The Soil Association is leading the Community Supported Agriculture strand of activity, which specialises in communities supporting their local farms by investing either their time or a small amount of money, or simply by committing to buying produce directly from the farm. Producers, consumers and community groups looking to establish their own schemes are being offered free training, advice and support.
Sustain is co-ordinating the Food Co‑ops and Buying Groups project, which aims to share best practice to support the successful creation of food co-ops and organic buying groups across England. This includes producing case studies and toolkits, and also organising exchange visits and conferences for people involved in running food co-ops. Sustain is working in partnership with a number of other organisations, including Somerset Community Food, Food Chain North East, London Food Link, Newham Food Access Partnership, Greenwich Co‑operative Development Agency, F3 and the Soil Association. These partners are helping to develop guidance on different areas such as volunteer support, IT, finance, governance, distribution, financial models, education and awareness, and needs assessment.
The Supply and Distribution strand, also led by Sustain, is working with Local Food Networks around England to increase and improve the supply and distribution of local, sustainable food, as well as sharing good practice in building sustainable local food supply and distribution chains. All the enterprises taking part in the strand are working to broaden their customer base and increase the number of local producers they work with. Several projects are already under way: Local Food Links in Bridport, Dorset, is delivering school meals to eight primary schools (over 70% of their meals’ content is locally produced); Food Chain North East in Newcastle and Organic Lea in Waltham Forest, London, are developing market stalls and box schemes as new outlets for local food; Community Food Enterprise in Newham, London, is developing a strategy to market a ‘Fruit at Work’ scheme to local businesses; East Anglia Food Link is expecting to launch a Certificate of Provenance scheme within the next couple of months.
Farmers’ markets have been running in the UK for over 10 years and have helped farmers, producers and growers bring fresh, local, seasonal food to communities throughout the country, but there is greater scope for launching new markets and increasing the frequency of existing markets. The Co-operative Farmers’ Markets project plans to help set up farmers’ market groups for the benefit of the producers, as well as consumers. Headed by FARMA, the Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association, the project will provide a package of support for groups of farmers’ markets interested in creating co‑operative organisations to run them.
Country Markets Ltd is supporting the development of Sustainable Models of Home-Produced Food, working with producers and advisers, providing training, a toolkit, a labelling system and detailed guidance on everything a home-based producer needs to know, from business planning to food labelling legislation and marketing. The aim is to increase the volume of quality, home-produced food available in shops, so Country Markets Ltd will be working closely with FARMA, Sustain and ViRSA to compliment their activities.
ViRSA, the Village Retail Services Association, is concerned with reinforcing the relationship between Community Shops and Local Food. The aim is to enable community and village shops to stock and sell more locally produced food and drink. A toolkit and local advisers will offer support for shops wanting to source local producers and suppliers, advice on business, legal issues, marketing, storage and display. It is hoped that 200 shops will be on board by 2012.
These six project areas are supported by four underpinning activities in the areas of governance, enterprise support, food webs, and information, communication and evaluation.

www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk