• If you are not a member of a CSA, please complete this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CSA-non-member-survey
• If you are a member of a CSA, please complete this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CSA-member-survey

It should only take 5 to 10 minutes. To thank you for your help, you’ll receive a discount code for books from Earthscan, a leading publisher of environmental books, and you’ll be entered into a prize draw for a selection of books.

So what’s this about?

Provenance is working with the Soil Association to research the impact of community supported agriculture (CSA), as part of the Making Local Food Work project to support CSA enterprises across England.

Community Supported Agriculture means any food, fuel or fibre producing initiative where the community shares the risks and rewards of production, whether through ownership, investment, sharing the costs of production, or provision of labour.

The survey and interview phases will be guided by the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach framework, ensuring a comprehensive assessment of CSAs and their members across the full range of social, human, physical, financial and natural capital / assets. The case studies will follow the more structured IDEA method, which can be repeated by the CSAs to measure future progress across economic, environmental and social criteria.

The results will be used to compile a full final report, summary report, and targeted factsheets for specific audiences – policymakers, funders, the media, CSA participants. We will also be providing feedback to individual CSAs on the findings from their members and local non-members (without any identification of individuals), which should be useful in guiding their future development.

We are carrying out this evaluation of the impact of CSA for the Soil Association’s CSA support work under the National Lottery funded Making Local Food Work programme.

We will shortly be contacting CSAs and their members across England to invite them to take part in our initial surveys. If you are involved with a CSA and would like to participate, please contact us.

Here’s the brief editorial intro from the recent newsletter:

After our break during the election and first months of the Coalition Government, SD Scene is back online and will be once again arriving in your in-boxes each month.

As the Government affirms its commitment to sustainable development and sets out its approach, we’ve articles this month on the developing relationship between the public sector, civil society and sustainable development.

Peter Madden, of Forum for the Future, considers the public sector’s record in embracing sustainable development and the greater potential to deliver public value. The Sustainable Development Commission watchdog report on sustainability in Government identifies significant progress and savings with opportunities for much more.

Meanwhile, Mike Perry, of the Plunkett Foundation, asks if community-ownership provides a big answer for the Big Society. The Sustainable Development Commission finds in The Future is Local that empowered communities can effectively deliver sustainable development at a local level.

We received the go-ahead to resume publication of the newsletter and regular updates to the website in July, with the first post-election issue of the newsletter sent out on 28th July.

These are interesting times for sustainable development as the policies and approach of the Coalition Government emerge: through SD Scene we’ll be keeping a close eye on developments in government, business and civil society.

For the latest news from SD Scene, subscribe to the monthly newsletter, watch for regular updates to the website, or follow our new Twitter stream.

SD Scene welcomes contributions from business and civil society: please contact Nick Saltmarsh with any suggestions.

Provenance has also developed a new website for SD Scene. Sitting within the Sustainable Development Programme website, the dynamic SD Scene section allows frequent updates and user comment and discussion.

A monthly e-newsletter rounds up the highlights of each month’s updates on SD Scene. Featured in the first issue of the relaunched newsletter are an interview with Will Day, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, and news stories on the International Year of Biodiversity, the government’s Food 2030 strategy, a recent study on education and sustainable development, and much more.

Nick Saltmarsh of Provenance is acting as external editor of SD Scene over the coming months. Why not subscribe and keep up to date on developments in sustainable development?

I make all my preserves by hand in Pulham Market, Norfolk, following family recipes, creating new recipes and using the finest own-grown, wild and local produce. My latest seasonal speciality is a tart crab apple and chilli jelly, made with a bumper harvest of garden crab apples and Apache chillies from my mother’s greenhouse; it is fantastic with roast beef.

Janet Peachey’s handmade preserves have until now only been available through selected markets and shops in Norfolk and Suffolk. Now Provenance has launched a website and online shop for Peachey’s Preserves offering the year-round range for delivery across the UK.

Like many local producers, Peachey’s Preserves works with a network of local growers, brewers and others, to produce superb and locally distinctive foods. The apple, cider and sage jelly is made with garden sage and Aspall’s cyder from Debenham in Suffolk; apricot and Norfolk Ale chutney uses Norfolk Nectar Ale from the Humpty Dumpty Brewery at Reedham; date and Chestnut Ale chutney draws rich flavours from the ale of Alburgh’s Grain Brewery.

The Peachey’s Preserves website also lists local outlets and special events, such as Gressenhall’s Apple Day celebration on 25th October, along with details of seasonal products and recipe suggestions. Even the recipes have a local emphasis, such as the irresistible baked gammon with apricot and Norfolk Ale chutney, recommending gammon from Cannells butchers in Diss.

Find out more about Provenance’s web services…

Who stands to gain?

The Global Harvest Initiative has identified this target as its express goal:

By 2050, we must eliminate the global productivity gap by sustainably doubling agricultural output to meet the needs of a growing world.

Feeding the world is an undeniably commendable aim, but is a rush to increase agricultural productivity really the best way to go about it? As Paula Crossfield, of Civil Eats, has observed, the target may do more to increase the profits of multinational agri-business than to feed the world’s hungry. Who’s behind the GHI? DuPont, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and John Deere.

More achievable and sustainable approaches to addressing hunger include reducing food waste along the food supply chain, distributing the world’s food more equitably and managing demand for resource-hungry meat and dairy products.

Profligacy

Tristram Stuart examines these issues in his powerful new book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. Stuart developed a very personal interest in food waste from seeking swill for his pigs as a child to rescuing supermarket waste from bins as a campaigning freegan. He successfully combines personal experience with extensive research to present a compelling argument that profligate waste of food is at the heart of our dysfunctional food system.

Stuart digs up some truly shocking statistics from FAO data: of a total global edible food harvest of 4,600 kCal per person per day, only 2,000 kCal are consumed (1,700 are fed to animals, yielding just 400 in return; 600 are lost between field and food industry, 800 lost in distribution, retail, catering and households). The world is already producing more than twice the amount of food we actually consume.

One of many striking graphs in the book’s appendix plots countries’ GDP against edible crop harvest (including crops fed to livestock) as a percentage of nutritional requirements. In every country except the Democratic Republic of Congo, the harvest is over 100% of requirements, rising (in close correlation to GDP) to over 300% in most of the developed world and over 400% in the USA and Greece. Meat production is an important part of the story, but needn’t be such a drain on resources: another telling morsel of information is that livestock in Kenya are net contributors to food supply, feeding on residues and grass rather than arable crops.

Besides the abundance of informative data, a diverse collection of photos starkly illustrates rampant profligacy in farming, processing and retail.

Positive lessons

Stuart examines, and dismisses, possible arguments that waste is inevitable, identifying positive examples of less wasteful countries and cultures, particularly the Uighurs of China. The FAO identifies a food supply level of 130% as providing a sufficient buffer against crop failure and other supply problems; achieving this would leave enough surplus food at current production levels to feed an additional 3 billion people (without any change to dietary patterns), about the number by which the world’s population is expected to rise by 2050.

All of which suggests that we don’t need another Green Revolution to feed the world, rather to eliminate profligate waste from farm to table. Such a waste revolution will not even require drastic changes to our lifestyles, but will have to be achieved piecemeal, changing the attitude and behaviour of individuals, households, businesses and farms across the world.

Practical local steps to eliminating waste

At a local level, farms and businesses can take relatively simple steps to reduce waste. Production planning, supplying food through more diverse and direct markets, professional supply chain management, raising production standards, collaborating and sharing information, auditing sustainability and monitoring waste: all can contribute to a more efficient and less wasteful food supply system. Provenance hopes it can play a part in helping businesses achieve such vital steps.

By committing to cut your emissions by 10% in 2010, you will join thousands of individuals, schools, hospitals, businesses and organisations all actively helping to combat climate change by making simple changes to their lifestyles, homes and workplaces. More importantly, your voice will help to put pressure on the politicians to cut Britain’s emissions as quickly as the science demands. If we in the UK can prove that fast, deep cuts can be made at a national level, then we may just inspire all the other big polluting countries to follow suit.

The UK will need to change the way food is produced and processed so that we continue to enjoy healthy affordable food in the decades ahead
Hilary Benn, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary

As Defra launches the Food 2030 open discussion on the future of food, Provenance, a new London and East Anglia based partnership, is offering a range of services to independent food businesses across the supply chain, with an emphasis on supporting, promoting and developing more sustainable and local supply chains.

Demanding more sustainable food

Government policy and consumer demand are changing, creating new opportunities for independent food producers to supply both public and private sector outlets. Producers that work transparently to produce and supply food more sustainably will be best placed to benefit from these opportunities. Provenance aims to help food and farming businesses to work more sustainably and win new business.

Helping independent businesses access public sector markets

Amongst Provenance’s services is support for independent food suppliers in winning contracts to supply public sector markets. The public sector catering market in England is worth £2 billion annually (according to the National Audit Office’s report, Smarter food procurement in the public sector). Provenance recognises that many small and local suppliers can supply quality local food to schools, hospitals and other outlets, but face obstacles that favour larger businesses with more experience and resources.

These obstacles have been highlighted this week by the launch of Sustain’s new Good Food for our Money campaign, demanding “mandatory standards for 100% procurement of healthy and sustainable food in the public sector”.

A free alert email alert service for public sector food supply contracts

Food suppliers are often simply not aware of opportunities to supply the public sector. While all public sector contracts above specified thresholds are advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) and subscription services provide alerts of opportunities, accessing this information is often expensive or difficult.

Provenance has launched the first entirely free alert service to notify businesses of every upcoming public sector food supply contract advertised in the OJEU. Businesses can subscribe to receive daily or weekly emails with details of every contract. Provenance can provide further support in meeting the requirements of public sector purchasers and tendering for contracts.

More from Provenance

Provenance can also help manage supply chains, bringing professional standards and systems to independent food supply chains of every scale; audit supply chains to demonstrate and improve sustainability; and provide affordable but effective advice on marketing and communication, from support for direct marketing initiatives to development of web sites and services.

We’re all too aware that many independent farmers, food producers, retailers and caterers often fail to adequately communicate their excellent work and the superb food they produce or provide. Small businesses may be too focused on their day-to-day business, too occupied with their primary occupation of producing and supplying good food, or simply feel that the cost of communication services is unjustified.

Why are so many food producers not using the web to communicate?

A good website is an essential tool for communicating with existing and potential customers, yet many food businesses still don’t have one.

Price is often an obstacle: quotes for development of even the most basic websites can be very high, often because of design and technology that goes beyond the requirements of a small business. The range of services on offer can also be confusing: setting up a website involves domain name registration, website design and hosting even before extras such as a statistics service are considered. Another obstacle is lack of control over the resulting website: businesses can be locked into a relationship with their web designer where every subsequent change comes at a cost.

A complete, affordable and straightforward web package for food businesses

This is why Provenance is excited to be launching a complete web service aimed at the requirements of independent food businesses, providing all the elements of an effective online presence in a single affordable package, from just £300 for set-up and the first year of service.

How can we do this?

We use open-source software to keep implementation costs to a minimum; we provide access to a wide range of existing templates to avoid costly web design; we don’t charge extra for freely available services such as website statistics or submission of a website’s details to Google.

This is exactly the same approach we take to providing our own website and others we’re involved in, like The Tracing Paper. We believe that we’re able to offer a service that is easy to use, affordable and still professional.

We hope that this will help get more independent food businesses online and raise awareness of their good work and the food they produce.

Read more about our web services…