How would this work if all the supermarket shoppers decided to use your services? Wouldn't the roads be clogged with veg box delivery vehicles? Isn't it a question of scale? Our local village shop is very successful and used by people from surrounding villages. The street is increasingly being blocked by the delivery vehicles serving the shop, and customers cars from those villages. Maybe the answer would be to relocate a much enlarged village shop on the edge of the village, with improved access for larger trucks and a car park ………...
Personally I drop off at seven or so pick up points where customers then collect from--on foot bike, or by car.
If there were lots more operations like mine around towns and cities then I'm sure delivery could be worked out.. Similar to how milk floats used to do it in ye olden days.. And as are springing up again.
My operation is not unique there are many others all round the country - they just tend to be under the radar and ignored by the mainstream.
Dismissed as wooly , niche, or unproductive - none of which is true - we are just operating in a system that massively favours and promotes the big players - because they have loudest voice and clout when it comes to publicity, lobbying power at governmental level, and advertising budget.
Up until now that is.. now us regenerative agriculturalists have a bit more voice in Westminster - and we can come to places like this and tell you good folks all about it too
But in essence we need to relocalise most food supplies, cut out the long supply chain model that means most of the profit goes to the supermarket and the distributor.
I would disagree that markets ' just work' - maybe in the short term, but the end consumer doesn't get to see the hidden costs of over cultivation on soil , over use of pesticides herbicides and fertilisers which are gobbling up resources and causing pollution to groundwater - depleting soils so the current estimate is that we maybe have seventy or so years harvests left - killing off delicate ecological systems - insect extinction rates are huge - and which also rely on a lot of poorly paid exploited labour - both here and overseas -which we don't see. All these 'costs' are picked up elsewhere either by society or the environment - they are not 'free'
Our current system of food production and distribution is highly unsustainable - and doesn't deliver good food where its needed - its mainly fossil fuel* converted to cheap overprocessed calories which don't create health or well being for our population, just big profits for a few big players.
* i do use some fossil fuel in my cultivation machinery - but it wouldn't be impossible to have a electric cell version of them i'm sure.
Otherwise the farm runs mainly on 'contemporary sunlight' ie greenwaste compost, some animal manures, and green manures grown in situ - i don't use artificially created fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides.
Its not a perfect system - there are still some holes to plug - but if more ( or at least some) R&D effort were put in we could do a lot better -
