Local Food Directory | Our Mission

Updated: January, 25, 2008

	020 7489 7107
	info@thelfd.com
	3, Globe View High Timber Street London EC4V 3PN

What we believe in-

The local food directory was founded to champion the cause of local food in Britain. We passionately believe that buying local is best; an achievable reality, not a high ideal. Buying local is one of the things that helps support and bind the communities in which we live.

What we wanted to do was create a directory that encompassed all the people producing (and sourcing) fantastic British food within their local area, people you could buy from directly. There are directories out there (believe us, we've looked), but they all seemed to include bulk wholesalers, caterers or distributers. Well, that's not local food to us. So we set about creating our own directory, that embraces everyone producing local food, raised or made with care, from the tiniest smallholding, to the largest biodynamic estate. Every single one of them had either a shop, farm gate sales, or a stall at a farmers' market. If not, they have an online shop and do mail order. Some have all of these things! What matters is that you can see what they do, find them, and buy from them. We are the easy way to start your live local campaign.

Being a locavore shouldn't entail tying yourself in guilty knots every time you buy a banana or driving yourself mad over whether the only carrots you could find in Winchester were biodynamically grown. It's about taking food buying back to the fundamentals. This doesn't mean that we spend our time demonising supermarkets, after all, they are a fixture of the modern world and if you need to buy five kilos of washing powder and forty eight loo rolls they do come in fairly handy. What they don't do well is local, natural food and their economies of scale mean that small producers are crushed beneath their commercial wheels.

The best food grown and raised on British soil is some of the world's very finest. It does not deserve to be packaged into anonymity and traded as cheaply as possible, and neither do the people who produce it. For too long, British food consumption has been controlled, not by the independents who grow, produce and retail it, but by convenient middlemen - the supermarkets. By making a conscious decision to put as much of your food spend as you can into quality local produce you are automatically empowering smaller producers.

Reasons to eat Local Food

It tastes great. Locally grown and supplied produce has a short transit time between field and fork. Produce on the supermarket shelf has often travelled thousands of miles and been stored at low temperatures, preserved and/or irradiated.

You know what you are eating. If the chicken you bought in a supermarket had a photo of its hen house, or cage, or feed tray on the packaging, would you still buy it? Probably not, and we suspect that the purchase of free range and organic chickens would go through the roof. The people who believe in local food, grow and raise it, can tell you what they believe in, and it generally isn't battery and barn raised hens.

Building communities. By spending your money in your local community, and not with a supermarket, you are building fiscal and social relationships that bind your community together and make a real difference to the area in which you live. Don't underestimate the power of local buying.

Eating with the seasons. Buying and cooking with the seasons means tasting the food when it is at its best, and most full of goodness. It takes a little effort to start with, but it can be as simple as not buying enormous and tasteless strawberries in December. You'll be glad you did.

You CAN save the world. You really can. The average British supermarket bought meal has travelled 66 times further than a meal bought within a one hundred mile radius. We are a tiny country, with enormous sway in the world, and we should not underestimate our power. We can't control the squabbling of politicans but we can choose to make a positive change in our diets and lifestyles.

If you could give your son or daughter a choice between a future working the land, producing healthy, nourishing food, or working in a supermarket or fast food outlet, which would you choose? Buy local, and support the people who are both safeguarding an ancient way of life, and forging a new economy in the modern world.

Where it started-

We love local food. Lucy's memories of her rural childhood include being packed off across the village on Sunday mornings, with an empty bag and fifty pence to buy the vegetables for lunch. 'Ernie grew almost everything and I would hold open the shopping bag as he lifted potatoes, pulled up carrots or leeks, picked runner or broad beans, an onion or two, or a cabbage. Sometimes he would stuff in a bunch of sweet williams on the top. I would give him the fifty pence, and try to get home before the handles of the bag cut through my fingers. I can still taste those potatoes.'

Whilst this is a now childhood memory (although Ernie's still there and growing - sadly, Ernie died on the 15th of January 2008), it is the essence of local food: fine food, bought directly from the producer. Of course, not every village has an Ernie, but locally to you there will be someone who takes the same pride in what they grow or produce, or sell.

What we want to achieve-

This site has two main objectives, and that it to inspire you to find these people, and to help you find them. We are dedicated to making small, independent producers and retailers accessible and visible. We will showcase their concerns and let customers know what is happening. Its our aim to grow slowly and sustainably, in an ethical way.

p.s. We hope this is a friendly site, and we want it to be the best. Drop us a line or call if there's anything you'd like to see here, or if there's something that isn't working.