Two of the Better Food Traders, Forty Hall Farm and Crop Drop got together recently to do crop planning for the new year. Read about it here.
Forty Hall Farm is a market garden in the northern edge of London, just inside the M25, a great example of a peri-urban farm. Crop Drop is a veg box scheme based in the neighbouring borough Haringey, just south of Enfield. They’re both driven by the mission to increase the consumption of local, organic produce, developing trust and transparency in the food chain and increasing the viability of urban agriculture.
Forty Hall Farm is a Soil Association certified organic farm that keeps pigs, goats, cows and sheep as well as growing a range of vegetables on eight acres of land. Their produce is sold through their own veg box scheme, Enfield Veg Co and Crop Drop. These community-based schemes are the right kind of scale to trade with small farms, which makes their collaboration perfect.
They both launched their box schemes about three years ago and since then Forty Hall Farm has expanded their food production five fold. This is set to increase again next year as both box schemes continue to thrive. This is a great example of a successful collaboration which is helping to increase the amount of locally grown food for London.