Bickerdike, local resident and co-ordinator of Transition St Austell, said: 

‘I can see that this project has the potential to bring the people of St Austell together to make a real difference for our community.  I am looking forward to being involved in the project and discovering more about local food in the area. I hope that as many local people as possible will get involved.’

The project is supported nationally and locally by Big Lottery funding as part of the Making Local Food Work programme, which aims to reconnect people with the land through food and community enterprise. [4]

At the meeting it is hoped that a team of volunteers will be recruited. Volunteers will be needed for many different roles including steering the project, interviewing local shoppers, sellers and producers of local food, and running a workshop for local residents.

‘The meeting will be a great chance to find out more about local food and about the project, and to join a team of volunteers in carrying it forward,’ Jenny Gellatly concluded.

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NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Bill Bryson. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen. www.cpre.org.uk

2. A local food web consists of the network of links between people who buy, sell, produce and supply food in an area.  These relationships of interdependence between people, businesses and places in the web benefit livelihoods, the quality of life and the quality and character of the towns and countryside. 

3. The Mapping Local Food Webs project is a national initiative to engage the skills and knowledge of local people to research the spread of local food networks from consumer to producer and their impact on the local community, economy and the countryside.  In total the project will cover twenty two towns and cities across England.  It aims to achieve better understanding of the challenges facing local food networks, to build links within communities between residents, shopkeepers, food producers and policy makers, and to create opportunities to influence local, regional and national policy and planning decisions.  The project forms part of the Making Local Food Work programme, funded by the Big Lottery from 2007-2012.  The project is led by CPRE, with the support of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming. www.sustainweb.org

4. Making Local Food Work is a 5-year, Big Lottery-funded programme aiming to reconnect people with the land through food and community enterprise. A consortium of seven organisations, led by the Plunkett Foundation, is pooling its expertise to develop and promote different types of community food enterprise, giving advice to people all over England looking to re-engage and help others access good, fresh, local produce with clear origins. Our vision is to secure the long term future of thriving communities that are strongly connected with land, that understand where their food comes from and are empowered to respond to their own needs using community-led solutions. For more information, please go to www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk