Mapping the food link

BigBarn brings local supplier networks up to the supermarket scale “We need to make buying local more convenient by taking local food to where consumers already buy food. We also need to give farmers a fair price to encourage them to grow a wider range of produce.” To Anthony Davison, founder of BigBarn, sustainable production and consumption is a pretty straightforward idea. He’s on a mission to reconnect consumers with their local food producers, and his business has already been trading for five years, with seed funding from Defra. If you want contact details within a 10-mile radius, type your postcode into a database of over 6,000 food producers at www.bigbarn.co.uk. BigBarn aren’t using this mapping approach in isolation. Amongst others, they’re working with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s www.rivercottage.net website and the London Green map (www.london21.org), and they’re also setting up mapping websites for individual parish communities to extend their network. So far, so good - but Davison also has his eye on the big supermarkets as potential suppliers of locally sourced food. This is a different world, where what sounds sustainably sensible rarely stacks up commercially, and other agendas like timeliness, scale, logistics, guaranteed supply and appearance exclude all but the big players. Put simply, the big boys don’t really want thousands of contracts with quirky local suppliers - it’s too much trouble for too little return. With BigBarn, Davison reckons he’s found a way through the mire. “We want to use our network approach to persuade supermarkets to give space in their stores for local farmers to sell their fresh local seasonal produce.” He’s not expecting a philanthropic gesture. “As long as the supermarket makes the required return form the ‘local food’ space, there shouldn’t be a problem. We’re proposing that the retailers take 75% of the retail price, comfortably within what they expect. The challenge for us is to build the infrastructure that can reliably generate that return by filling the shelves with the right goods.” That infrastructure is the current focus of Davison’s endeavours. He doesn’t want fragmented and competing networks and databases to thwart everyone’s efforts. “We’re happy to share our mapping technology so that ultimately we can all have one map and one database - giving the network the scale and resilience to supply big private and public sector contracts.” He’s optimistic about the future. BigBarn’s approach is being taken up by a wide range of local food groups, including all those in East Anglia. And one supermarket - the famous Roy’s of Wroxham - has agreed to pilot the local food counter scheme. - Ben Tuxworth

18 June 2005

Ben Tuxworth