Cymraeg What’s the issue?
To meet the UK demand for fruit and vegetables, a massive scaling up of production is required. If everyone in Britain were to eat the “Seven a day” now recommended by Public Health England, we would need an additional 2.4 million tonnes of fresh produce, equivalent to a 66% growth in UK production.
The Eatwell Guide recommends that 40% of each person’s diet consists of fruit and vegetables; yet currently only 1% of the £3 billion agriculture budget is spent on horticulture. Over the last 30 years the area planted to vegetables in the UK has decreased by 26%.
What are we doing?
Rather than increasing the scale of production on a few large farms, the Landworkers’ Alliance believes that a dramatic increase in the number of small scale, agroecological producers growing fruit and vegetables close to the point of sale would help address the issues whilst bringing numerous additional benefits.
To achieve this we have created documents outlining the numerous benefits of this approach and developed policy proposals that would help make this a reality. We are now working with Defra and our members to get these proposals developed into policy.
- Growing the Goods – A horticulture test and trial for the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) to find ways to adequately incentivise and reward the delivery of public goods for both small and large scale growers.
- Fringe Farming – Promotion of peri-urban horticulture across five cities in the UK and advocacy for local and national policies that would better support fringe farming. LWA hosts a “peri-urban practitioners forum” which meets quarterly to share experience and best practice.
- Horticulture Across Three Nations – The policy co-ordinators of England, Scotland and Wales meet regularly to support one another in the mission to build the capacity of growers in all the devolved nations.
- Food Zones Case Studies – Part of our horticultural vision for the UK is that most fruit and vegetables for every city would be supplied by a mixture of producers from urban, peri-urban, rural hinterland areas, supplemented by national and international produce. We are collecting case studies of where this is already happening, to help other cities develop their “food zones” supply systems.
- Horticulture Study Tours – Visiting both rural and peri-urban horticulture holdings is a powerful way to demonstrate to MPs and civil servants the benefits of agroecological horticulture. We organise one or two opportunities each year to get policy makers onto farms.
- Edible Horticulture Roundtable – Three times per year we meet with Defra officials and the Minister of Agriculture as part of the Edible Horticulture Round Table. We are an active member of the Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, alongside other small growers’ organisations and bodies representing larger growers, such as the NFU, where we advocate for the needs of small and medium scale, agroecological and organic growers. We will be actively campaigning to ensure that the horticulture strategy recently announced in the Government Food Strategy supports such growers.
How can I help?
Please write and/or arrange a meeting with your MP to explain the aims of the horticulture campaign to them and ask them to support our policy recommendations.
Arrange Farm walks for MPs to your farm, or other farms around you so they can see first hand the benefits of small-scale diversified horticulture.
Contact
Rebecca Laughton: rebecca.laughton@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk
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