During my Permaculture Design Course in London with Naturewise, I spent some time touring and working at Growing Communities (GC) Hackney market gardens. Very interested in this urban food production system started off by Julie Brown. Salad and soft fruit is grown in what was beautifully described as a "patchwork farm" of allotment gardens across Hackney (see green cabbage symbols on map above, each one is a growing site). Remaining seasonal fruit and vegetables are sourced in East Anglia. The only imported goods are fairly traded bananas and other exotic fruits there is a high demand for now. All goods are then distributed at Stoke Newington farmers market.
In addition apprentices are taken on, and then encouraged to set up and manage their own city market gardens.
Excitingly, there is a new start-up programme http://www.growingcommunities.org/start-ups/programme/ that allows the GC model to be rolled out for other areas. Possibility for this scheme in Cambridge could be Massive.
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