Kilos and kilos of courgettes, cucumbers, tomatoes and salad leaves are ripe and ready for picking on a small Welsh farm in the rural county of Powys. The haul being harvested by Tilly Gomersall is not just impressive after a difficult growing season hit by a record string of heatwaves and drought across all of Wales and most of England, but all the more remarkable given that 18 months ago the site was uncultivated pasture. The 15-hectare (36-acre) site is divided into three plots, each with a holiday chalet where the growers live, as well as shared facilities including a barn and diesel generator, to cover any power not provided by the farm’s solar panels.
Gomersall’s farm, Cân y Pridd (Welsh for Song of the Soil), totals 4.9 hectares but she is now only growing on half a hectare, including in polytunnels, where she says she is “producing very big volumes for the scale”. She and her two neighbours are already providing fresh fruit and vegetables for the local community, through a veg box subscription service and at markets. In late July, they also started supplying fresh produce to Birmingham city council, where it is distributed to holiday clubs, giving disadvantaged children a taste of homegrown veg for perhaps the first time.
The Wern farm project was launched by Our Food Trust, a charity which is working to increase levels of homegrown produce and aims to tackle Britain’s food insecurity. The UK depends on imports for about 40% of its food and has one of the lowest food self-sufficiency ratios among large western European countries, leaving it exposed to supply shocks prompted by the climate crisis, or other risks including geopolitical tensions and cyber-attacks. Just 0.2% of land in Wales is used for horticulture, according to the charity, giving huge scope for expansion.
One way to do this is to remove barriers for young people who want to get into growing, Fisher says, but who often find themselves priced out of renting or buying land and a suitable home. She and her partner Charlie James have named their plot Tir a Nant (Land and Stream). Our Food worked with the landowner, Powys county council, on the project, securing a 95-year lease for the plot and changes to the county’s planning guidance for rural enterprise dwellings, to enable growers to have a home on the land they work.
The council leader, Jake Berriman, says “there was a perception that planning was a barrier and we wanted to remove that barrier”. He says local worries about extreme weather had also encouraged the authority to get involved. The farmers have 35 customers for their veg box subscription service, along with selling to a local wholesaler and at regional markets.
While they stress the importance of growing for their community, they do not believe that doing so would currently sustain their businesses. Gomersall reels off a list of the produce the farmers have supplied to the city in the course of a few short weeks, including a “couple of bathtubs” of salad leaves, 28kg of spring onions and 18kg of French beans. The gently rolling hills above Wern farm feel a world away from the urban sprawl of Britain’s second-largest city, although it is just 70 miles away on the other side of the Shropshire hills.
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