Producing the Goods 1 Producing the Goods 1
Food, Locality & Identity : Casebooks
Food that is grown and produced here that reinforces the particularity of place, and adds to its cultural identity and local economy. Examples include orchard produce, other seasonal fruit and vegetables, cheese made from milk from stock grazed on flower-rich pastures nearby, bread from locally grown and milled wheat.
Adam Nicolson describes the French concept of terroir: "In restaurants, you eat what emerges from the terroir, that nearly untranslatable word that embraces the land, the landscape, the sense of place, the history of what people have always done there, a sense of local pride and a connection between patterns of eating, farming, building, cooking, thinking and living that we have largely abandoned and which now, in a desperately broken and fragmented way, we are trying to piece back together."
Ways of selling local foods such as street markets, direct selling / mail order, independent grocers, greengrocers, bakers etc, shops, restaurants that sell and cook local foods. Big Barn is a website that will tell you where you can find good food within a few miles of home or work.
Food, locality and identity currently includes: apples, apple juice, barley, beer, bread, breweries, cheese, cider, cobnuts, damsons, garlic, hops, local shops, perry, watercress …
Producing the Goods 1 (food) is available as a 16 page illustrated pamphlet. Individual A5 printed copies are available for £1.50 plus postage from our MARKET PLACE (discounts are available for orders of 50 or more; contact info [at] commonground . org . uk, for details & prices, +44(0)1747 850820).
Inventive producers
Inventive producers find value all about them and add value to what they grow.
Gregg’s Pit Cider & Perry
Promoting the Goods: Ways of Selling Local Foods
See also Producing the Goods 2 : Markets and Market Places
Mail Order
Vegetable Box Schemes
Delicatessens & Grocers
Farm Shops
What started out as a simple way of selling the produce from a farm has, in some cases, turned into a market or outlet for other local farms producing different foods. They have become the equivalent of a village or one-stop food shop that sell non-perishable goods as well. Some provide cafes/restaurants.
Restaurants
Naming the Goods
The naming of products is important. Do they reveal their provenance? We are looking for good labelling - helpful information about a product, not just about its contents, but about how it is grown, where it comes from, how it is produced, who produces it. The labels on Yarde Farm’s Real Apple Juice give the name of orchard in which the apples are grown. The goods sold in the WI Country Markets have the addresses of the domestic growers and producers marked upon them.
Minimal or no packaging is best for the environment, providing the goods are kept clean and fresh. An alternative is to create a form of packaging that can be re-used:
Labelling
Packaging
Producing the Goods 2 : Markets and Market Places
