Teign greens: Growing together

Food story

GROWING TOGETHER

WORDS TIM DICKENS

It was March 2020. Suddenly,

supermarket shelves ran empty of fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, and loo roll. Overnight, the vulnerability of our broken supermarket food system was exposed for everyone to see. It was then that the queues at our rickety wooden farm gate stall began. This was the backdrop to the birth of Teign Greens, a community-owned vegetable growing enterprise on the edge of Dartmoor.

As we celebrate our first birthday this month [September] we have nearly 70 local families receiving organic veg bags from us every week - with everything grown here on the farm using agroecology and agroforestry. All our members live within the Teign Valley - and within 3-4 miles of the farm. Many also volunteer some of their time to help us tend the land, weed, and harvest. We grow our vegetables on about 4 acres of land on an Organic and Biodynamic-certified farm, with annual veg crops grown between alleys of local Devon varieties of apples, plums, and pears.

As a Community Interest Company (CIC) any profits we make in the future will be reinvested in the business or other local community assets. As a social enterprise, one of our biggest objectives is to support the local community and provide them with access to health, affordable and nutritious food.

Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, is a radical way of producing food that puts the power back in the hands of both the consumer and the producer. Customers, or members, share the risks and rewards of small scale, sustainable farming in several ways. Members commit to a share of the harvest over a season, or a year, to help give the farm the security it needs to plan a year of crops.

The CSA model empowers communities to come together to take control of their food at every level. Instead of giving money to huge supermarket corporations for bland, nutrition-lacking food grown in an unsustainable way, they can support local jobs and support a way of farming that strives to nourish humans and the planet. All of our food miles are in single digits, and with almost no single-use plastic or packaging involved. It’s a resilient model of food production on so many levels. Encouragingly, the numbers of CSAs in the UK doubled last year in response to the Covid pandemic.

At many CSAs, like Teign Greens, members are encouraged to spend some time volunteering at the farm to help grow the crops. We want people who eat our food to come and connect with the way it’s grown; we want kids to know what it means to dig potatoes or pick tomatoes. It’s a fun, physical and social event each week for many of our volunteers, who range in age from 19 to 85.

At Teign Greens we feel we have a responsibility to educate people about how their food is grown, about seasonal eating and about biodiversity. But we also want to teach people how to grow their own food. This summer we have three young trainees working with us, and we aim for them to learn all the skills necessary to go on to set up their own small agroecological farm somewhere soon. We also hope to do courses on small-scale growing and CSAs in the future.

Setting up a market garden or small farm with a CSA model is a very real prospect for young people with a drive and passion for small scale farming. CSAs like Teign Greens can be set up without too much capital investment if you have access to land or can start in partnership with an existing landowner, who may have the buildings and machinery you need to get going. There are a variety of grants available - including through the Prince’s Trust and Landworkers’ Alliance, to support new entrant young farmers and these opportunities will only increase with time. You can also get support from organisations like the LWA and the CSA Network UK. Other ways to access land for your small farm project include via the Ecological Land Cooperative, which develops small plots of farmland for new entrants to either rent or buy as they develop their business.

www.teigngreens.co.uk