Project partners
Glasgow Community Food Network
Regather (Sheffield)
FoodSense Wales (Cardiff)
Capital Growth (London)
"Shared Assets has long believed that peri urban land has fantastic potential to help us meet our needs for fresh, locally produced food whilst creating resilient local supply chains, good jobs, training opportunities and helping tackle climate change. For the past three years we’ve been working on an international research project learning from cities across the globe about how they are supporting farming on the urban fringe, and are excited to work with our project partners in the UK to apply and develop that learning in cities here.”
Mark Walton, Shared Assets
"ShefFood is looking forward to bringing together a range of Sheffield and South Yorkshire urban and peri-urban food growers to be included in this exciting UK-wide project. As our nation's food security is tested and cities declare climate and ecological emergencies there has never been a more pressing need to seriously engage with urban and peri-urban agriculture. Fringe Farming is a timely intervention that will help remove the barriers to land access, enabling citizens to grow food sustainably, live well and build resilient communities. This is an opportunity to collectively advocate for policies supportive of city growers and farmers. By pooling resources and sharing experiences with project partners, we will create working models that streamline the process of identifying available land, matching people to places and supporting their successful development to produce food that is good quality, healthy and sustainable and fair."
Fran Halsall & Gareth Roberts, Regather
"Access to land has been a significant barrier in upscaling local food production in and around Bristol and this is an exciting opportunity to focus on this issue. Over the past few years, we have seen a significant increase in demand for locally produced food, but accessing land, especially for new entrants, has proved incredibly challenging and production has not increased in line with the demand. In peri-urban areas there are lots of competing priorities for land, and this project will allow us to explore the land that is available and who owns it, the barriers to accessing it, and take steps towards unlocking this for food production."
Steph Wetherell, Bristol Food Producers
“In Glasgow we are launching a new project that will empower communities to get involved in local sustainable food systems change. Part of these ambitions includes upscaling urban agriculture in and around the city, and we are excited to be partnering with Sustain on the Fringe Farming project. We hope that the additional capacity Sustain can bring will help us to influence key people, and enable us to achieve our goal of setting up a community farm on a former municipal golf course.”
Abi Mordin, Glasgow Community Food Network
Fringe Farming: The Fringe Farming project is a collaboration with partners across the UK to understand barriers, identify land opportunities and local actions, and develop national policy to enable agroecological farming at the edge of cities as part of a green economic recovery.
