Big thanks to BBC Radio 4 ‘You and Yours’

Our big thanks to BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours for including us in their piece about people saving money by leaving the supermarket and shopping locally. If you missed it you can listen again here and scroll forward to 37.14 minutes to get to the bit with local food and BigBarn.

Unfortunately the Scottish Power story took up some of the time allocated for the local food story. (Rather ironic that another big corporate rip off stopped listeners hearing about ways to fix the rip offs in the very corporate food industry). So here is the bit we were hoping to include, befor the microphone was switched off!

Our mission is reconnect consumers with producers to encourage trade and communication, and build trust.

Since BigBarn started 12 years ago we have seen BSE, Foot & Mouth, Salmonella & now Horsemeat, all consequences of a profit focused, long supply chain, national food industry.

I am sure we will get more food scares decaying trust in the supermarkets and food industry.

To me this is very exciting as after 12 years of harping on about why we should buy local food, people are now finding out that it is cheaper, and better.

In the long term, we want to divert as much of the £120b spent with supermarkets to local producers and retailers, as possible, with massive social benefits to all.

Family Farm Shop

To do this our strategy is;

1. To build a database of local food outlets that is constantly updated, by those listed, using their passwords.

2. Display the database on maps, on BigBarn, and as many partner websites as we can find.

3. Give consumers reasons to shop with their local suppliers including cheaper than the supermarket and crop for the shop, where you can earn from what you grow.

We now have 7,000 local food outlets on BigBarn, with more signing up to have an icon on our local food map every day. 460 have set up online shops in our online MarketPlace and 90 other websites have our map on their websites to help more people find local food. Thousands of consumers visit BigBarn every day, 19,000 get our newsletter, and some have even joined the food industry through our Crop for the Shop scheme.

We want to build a local food industry where local shops have lots of local food and can tell the story about that food.

As a Social Enterprise we hope that everyone can get involved, and help build their own local food community.

If you want to help you can:

– Grow your own and sell via icons marked on our map with a Rossette
– Register for our free post code specific emailed newsletter with local news and special offers
– Tell your local producers and retailers to join us and add their details, news, online shop, offers, video +++

It’s all there, let’s make it happen and save money!