Our story

Sustainable Food Somerset is the outcome of two organisations coming together with a shared vision of achieving greater food sovereignty and security, recognising the importance of food to our landscape, environment and the climate crisis, as well as to our local economy and health.

SOMERSET COMMUNITY FOOD

A grassroots charity with a 24-year history of supporting community groups by delivering food and land-based projects, building community organisations' capacity, rolling out toolkits and developing vital cooking and growing skills through its programmes of training. It aims to re-connect people with the social, health and environmental benefits of growing, buying, preparing and eating local food.

WELLS FOOD NETWORK

The organisation, founded in 2016, that launched the Somerset Food Trail – a celebration of the best, most sustainably produced local food. The Trail focuses on Somerset's more nature-friendly farmers and artisan producers - the local food heroes leading the transition to a new era of agroecological farming to cut emissions, restore wildlife and produce better, tastier, more nourishing food.

Since merging, the charity has been renamed Sustainable Food Somerset to better reflect both our focus on sustainably produced food and our ambition to influence food system policy across the whole of Somerset – and, indeed, the wider South West bio-region. These objectives are embodied in the programme of our exciting new two-day conference LandAlive, to be held at Bath & West Showground in November 2024.

Sustainable Food Places

Sustainable Food Somerset is a member of the fast-growing Sustainable Food Places network, a network of more than 100 cities and regions - including Bristol and Bath & Northeast Somerset - all taking a joined-up approach to tackling some of the social, environmental, economic and health challenges facing us today.

OUR TEAM

OUR APPROACH

SFS BLOG

“We want to increase access to locally produced, nature-friendly food and bring regenerative farming into the mainstream in Somerset.”

Our approach

We are interested in ‘joining the dots’ across the food system to build the movement for change in favour of more localised, circular, climate- and nature-friendly ways of producing food. Why? This approach is needed to decarbonise the food system, reverse biodiversity loss, optimise carbon sequestration in the productive landscape, minimise waste, make farms more economically resilient, build long-term food security, widen access to healthy, nutrient rich food and boost local economies. We’re focused, in particular, on:

Encouraging farmers to embrace regenerative / agroecological farming

Boosting consumer demand for more sustainable local food through public awareness campaigns and events
Making nourishing, local, sustainable food more accessible to people on lower incomes
Shaping public and private sector procurement practices in the region, relocalising and shortening food supply chains
Promoting circular economy principles within the local food industry, business and local institutions
Catalysing closer interaction between policy makers in the South West to work towards a commonly agreed Local Food Plan / Regional Food Production Strategy which anticipates the impact of climate change and biodiversity loss on food supplies.

Our Partners

Our partners

Huge thanks to the generosity of our partners and supporters. These include: THE PIG-near Bath, WWF-UK, Cultivate (a Take Art initiative), Feed Avalon, Glastonbury Growers, One Planet Bruton, Green Wedmore, Reimagining the Levels, Sustainable Wells, Somerset Community Food, Somerset Local Food, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Somerset Climate Action Network.

Funders of our 2022 Somerset Food Trail included South Somerset, Mendip and Sedgemoor District Councils (all of which will be subsumed into the new Somerset County Council in April 2023) as well as Somerton, Frome (through it's People's Budget), Langport and Glastonbury Town Councils, Wells City Council. the Green Scythe Fair and WWF-UK's Land, Food and Farming Fund.

Read more about the success of our 2022 Food Trail in our Evaluation Report.