2009
Community
- Hundreds join Billy Bragg for the TOSCAs, where hundreds of people make scarecrows as part of Totnes Allotments Association’s campaign for more allotments.
- Local primary school leads campaign to source 5 a-day fruit & veg locally
- The TTT Gardenshare project leads to 30 gardeners growing food in 14 gardens across Totnes town
- ‘Totnes, the Nut Tree Capital of Britain’ initiative reaches a total of 100 fruit and nut trees planted in and around Totnes
- Gardening continues to grow in popularity. The summer of 2009 sees more back gardens in use for food growing in the area than at any point since 1978
- 39 people complete TTT’s Basic Gardening course
- The Diploma in Sustainable Horticulture at Dartington opens, set up and run by Duchy College. Based at Foxhole, it covers a range of Sustainable Horticulture skills, as well as placements at School Farm Organics, Schumacher College and the Dartington gardens. In its first year, bookings exceed expectations.
- Dartington Hall Trust begin a process of rethinking how they will use their 1,000 acres of land when its current lease expires in 2014. A 2 day event is held to explore the options, and concludes with a vision of the Estate being planted as a mixed agroforestry system, designed to produce fruit, nuts, fuel, medicines and field crops, drawing from the 15 years experience of the Agroforestry Research Trust, who have a demonstration garden on the Estate. A design and a feasibility study is commissioned.
- KEVICC begin growing food in the walled garden behind Kennicott, with students in their spare time, and also set up a Forest School in the nearby orchard, teaching brash hedging, clay oven building and other skills.
- The TTT Energy Descent Plan food section sets out a clear model for the relocalisation of food in the area.
Producers
- Sharpham Estate management look into growing cooking oil crops to supply local cooking that can subsequently be recycled for transport fuel.
- The former Organic Training Centre at Foxhole in Dartington, which had been closed, reopens as ‘School Farm Organics’, a no-dig, intensive market garden, with the intention of supplying local markets
- In February 2009 half of all farmers surveyed in England as part of the NFU Farming Futures project said they were already affected by climate change and more than 60% expect to be affected in the next ten years.
Policy Makers & Service Providers
- In the news: the Sun reports that Manchester City Council plans to spend £200,000 planting fruit and nut trees as well as herbs and vegetables, in every park in Manchester. Readers’ comments include the concern that people with nut allergies might eat the nuts by mistake and sue the Council1. Vegetable growing is established at Buckingham Palace and Michelle Obama, wife of the new US President, digs up the South Lawn of the White House and creates an organic vegetable garden.
- Totnes is chosen as one of 6 towns nationally to pilot the Mapping Local Food Webs Project, which looks into retail, supply and consumption of local food in the area as a first step towards changing local shopping habits. Local report to be launched by the end of the year alongside national report.
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