Repurposing the Commons for Open Source Food and Agricultural Biodiversity

Incredible Edible pumpkins planted with a view over Todmorden, West Yorkshire, UK. Credit: : John Paull

The Incredible Edible Todmorden project has created 40 public fruit and vegetable gardens as a means to address the town’s unhealthy eating habits. It has been very successful, raising awareness regarding the benefits of consuming local food.

The Problem

Britain is plagued by extreme rates of overnutrition. On a daily basis, newspapers report dysfunctional eating, and the obesity epidemic engulfing Britain. The National Health Service (NHS) is funding lap band surgery for obese Britains as young as 16 years old. British women are the fattest in Europe and a quarter are obese.

The Community College of Todmorden tempts passers-by with open access radishes growing in a pavement plot. Credit: John Paull

The Project

The Incredible Edible Todmorden (IET) project IET has created 40 public fruit and vegetable gardens. The gardens and orchards in ‘the commons’ are the public face of IET and they are its most visible, tangible and immediate community benefit. They are a constant reminder that ‘food doesn’t grow on supermarket shelves, you know’. They deliver visual interest, opportunities for participation and engagement, gastronomic novelty and amenity, as well as fresh seasonal local nourishment. 

IET has also created a variety of communication, educative and celebratory events in the town. Such events have included street cook-offs, ‘Ted Talks’, targeted campaigns such as ‘Every Egg Matters’ which maps local egg production, cooking courses, the field to plate lunch, and seed swaps. Regular newsletters, an active website (www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk), presentations beyond the local district, and veggie tourism, all serve to maintain the momentum of IET. 

A celebrity visit, such as by Prince Charles, to IET adds endorsement and gains media exposure beyond what free carrots in an obscure West Yorkshire town may otherwise attract. It can add Todmorden to the celebrity-circuit and, as an online commentator offered: ‘Congratulations to the folk of Todmorden for being so innovative that the Prince of Wales just had to come to see it for himself’ (wrinkles, in Moseley, 2010).

Impact

The local and immediate outcome of IET is the transformation of the commons with edible townscaping. IET has raised the profile of food in general and local food in particular. Residents and food vendors have a raised awareness of localness. The Todmorden local market has survived and even prospered.

A survey in Todmorden had 47 per cent of respondents reporting that they ‘have grown food at home this year’ while 35 per cent reported that they are ‘fairly new to food growing’. Seventy-nine per cent stated that they ‘would like more food growing around town’ (Lee-Woolf, 2009). 

A local mother stated: ‘I’d never grown a vegetable in my life and I had absolutely no idea how to do it, but when I heard about Incredible Edible from another mum … I knew it made sense. I started in my own garden by growing vegetables. It was far easier than I’d expected it to be. This year we’ve had potatoes, leeks, carrots, cabbage, strawberries, onions, garlic, peas, parsnips and sprouts, and I don’t spend more than two hours a week in the garden’ (Pauline Mullarkey, quoted in Moorhead, 2009).

Lessons Learned

  • The success of IET has been driven by local champions who have imaginatively, enthusiastically and articulately taken up the challenge of localizing food.
  • Find out what works and do that, again and again. Some activities (e.g. street gardens) can proliferate to occupy the available niches. Rituals that work can become regular fixtures. 
  • Foster contagion – keep it simple, open, replicable, nonproprietorial, and continually refresh the momentum.

Further Opportunities

  • Sites for gardens and orchards continue to be identified in Todmorden.
  • It remains to be tested if Incredible Edible is a small-town phenomenon that can readily be scaled up to larger conurbations, cities, and perhaps even mega-cities.

More Information

http://www.b4fn.org/fileadmin/templates/b4fn.org/upload/documents/Diversity_for_Food_and_Diets/
CS10_Paull.pdf
 

https://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/ 

www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk 

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