BigBarn's Community Interest Statement

Activities (What the company is set up to do)

BigBarn is committed to reversing the anti-social trend of the UK food industry. A trend towards the growing mass production of food and control of the market by big business and retailers, giving farmers an average of only 9p in every £1 spent on food in the supermarket. And where milk is cheaper than water in some shops!

BigBarn's mission is to reverse this trend by reconnecting consumers with their local producers and encourage local trade. Giving farmers a better deal and consumers fresher, cheaper, accountable food.

Today's food industry is anti-social, resulting in:

  • Small farms going out of business
  • Small rural shops and post offices closing
  • Decreasing access to fresh food
  • Food being produced for shelf life and not flavour
  • Excess animal movement
  • Too many additives in food, hidden behind a label
  • 'Staple food' costs actually rising as middle men and retailer margins increase
  • Increasing consumption of ready meals
  • Increased reliance on oil as specialist farms move away from mixed farming

BigBarn reverses this trend by promoting local food producers as icons on post code specific maps accessed through the internet. It allows small, struggling, rural, producers to sell direct and get a better price. And consumers access to cheaper, fresh, seasonal, accountable, food. It also reduces food miles, increases food knowledge and farm diversity and boosts local rural economies and those communities.

How will the activity benefit the community?

BigBarn will continue to:

  1. Provide a definitive database of producers who want to sell direct
  2. Promoting these producers by displaying them on post code specific maps
  3. Actively seeking other like-minded websites to have the BigBarn map open within their website to promote local producers
  4. Develop and promote an on-line market place and give producer members of BigBarn e-commerse to sell local food on-line
  5. Continually looking for ways to help producers team up with local shops to offer consumer a complete range of food & drink cheaper, like for like, than the supermarket.
  6. Accessing any grants to help achieve the BigBarn community's objectives.
  7. Providing producer members with a database of case studies to help them improve their businesses and better meet the needs of local consumers.
  8. Continually improve the BigBarn website and related technology to make it user friendly and world class

Statement to producers

BigBarn will:

  1. Continue to promote the BigBarn map and website to consumers and like minded organisations
  2. Offer a listing on the BigBarn website to all producers who:
    1. Sell direct
    2. Most of what they sell is produced by them or comes from the local area
  3. Offer premium listings and discounts on products and service for those that want to pay for them
  4. Provide case studies on best practice and how to build local food supply chains.

Statement to Consumers

BigBarn will:

  1. Offer access to the BigBarn website, free, a user friendly way of finding local producers of food
  2. Offer access to recipes, blogs, forums and foody articles
  3. Offer the BigBarn emailed post code specific newsletter free