Julie Brown of Growing Communities¹, an urban organic food social enterprise in Hackney, London, has developed a model she called ‘foodzones’. It attempts to put figures on the percentages of food that would feed London, and from what distance they might need to travel. It assumes an 80% national self-sufficiency, a more seasonal diet, and factors in domestic and urban food production. The result is the foodzone diagram shown in Figure 8 overleaf. Brown’s model offers a fascinating model for how a city might feed itself utilising the principles of the foodshed; that is, giving priority to foods grown as close as possible to the settlement. Although clearly stylised, might it be that settlements could create food systems based, at least loosely, on the stylised ‘target’ type model shown below.

In this research, the combined food footprints of 5 settlements within Totnes and District (see Figure 9) were calculated for their populations’ main requirements, fruit and vegetables, sheep, dairy and arable. Taking the foodzone model above and applying it to the locations of Defra-defined agricultural land types in Totnes’ hinterland, the foodshed analysis identifies the land types in closest proximity to the town which are best suited to different production needs.

Figures 9² and 10 break this down into more detail, looking at specific kinds of agricultural production that are possible on the land types available. Perishability and labour intensity are the drivers that give first priority to the required amount of fruit and vegetable production on the Grades 1 and 2 land in the urban area and its periphery. Next priority is Grade 1 and 2 land for arable production of cereals, sugar, hemp, flax, green manures, biofuels and fodder crops.

Defra sub-categorises its Grade 3 land into sub grades 3a and 3b, ‘good’ and ‘moderate’ quality land; the difference is potentially significant but data distinguishing the two sub-grades are not consistently available nationwide. For this model, Grade 3 and 4 land is all allocated to dairy and beef pasture. Theoretically, food zoning in the Brown model would place this activity further from the settlement, but for Totnes much of this land is in immediate proximity to the town – reflecting the wider region’s strong current livestock farming economy. Grade 5 land is best suited to sheep farming, and the nearest suitable location is some distance from Totnes, near South Brent on Dartmoor. Equally, the population here has insufficient land to grow enough grain, and the nearest place for them to grow it is close to Totnes.

This analysis has been subject to a number of data issues. Fine-scale soils data would provide a deeper insight into land suitability than the basic Defra classifications. We also lack access to comprehensive Defra data for productive urban areas or for woodlands, and our calculations use additional datasets from Natural England to identify the latter. In section 8 below we highlight the key issue of insufficient woodlands being available to provide enough wood for fuel; for the purposes of this model, woodland is regarded as an area to maintain biodiversity and offer a source of wild meat as well as providing wood for fuel.

Also, we need to acknowledge that the agricultural land classification is of itself, fairly crude. For example, it is highly likely that there is land closer to Totnes that is well suited for sheep grazing, whereas the model suggests that Dartmoor is the closest location best suited to this type of farming. We plan in future versions of the model to be able to integrate local knowledge more fully, by using more granular datasets and also by enabling local experts to modify land parcel information. However, at this stage, the cruder method we have employed does begin to give us an insight to the food security issues not only at the local level, but also just as importantly at the sub-regional, regional and indeed national level.

In Maintaining Fertility below we touch on a number of additional important future research directions, including the need to understand the potential for mixed farming systems. Currently, this model takes no account of existing land ownership or actual agricultural usage, and it may also be that mixed farming systems such as agroforestry offer greater opportunities to increase overall yields, especially on Grade 3 land.

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