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Abstract
The Bentley Bulk local food initiative was piloted in Manchester in 2003 with the aim of creating a “Healthy Local Food System”. It combined education in food, training in horticulture and work on a local market garden with a food buying co-operative and placed these within the context of a local currency. It is argued that, by operating at the nexus of sustainability and justice, the project can be seen as an example of Just Sustainability in the UK. Just Sustainability provides a framework for a discussion of the issues in taking the project from theory into practice. In particular, the paper looks at the challenge of reaching out to the “non-usual suspects”, making organic food more socially inclusive, linking community projects with larger-scale environmental issues, and the ethics of volunteering.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express his thanks to Rob Squires, the co-ordinator of the Bentley Bulk project, for allowing him full access to the project as a researcher, to Dr Phil Bell and Dr Joe Howe and to his examiners Professor John Handley and Professor Julian Agyeman.
The author would like to thank the ESRC for the PhD studentship that facilitated this research.
Notes
“My caveat, mentioned in the introduction, is that my characterization largely surrounds two major players in the JSP: the environmental justice movement and organizations using the just sustainability discourse. Other than passing references to other inhabitants, such as peace, indigenous, spiritual, women's, civil rights, labor [sic], and antiracist groups, I do not intend to fully explore their roles here” (Agyeman Citation2005, p. 79).
Agyeman describes the EJP, building on Taylor Citation(2000): “[the Environmental Justice Paradigm (EJP)] is a framework for integrating class, race, gender, environment, and social justice conerns. It represents the theoretical underpinning of the environmental justice project and activism”.
Agyeman describes the NEP, building on Catton and Dunlap Citation(1978): “[the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP)] sets out an environmental stewardship and sustainability agenda that currently influences the work of most environmental and sustainability organisations but has little to say about equity or justice”.
Permaculture can be understood as “an approach to designing whole systems, through the maximisation of the interconnectedness of elements, which has an ethical foundation in sustainability and a scientific basis in ecology” (Sherriff Citation2005, p. 224).
The Community Champions Fund is a national government fund aiming to support small-scale projects to improve communities (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/communitychampions/aboutus.cfm).
The currency began life as the Bentley Buck but was changed to the Bentley Bob because complaints about connections to the USA were raised, and this was a sensitive issue in the run up to the Iraq war.
A Local Exchange Trading System is a “local, multi-choice bartering system. It enables local people to give and receive all kinds of services from one to another, without the need to spend money” (see Pepper Citation1996, p. 310). Seyfang Citation(2006) discusses the benefits and policy implications.
“The [Community Supported Agriculture] basic model is simple: consumers pay growers for a share of the total farm produce, and growers provide a weekly share of food of a guaranteed quality and quantity … In addition to receiving a weekly share of produce, CSA members often take part in life on the farm through workdays” (Pretty 2002, p. 118).
Five a Day is an ongoing campaign to promote the eating of fruit and vegetables. The strategy includes funding community health workers to work directly on food access issues, including education around diet and food preparation. In my research, one of the projects was surveying local shops and encouraging them to stock more healthy products and one was working with the local traders' committee to similar effect using a survey of the local community as evidence of demand. More information at www.5aday.nhs.uk
Part of Wal-mart, the supermarket Asda has received much criticism on grounds of employment practices, destroying greenbelt land and lack of environmental policy (see http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=800).
BTCV, the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers is a UK-based environmental charity promoting volunteer involved in conservation projects. One of their initiatives in the Green Gym, which provides the opportunity for exercising in the open air through involvement in practical conservation.
Friends of the Earth run their “Real Food” campaign (www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/real_food/), Greenpeace run “True Food” (sites.greenpeace.org.au/truefood/index2.html) and the Soil Association promote organic food and farming (www.soilassociaton.org).
See, for example, www.tescopoly.org and Manchester Evening News Citation(2007).
On the 8th Day is a health food shop and vegetarian cafe in Manchester.
