Urban Scrumping

An inspirational project to grow food in the heart of a city was launched last week in my home town: Harvest Brighton & Hove.

A group of organisations led by the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership and the city council has been awarded £500,000 of funding over four years from the Big Lottery's new Local Food Fund to develop a wide and imaginative range of projects to grow all sorts of crops in “underused and unusual spaces” – landscapes more often associated with concrete and graffiti.

 “Imagine taking a walk through Brighton and Hove in 20 years time. You’ll know you’re in a lively city, but beyond the busy shops, cafes and restaurants, you will find vegetables growing in front gardens, herbs in window boxes, tomato plants on roof spaces, fruit trees in schools and vibrant growing projects in the communal spaces around housing, hospitals, schools and offices. The City’s parks will flourish with edible plants – still beautiful but also productive. On the housing estates, residents now use the once empty spaces in front of buildings for growing food and flowers. More space is set aside for allotments and community gardens which bring together communities of interest or locality.”

Other elements of the project include a greater number of local shops providing outlets for local food alongside fairly traded imports which are accessible and affordable to all residents; regular local produce markets in schools and community venues; and city-owned farms in the outskirts.

The resulting changes in people’s diets “have contributed to a reduction in obesity and related diseases, and a lower carbon footprint for every resident of the city,” the vision continues. “Work on the issues of access and affordability in deprived areas of the city mean that this vision is not just for the more affluent. There are no longer areas of the city where fresh produce cannot be bought, and an extensive programme of cookery training means that residents are now confident in cooking nutritious and delicious meals to enjoy with family and friends.”

There is a Children’s Growing Competition; a ‘Grow your neighbour’s own’ scheme matching volunteers with people who would like their gardens to be used for growing fruit or vegetables but don’t have the time or physical capacity; and a city ‘scrumping project’ to collect, process and distribute unharvested fruit which currently goes to waste.

Of course, some of these projects will be more successful than others, but the range and creativity of ideas give this scheme huge potential to become a model for all our tired urban areas, and solve the current problems of fresh fruit and vegetable ‘deserts’ in the poorest communities; and the city-dweller’s slavery to the supermarket. I will try and keep track of what works and what doesn’t, and report back on this blog.