Landshare; reducing food miles through 'useful' networking

Some of you may be aware that this Sunday, Whatleydude and I will be ‘competing’ (also known as ‘trying not to burn everything while eating all of the chocolate meant for our dessert’) in Nom Nom Nom 09.

‘Like Masterchef, but for bloggers’ this is the second annual cook-off that pits several teams against each other to win a loads of prizes to be awarded by judges, as well as some given out by readers of the participant’s blogs post-event (that means you).

Needless to say, James and I are doing this for a bit of fun and will be gunning for the latter category with the help of some stop-motion filming and high definition imagery.

We were asked to come up with a three course menu that was simple, sexy, seasonal and sustainable. Now the last two areas are obviously very close to my heart, as my desire to be ecologically responsible isn’t restricted to technology alone. The Nom team have picked up on the self-sustaining, ‘shop local’ trend also being capitalised by celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver with his At Home series and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage.

The River Cottage experience doesn’t finish after the television show ends though, as the team is now attempting to use technology to connect an expanding group of growers across the UK. The idea is to promote the Cottage’s principles of increasing food integrity, as well encouraging the consumption of local, seasonal produce. Social networking capabilities have brought people together in many interesting ways to build communities and create change, so this makes perfect sense to me.

Landshare is the result of this new venture (well, not brand new, it was launched at the beginning of the year) created to make the ‘River Cottage lifestyle’ more accessible to us all. Though community gardens are nothing particularly revolutionary, this is pushing the concept further and using a networking-based site to connect those with land with those that want to grow.

Like a lot of successful initiatives, Landshare is starting small, focusing on connecting individuals in their own neighbourhoods, using a simple but effective postcode search and map. That said, with allotment waiting lists massively over-subscribed and people right across the country keener than ever to grow their own fruit and vegetables, it’s growing quickly.

One of the main things that impresses me about this idea is that it’s not just a question of introducing people and letting them get on with it (like so many recruitment sites tend to do, shudder). The site has a flourishing forum and community of gardeners and growers alike that meet offline, as well as swap tricks of the trade online. They’ve nailed this sense of continuation that often lets down campaigns like this. I’ve seen so many great ideas land in a parcel on my door, or arrive in my inbox, but when I try to respond and reach out – I’m ignored.

Large scale farming has such a negative effect on small economies, our health and the environment, that encouraging a return to growing produce at home makes so much sense. Especially when you look at the stats that Mint Digital (the agency that built the site) states; ‘at the moment, 60% of the food we consume in Britain comes from overseas (which goes up to 80% for London). If we utilise available space, that number could fall to as low as 15%.”

Now that’s a big target, but with almost 40,000 people signed up and success stories flying out of the site, I’m keen to see where they’ll take this next. Apparently, Capital Growth are aiming to get over 2,000 new growing sites in London by 2012, so that’ll go a long way towards reducing the ‘food miles’ produced in the city. I wonder if this could act as a model for other countries to learn from (though I haven’t looked into similar campaigns abroad yet), much like Amsterdam and Barcelona did with its free-to-rent bikes.