The first in a series of explorations of the Food Zones – written by Julie Brown, founder of Growing Communities…
Hello. Welcome to my blog. I’m Julie Brown, founder and director of Growing Communities. We’re based in Hackney, London and we’re working to create a better, fairer and more sustainable food system by supporting small-scale local organic farmers with fair prices.
Our vision for a better food and farming system can be illustrated by a diagram we call the Food Zones. This vision informs everything we do here at Growing Communities and it is being put in place right now by all the people around the country involved in the alternative food movement.
I recently spoke to Rob Hopkins for a piece for his Transition blog, where he described our work as “a research project with its sleeves rolled up”. I love that description as it captures both the theoretical and the practical sides of what we do. I now want to see how we might model and map the alternative food system being created: bring it into the light, prove its impact and show how it’s growing.
It’s a grand ambition in its very early stages. I’ll be looking for lots of help to illustrate my journey online and to fine tune the research methodology.
I’d like to see if we can promote useful dialogue and debate along the way via blogging and tweeting. And as well as doing that virtually, I’m hoping to get out and actually visit some people and farms!
This blog is my vehicle for exploring all of that. I look forward to you joining me on my travels….
Julie Brown, Director, Growing Communities
8th December 2015