Why Good Food Exeter closed

I watched this fascinating YouTube video today, which reveals some of the reasons why the local food hub in Exeter, Good Food Exeter, closed it's doors to business a couple years ago. At face value, such a closure sounds like a massive blow to the sustainability of Exeter's local food system. But is that really true? After listening to Lynn in this video, I'm not so sure.

In case you don't know what an online food hub is, I'll attempt to explain. Actually, I'll let the US Department of Agriculture explain because their definition is as relevant in the UK as it is in the USA. Here it is: a food hub is "a business or organization that
actively manages the aggrega-
tion, distribution and mar-
keting of source-identified
food products, primarily from
local and regional producers
to strengthen their ability to
satisfy wholesale, retail and
institutional demand."

This definition explains the purpose of the Tamar Food Hub of which I am a customer here in Plymouth, at the mouth of the Tamar River. Tamar Food Hub allows me to buy on an eBay style marketplace from a myriad of local food growers and producers. Then, I pick up my whole order each Friday on Plymouth University's campus. I just love that leasurely stroll across town each week.

So why, oh why, did Exeter's equivalent food hub fail when the Tamar's thrives. This is going to sound counter-intuitive, but listening to Lynn, it sounds like Good Food Exeter closed because Exeter is too affluent... Really? That makes little sense... Bear with me.

Basically, when Lynn and her colleagues formulated the vision for Good Food Exeter, they wished to create a marketplace to make it easier for local producers to find customers. They made a huge assumption. They assumed that small food producers local to Exeter struggle to find customers. Their assumption isn't true. 

Instead, Good Food Exeter struggled to retain their producers. They experienced the same phenomen over and over. A new producer would join their hub, hurray, but then leave soon afterwards in favour of selling to customers directly, to cut out the "middle-man" as it were.

Lynn laments this phenomen, viewing it as a sign of failure. Louise in the video however, like me, interprets it differently. Surely it is good when a producer is capable of cultivating such strong relationships with their customers they can sustain their businesses through a direct customer base. This surely is the holy grail of a sustainable business model.

In other words, Good Food Exeter was redundant. Blessed with such a boyant local food system, Exeter simply doesn't need a food hub. Good Food Exeter failed because it tried to plug a gap that doesn't exist.

Ah, now you can see. Exeter is just too affluent possessing plenty of folk willing to go out of their way and spend more to support local small scale producers rather than big supermarkets. Fascinating. Lucky Exeter.

Comments

Post a Comment

Please feel free to comment. Thank you.

Popular posts from this blog

Vegetable Growing Calendar

Image
I've always liked those little gantt chart style sowing calendars you see every so often. You know the ones I'm talking about, those little calendars that show you when to sow and harvest your vegetables, if everything goes according to plan of course. I always look at these calendars and think, gosh this has such potential... But, this one is too difficult to read, that one is missing the vegetables I like, and these ones I'm never going to have in my allotment shed or garage or greenhouse when I need them. Yet despite all that, they still have such potential, if only... Well, this month I took the plunge. Taking inspiration from all the others, I built my own.  I published it here: Vegetable Growing Calendar freely available to all. I'll let it speak for itself.  Before leaving you to explore, I should mention that over the winter you will notice the list of varieties in there grow. This project has encouraged me to slowly begin working my way through my massively di
Read more

Allotment Waterlogging Mitigation

Image
In the last month, our City Council offered us a different allotment plot, one less windswept and possessing a thriving Allotment Association. Hurray! The timing of this couldn't be better from the point of view of observing the pressures the ground faces from Devon's wet winter weather. The shallow sloping plot possesses a thin layer of heavy clay soil over what appears to be shillet. Bad for drainage, it must be said. After rain, the site becomes a quagmire of mud with pools of standing water. Not ideal, but equally not insurmountable. The plot design must mitigate waterlogging while catering for the periods of dry summer weather we occasionally, yes occasionally, get too. This clearly requires careful consideration. After contemplating this question over several nights of fitful sleep, this is the plan I'm actioning. A photo of my progress to date describes it nicely. As you can see, it's a lot of graft, but hopefully worth it. The approach consists of building up a
Read more

Pea and Bean Weevil Mitigation

Image
I'm working a new allotment plot this season and, as I normally do, I planted broad beans. I watched the little seedlings grow, but my glee quickly turned to concern when I noticed a curious problem develop. All the young leaves acquired these little notches along their edges. Below, you can see what I mean, like little peck marks, but they seemed too uniform and neat for pigeon damage... I felt puzzled. So, as I do, I commenced some research and RHS quickly offered the answer: pea and bean weevils ( Sitona lineatus). The leaf damage is caused by adult weevils. They overwinter in field margins and then fly in spring seeking out legumes, preferably beans and peas, on which to feed. Once fed, they lay their eggs in the soil around these same plants. Their larvae then feed on the plant's nitrogen fixing root nodules (housing rhizobia ). To quench your curiosity, you can see clusters of rhizobia filled root nodules growing on the broad bean roots below. My natural next question wa
Read more