Discover your local community food strategy and get involved

Why is it cheaper and easier for families to feed themselves with powdered mash and sausages with a 5% meat content than with local veg and meat from their communities that are surrounded by farms & sea? 

By Kyle Wilson | August 2022

After reading this report, we’ve considered that it might be useful and enlightening to re-discover how we can access more locally-grown, affordable food.

Yes, people began growing their own food several centuries ago, when politicians, landlords, and landowners, often fearing civil unrest, would ‘allot‘ small areas of community land to low-income households.

In the UK, the vision of self-sufficiency thrived during the Second World War, when rationing made a necessity of growing food for oneself in their Victory Gardens.

This home-grown practice stayed alive in the following decades but the trend did not last.

Since the eighties, more and more land is disappearing under the concrete of those developers tasked with building more and more expensive homes for the upper middle-class and more foreign, big-box retail stores that have no connection to the local communities or to the land (farmland) on which they were built, and (surprise, surprise) councils dodged responsibility.

Today, millions and millions of pounds are being invested into paving over the farmland of rural communities to make way for retail stores that, for the relatively few positives they create, end up sucking the life out of their local economies and destroying the very culture created by historic family-run independent businesses.

Because of this, there are around three hundred thousand plots of ‘common’ land left in the country… and we must act to protect them.

Scotland has a policy called the community empowerment act 2015.

The policy requires all local councils to prepare food growing strategies.

It also encourages councils to identify new land that may be used as allotment sites and community growing.

These strategies are beginning to take root as we speak and for people like us, they provide an excellent opportunity to access and connect with the land and with like minded people.

So, if you’re looking for growing opportunities and a simple way to advocate for organic, chemical-free food in your community, please have a look at the list below and discover a renewed sense of appreciation for the farmers, growers, foragers, cooks, food makers, and other interesting locals who help us rediscover the shared economy under the ground where nutrients and food are shared for ecosystems to flourish without greed.

Then, get involved and have fun!

In Perth & Kinross, we have a good directory of local community food growing projects that help us to discover who is growing food near us. Check out the ‘Growing Together‘ directory and map.

Take a look at this interactive map for Grow Dundee. These are all the local spaces in and around Dundee city where food is being grown for the benefit of the community.

Below, we can click on the council area of our choice and view their growing strategy. 

How do we rebuild a food system that delivers safe, healthy, affordable food to everyone?

Better yet, how do we become the new OWNERS of our local community food systems?

The actions we take now, such as supporting local community projects and progressive policies like the Good Food Nation Bill, will shape the food system of the future, affecting everything from the livelihoods of families and farmers to animal welfare and climate change.

That Good Food Nation Bill is currently being debated in the Scottish Parliament.

Learn more about the Good Food Nation Bill here.

Helpful Resources