Todmorden

Just Grow Bowland Clitheroe Accrington Regenerate Future

4. Todmorden

Todmorden has become known as the 'Incredible Edible' town. "We grow to food to share but much, more more! Incredible Edible helps to build a vibrant community in Todmorden – running festivals, workshops and community events, educating about food and supporting businesses and other local groups."

Click for 'Sowing the seeds' 1.16 min

Incredible Farm

In the film we meet Nick and Mike who have been working on a small hillside farm producing salad crops, fruit crops and variouos farm animals for over 10 years. They supply many local outlets with locally grown chemical-free food. They show what can be done, even with poor land in hostile conditions. We do not need to be as adventurous as they are, but it shows what can be done. The potential to grow food is enormous, in terms of biology and unlimited labour. But other considerations get in the way. Particulary producing as cheap as possible - and hence the imputs from abroad. Our production is 'expensive', if measured in simple economic terms of turnover alone.

Click for 'Growing on marginal land' 1.13 min

In my book Bittersweet Brexit, bittersweetbrexit.co.uk I calculated the best crops and animals to grow to save the most in terms of value of food imports - based the proportions of the easiest crops and animals we could be producing.

Pick of the Bunch

A lot of people - like the St George flag people on allotments - thought that coming out of the EU would mean growing more ourselves. I wrote Bittersweet Brexit where the 'sweet' bit' was just that - that we would not rely on Europe so much to produce our food. If you remember earlier on the Royal Soceity reckoned the EU produced 14% of our food. That has not proved the case, but I'm going to use some of the stats collected in the book to determine which foods crops best to grow more of. - in terms of saving on imports.

1. Grapes are the most profitable - just a fifth less could save 0.5B - we drink a lot of expensive wine from all over the world. And our climate can now do it - particularly in South as round here my grapes are only good for cooking.

2. 'Top fruit' like apples & Pears. Having worked at Fruit Research Station, it appals me how few British apples are in shops. You find 2 - or 3 varieites from Africa and Canada when there ar ehundreds of UK varieites. Our ground and climate is built for these fruit. And they are very healthy

3. Curiously we could produce and eat a lot more British cheese

4. We also import millions of chickens, but we need to be careful where we breed them - as the Wye VAlley can testify. It looks like we are gong to import more beef when we should be getting our cattle out on the pasture keeping the planet cool.

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