Last month, Better Food Traders brought together 60+ traders, growers, food partnerships, researchers and campaigners on the Penarth seafront for our biggest Annual Gathering yet. People travelled from Edinburgh to Jersey, East Anglia to West Wales.
What followed was a day that moved between the hyper-practical and the boldly visionary.
We’ve released a Learning Summary of the day with our key take aways.
Here’s a top line of what we discovered:
1. Running a small business in the UK is increasingly difficult.
Independent traders committed to fair pay, ethical supply chains and sustainable food are being squeezed from every direction. Living wage increases, national insurance, business rates, energy costs. Many are absorbing what they can and working longer for less. Our food and farming system faces growing pressures and possibilities — from supply chain shocks to local food resilience — and independent traders have a vital role to play within it. The BFT network is building a real alternative to the mainstream food system. But it needs support to thrive.
2. Relationships are the infrastructure.
From bakers who visit the farmers who grow their grain, to shopkeepers who remember customers’ favorite products, and wholesalers who go that extra mile, the BFT network runs on trust built over years. When supply chains are short, there’s room for care and transparency. When shocks hit—failed harvests, weather events, global instability—those relationships are what hold things together.
3. Cymru is a place to watch.
What is it like to work in sustainable, independent food trading in Wales? What does success look like? What are the challenges and what are those working in this sector excited about? We brought together a farmers’ market organiser, an owner of a rural grocery shop, the director at community food initiative and a policy-influencing NGO to find out.
The energy in Wales right now is something. A new Plaid Cymru government, years of movement building, farmers diversifying crops through direct trader relationships, The Planet Card widening access for people on low incomes, Welsh Veg in Schools proving procurement works for agroecological growers. There’s real momentum, and real challenges around scale, logistics and horticulture capacity.
4. What if we win?
The afternoon asked a bigger question: what does success look like, and what needs to shift to get there? We had speakers give micro-presentations which attendees could then explore in group discussion. Check out our speakers and the questions they proposed on the next slides.
Enterprise support for BFT traders is vital and core to what we do. But the conversations at this year’s gathering made clear that BFT also needs to influence the broader operating environment, from national planning and business rates policy, to new economic models, to funding for civic infrastructure.
5. The momentum is real.
There is growing interest in the role independent traders play within the broader movement for organic and agroecological food, and growing public demand to match.
We closed the 2026 Annual Gathering with a renewed sense of admiration for independent traders and commitment to supporting them. People left feeling inspired, energised, supported and connected.
