4.4 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Local food networks thrived during lockdown with more people turning to local producers, farm shops and veg box schemes as supermarket shelves ran dry. But how are they doing now? The Covid pandemic was a reminder that localised networks give our food system resilience during disruption, but also that they pay farmers fairly to produce food in a nature friendly way, and helps them stay in business. The cost of living crisis has been one of the biggest difficulties for this system recently, as consumers pay a higher price at the till.
Sheila Dillon visits Growing Communities, a local food network in Hackney, East London who run a veg box scheme, to hear what’s needed to help networks like theirs to expand. She also talks to Rana Foroohar, global business columnist and associate editor at The Financial Times, about what the Biden administration is doing to decentralise the food system in the US. Nigel Murray, Managing Director of Booths Supermarket, explains how they support smaller producers and local supply chains in the North West of England and Yorkshire. And we hear from the Food Producer finalists in the 2023 BBC Food and Farming Awards, about how they are carving out their own diverse network of customers outside the supermarket system.
Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio in Bristol
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0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
0:03.8 | podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC. |
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0:23.7 | And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject |
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0:39.7 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
0:44.5 | Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan, and in this edition of the Food Program, |
0:48.2 | producer Sophie Anton and I are trying to find out if a more localized, regionalized food system is possible. |
0:56.0 | What changes are necessary if we're going to break away from the globalized food chains so good at producing food that's cheap at the till but so costly in other ways. |
1:08.0 | We hope it gets you thinking. |
1:10.0 | What does buying local mean to you when it comes to food? |
1:15.0 | Buying from your local vegbox ski, visiting a local farm shop, |
1:19.0 | or seeking out anything produced in the UK when you're at the supermarket? |
1:23.0 | Do you care? Does it matter? |
1:25.0 | The local food movement was born out of the success of supermarkets |
1:30.0 | with their global supply chains |
1:32.0 | coming to dominate food sales. |
1:34.4 | The majority of local food shops disappeared. |
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