Local Produce

Press Release 14 July 2010
Directory to local food producers in and around North Cornwall

Ever wondered how best to support our local economy to help safeguard/ create jobs for our young people? Or how to save money on fresher and more nutritious food and at the same time reduce your ‘carbon footprint’?  ‘Cornish Diet’ can be part of the answer.

The Cornish Diet is an initiative calling on all the people of Cornwall to switch to purchasing local food from local shops and local food producers. To help you do that, Transition North Cornwall have compiled a new Local Food Directory at their website www.transitionnc.org.  The Directory is free to both producers and users and shows lots of information on each producer and their food products, including full description, links to their own website and full contact details. Users can further develop the directory by leaving comments on their experiences with each food producer.

The Cornish Diet Directory currently contains details of over 70 producers, many of whom offer free home delivery service at prices equivalent or even lower than supermarkets, saving you time and money.

Using local produce is …

• Better for the local economy: Every £1 spent on local produce at local shops or producers generates £2.56 in the local economy, which is about twice as much as spending the same £1 in a supermarket. That means more jobs for our young people and more wealth for our community.
• Better for the Environment: Consuming local produce reduces your ‘Food Miles’ and increases our food and energy security, as well as typically requiring far less packaging.
• Better value for money and better deal for our farmers, fishermen and all our local producers.
• Better quality, fresher food - higher in nutrients, lower in saturated fats and additives

Paul Sousek of Transition North Cornwall says, “Buying local food directly from our local shops and producers is a very effective way of supporting  the local economy, safeguarding and creating jobs and indirectly supporting your neighbours and fellow residents of North Cornwall.

Shopping at Supermarkets does the exact opposite, reducing producers’ incomes, deskilling local jobs, exporting jobs and our wealth away from our locality to finance the high cost transport, headquarters and the supermarket profits. Even if you buy the few local products available at supermarkets, even then the local economy loses out: producers’ prices are depressed by the dominant supermarkets thus reducing their ability to invest and create jobs, goods are moved all over the country due to their centralised warehousing policies, thus greatly increasing ‘food miles’ and carbon pollution.

Yes, we all need to buy some products from Supermarkets occasionally, but local food such as meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, some fruit, bread and cakes, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink and other products are all available right here right now and we owe it to ourselves to take advantage of that and help build our community at the same time”

Most people know a few local producers and shops selling local food, but not many of us are aware of over 70 such establishments currently listed in the Directory. So why not take a look at the Local Food Directory at www.TransitionNC.org and help yourself as well as the whole community.