FarmStart goes national!
Earlier this summer people from all over the UK came to learn from Kindling how to set up incubator projects for supporting brand new organic growers, at our second ‘How to Set Up a FarmStart’ day. Having brought the idea over from North America, we're really excited to see it being adopted, adapted and set in motion in others parts of the UK.
After attending last year's session, OrganicLea in London have already got theirs up and running, and are in the process of recruiting for a FarmStart co-ordinator, so we’re hoping that this year's event will have similarly exciting results. Participants came from all over the UK, including folk from the Welsh Rural Regeneration Unit, Stroud Community Supported Agriculture and LESS Lancaster, and all were super-enthusiastic about the project and its potential in their area.
As well as us Kindling-ers, we were also lucky enough to have with us Rebecca Marshall from the Community Land Advisory Service (CLAS), whose expertise in legal agreements with land owners was particularly useful.
Mark Jones, Welsh Produce Manager at Wales’ Rural Regeneration Unit described the day as ‘Inspirational. The input from Helen and Alex, and from Becky (CLAS), provided everything and more that we need to get things started. We hope to get something started in Wales sooner now than we originally thought’.
There were also some really useful suggestions for improving future sessions, which we will definitely be incorporating next time, including:
- Time to further explore other farm start models and what has worked/ hasn’t worked from each.
- Brainstorming on Recruitment, Markets and Land.
- Time to talk to FarmStarters on the visit to the site (sadly the FSers who were there were just leaving when we arrived as the weather was awful!)
The only problem is that there weren’t any topics that people wanted less information on - so we might have to hold it over two days instead of one next time! Our original plan was to hold just one of these sessions each year, but a couple of people have shown an interest in attending one in the winter, so keep an eye out here for news.
Click here for more background on our FarmStart initiative.