Development of the growing area at Forever Fields

Nornir have been busy working with other stakeholders at Forever Fields in Manchester. To date we have arranged for a team of Community Payback workers to visit the site each Monday where they are working creating a new growing space. The results so far are shown in the photo above. So the growing of food has started at Forever Fields  - but its next season before we get full crops.

In the kitchen at Forever Fields, we have already cooked 186 ready meals using surplus and donated foods. This has been achieved using a chef and 2 community volunteers as well as CP workers helping out in the kitchen.

We have plans to continue to cook ready meals at the site and donate them to local Pantries via our links with Eat Well Manchester: https://www.eatwellmcr.org/

Our plans have been helped because Forever Fields are now appointing a full-time centre manager to help coordinate all the activities at the centre.

There has been development at the site with a base being built for the container that will be used to grow mushrooms. The plan is to use the mushrooms in the ready meals as a way of providing protein without resorting to cheap meat.

The major barrier at the moment is accessing enough surplus foods for the cooking. We are in talks with a range of other organisations who are involved in austerity retail to see how we can over come the problem. One possibly activity is to join a Gleaning later in the year where we can gather a large crop of some specific vegetables.

We are also pursuing links in regarding to developing a vermiculture presence on the site. This has been mostly with the experts at Egino Emerging: https://www.eginoemerging.org/

Ready meals waiting collection

Pilot production run on the 3^rd June 2024 produced 59 meals for donation to foodbanks, community pantries etc through the charity Eat Well Manchester https://www.eatwellmcr.org/

A chef and 2 community volunteers were joined by 2 volunteers from the Monday UPW team (Community Payback Scheme) who worked as kitchen assistants preparing ready meals from the produce grown and supplemented by donated and surplus produce.

One of the aims was to produce a nutritious and eco friendly meal to help combat both food poverty but also protein poverty. As such we substituted meat with mushrooms with a mixture of seasonal vegetables.

The next pilot production run is planned for 24^th June 2024 with 120 meal target, then every Monday thereafter (surplus and freshly grown food supplies permitting).

Further sessions are planned as we now seek additional surplus foods from the community and local businesses.

 The work is funded by the National Lottery Awards For All Programme

GM Foundational Innovation Fund

Our Phase 1 project demonstrated that, not only is Probation a key service of the Foundational Economy and also that people on probation can be key workers themselves.  This is achieved by increasing the innovation capacity and sustainability of organisations working in and with the Foundational Economy, specifically those in the ‘Austerity Food Retail’ sector.

‘Austerity Food Retail’(AFR) refers to local pantries, social supermarkets and other forms of cooperative and community shops offering highly discounted products to people in food poverty. They usually make use of donated and surplus/rejected foods which would otherwise be thrown away.

Our Phase 1 project in 2023/4 successfully provided Stockport Homes’ austerity retailer ‘Your Local Pantry’ https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk/  with proof of this concept. It created a means of retailing more locally produced non-surplus healthy food to its members to supplement the dwindling supplies of often poor-quality surplus and donated food available to them, without having to raise their weekly membership fees to pay for it.  Phase 1 did this by working with people on probation who are subject to an Unpaid Work requirement of a Community Order (‘Community Payback’) to:

•      grow fresh seasonal fruit, vegetables, and salads on unused/under-used public land in Stockport for onward donation to the Pantries.

•      assess the feasibility of manufacturing value-added food products from the produce grown for onward donation to the Pantries.

Our new Phase 2 project (April 2024 to June 2025) builds directly on Phase 1 aims and deliverables by

• Our model/business plan, of using CP to grow fresh produce for donation to the pantries to generate new income streams from commercial production will continue and develop. This will enable them to continue to bulk-buy their own supplies of locally produced non-surplus healthy food.
• Rolling out the Model of at a further 3 sites in Stockport, Manchester and Trafford, thus supplying AFR in Greater Manchester with locally produced healthy non-surplus fresh food free of charge.
• Enhancing the model with the commercial production of mushrooms. Facilitating the manufacture of value-added food products from the produce grown in the form of:

1. Frozen healthy ready meal production at each hub, also for onward donation to AFR.
2. Using mushrooms as a meat substitute from freshly grown mushrooms at each hub for use in the ready meals.

• developing training and progression routes into employment in the food and retail sectors of the Foundational Economy for people successfully completing their Community Payback on the project - helping plug the ‘skills gap’ in the food and retail sectors of the Foundational Economy.

Payback Pathways to Healthy Eating and Food Security

 Food poverty exacerbated by the cost-of-living-crisis is a growing problem across the UK. New initiatives are therefore needed to bridge the resulting food gap. In 2022 we used Awards for All funding to do this by enlisting Probation Services Community Payback Teams (CP) to set up and run community growing spaces. This provided a model of good practice for combating food poverty by growing fresh food for donation to pantries https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk

This was a great success but one of the key lessons learnt was that just growing fresh food is not enough. Often people in food poverty are not equipped to use fresh foods to create healthy meals and are thrown back onto reliance on cheap unhealthy ready meals eg surplus potatoes  swapped for tins of beans and other ultra processed foods. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/02/uk-families-eating-less-healthily-due-to-cost-of-living crisis#:~:text=Overall%2C%2061%25%20said%20the%20cost;due%20to%20stress%20(15%25)

 This reliance on cheap unhealthy foods has negative impacts. 1) it increases obesity rates in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/25/england-obesity-report-analysis 2) The production of the cheap meats that are often used is contributing to the problem of climate change. https://www.gfi.org/resource/a-global-protein-transition-is-necessary-to-keep-warming-below-1-5c/

So we will now  build a model of good practice that not only continues CP-supported healthy fresh food production, but also processes it into healthy ready meals prepared by CP teams and distributed through Pantries. CP teams will also be trained in mushroom cultivation to replace the use of cheap meat in the ready meals. Mushrooms provide all the same necessary proteins as meat, but don’t have the same carbon footprint associated with production of cheap meat. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/oyster-mushroom-benefits#4.-May-promote-blood-sugar-regulation During Covid ready meals were produced by community kitchens but this stopped at the end of lockdown due to lack of volunteers and supplies. The cost-of-living-crisis means they are needed again to combat food poverty, so we’ll reopen these facilities and begin by producing 100 meals per week over 3 sites.

Awards For All Logo

 Food poverty exacerbated by the cost-of-living-crisis is a growing problem across the UK. New initiatives are therefore needed to bridge the resulting food gap. In 2022 we used Awards for All funding to do this by enlisting Probation Services Community Payback Teams (CP) to set up and run community growing spaces. This provided a model of good practice for combating food poverty by growing fresh food for donation to pantries https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk

This was a great success but one of the key lessons learnt was that just growing fresh food is not enough. Often people in food poverty are not equipped to use fresh foods to create healthy meals and are thrown back onto reliance on cheap unhealthy ready meals eg surplus potatoes  swapped for tins of beans and other ultra processed foods. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/02/uk-families-eating-less-healthily-due-to-cost-of-living crisis#:~:text=Overall%2C%2061%25%20said%20the%20cost;due%20to%20stress%20(15%25)

 This reliance on cheap unhealthy foods has negative impacts. 1) it increases obesity rates in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/25/england-obesity-report-analysis 2) The production of the cheap meats that are often used is contributing to the problem of climate change. https://www.gfi.org/resource/a-global-protein-transition-is-necessary-to-keep-warming-below-1-5c/

So we will now  build a model of good practice that not only continues CP-supported healthy fresh food production, but also processes it into healthy ready meals prepared by CP teams and distributed through Pantries. CP teams will also be trained in mushroom cultivation to replace the use of cheap meat in the ready meals. Mushrooms provide all the same necessary proteins as meat, but don’t have the same carbon footprint associated with production of cheap meat. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/oyster-mushroom-benefits#4.-May-promote-blood-sugar-regulation During Covid ready meals were produced by community kitchens but this stopped at the end of lockdown due to lack of volunteers and supplies. The cost-of-living-crisis means they are needed again to combat food poverty, so we’ll reopen these facilities and begin by producing 100 meals per week over 3 sites.