Low Carbon Show #7: Growing Communities
First Broadcast: 19 June 2007
Featuring:
- Julie Brown
Growing communities is a social enterprise based in Hackney, North London
which has cut through the multitude of environmental and social costs
incurred by our globalised, supermarket-led food system and set up community
led models for a more sustainable future.
The project represents a model of best practice that is ripe for replication
across the capital and across the country.
Their organic box scheme was the first in London and now supplies 300
households in Hackney with their weekly fruit and veg for as little as £6.
Most of the salad leaves in the boxes are actually grown in Hackney in
Growing Communities' own urban market gardens - which is the only
organically certified growing land in London. And their farmers market in
Stoke Newington is the only weekly, fully-organic market in the UK.
They employ 13 part-time staff, a large team of volunteers and two
apprentice gardeners on a project that supports farmers who are producing
food sustainably.
The Low Carbon Show met up with co-founder and director, Julie Brown. With the sun beating down on their Allens Gardens plot we talked about food
swaps, seasonal feasts and edible orchards....
LINKS/REFERENCES:
Growing Communities
http://www.btinternet.com/~grow.communities/
Community Orchard, Butterfield Square
http://www.shakespeareneighbourhood.org.uk/?page_id=9
Community Supported Agriculture
http://www.cuco.org.uk/index.php?page=3
Community Farm Land Trusts
http://www.communitylandtrust.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=34&Itemid=53
London Farmers' Markets
http://www.lfm.org.uk/
National Association of Farmers' Markets
http://www.farmersmarkets.net/
F3 Local Food
http://www.localfood.org.uk/
Soil Association - Local Food Works
http://www.localfoodworks.org/
Sustain - Alliance for Better Food and Farming
http://www.sustainweb.org/
Available Audio
2768-1-20070620-low_carbon_show-7FINAL – Listen Online | Download .mp3 (25.80 MB)