Making Local Food Work
Country Markets has been part of the Making Local Food Work Project, a £10 million Big Lottery Funded
programme focused on promoting community enterprise as a solution to local food needs;it aims to reconnect
consumers to the land by increasing access to fresh, healthy local food.
The project achieved its goal to put in place a range of approximately 650 successful,
viable, resilient, locally controlled and principled local food enterprises throughout England over five years,
which actively contribute social, economic, and environmental benefits to the communities they serve
and help to address the challenges of food access and food security.
The programme vision is to secure the long term future of thriving communities that are
strongly connected with land, that understand where their food comes from and are empowered
to respond to their own food needs using community-led solutions.
Local food matters; it connects people to the land. It creates opportunities for farmers to provide food
directly to their customers and helps communities to build skills, trading systems, networks and resilience.
Local food can also have many benefits for the local economy, community regeneration, health and the environment.
The Making Local Food Work project has provided a fantastic opportunity to ensure the
sustainability of Country Markets Limited for all our existing Members – and
many new Members – well into the future.
Country Markets has worked with several other project partners:
- The Plunkett Foundation
- National Farmers Retail and Markets Association (FARMA)
- Alliance for Better Food and Farming (Sustain)
- Campaign to Protect Rural England
- Soil Association and Co-operatives UK