CoFarm - Improving Access to Local, Sustainably-Grown Food in the UK

About CoFarm Foundation

The CoFarm foundation is a not-for-profit organization which aims to “improve access to local, sustainably-grown food in the UK” (cofarm.co/news, 2021). The foundation’s strategy in pursuing this objective is through a strategy creating a network of agroecological community farms based in different locations across the UK. Co-farm, in doing this, aims at gaining the support of local authorities and adapts each individual farm tolocal needs and cultures, including possibly the different ethnic background of the members of each community. The first pilot project, CoFarm Cambridge, was established in May 2020.

The farm achieved its first harvest in July 2020, and since then, it produced more than ten tonnes of organically grown food, including over fifty varieties of fresh fruit and vegetables (cofarm.co/news, 2021). This produce was donated to nine emergency food hubs established across Cambridge to address food insecurity, which affected people following the Covid 19 pandemic erupted in early 2020.

The values that drive CoFarm include healthy nutrition, sustainability, and social inclusion. The founder claims that lack of proper nutrition, for example, affects the educational attainment of individuals, so change to more healthy food accessible to all is necessary for everyone to have a fair chance in life. Important objectives of Cofarm are community cohesion and biodiversity, and Co-Farm works together with ecologists and social scientists at universities. 

CoFarm foundation’s objectives are to extend this model of local farming across the UK, with a quantified objective to “achieve a ‘distributed estate’ of 250,000 acres of community farming land by 2030” (cofarm.co/news, 2021). CoFarm’s model of food provision, however, contrasts with a dominant business model which, through an oligopoly or food retailers such as Tesco Plc, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Waitrose, supply
the UK market with vegetable food available in all seasons and imported from various countries in the world. The food is threated in various ways including cold storage, waxing, packaging, etc. The current socio-technical regime of food and supply is therefore affected by considerable inertia. The sheer power of these suppliers make change to food production by organizations such as CoFarm a difficult transition. You are required to investigate possible responses based on the theory discussed in this module.

1. Explain what the business case is for supporting Cofarm’s product and service offerings from a resource efficiency and sustainability perspective
2. What are the organizations Cofarm can set up relationships with, to aid the diffusion of their products and services nationwide? In particular:
a. How could strategic niches be formed and managed?
b. What issues could arise from managing strategic niches?
3. One key factor which can limit the diffusion of Cofarms’ products and services is the routines people perform
around food, which often privilege the convenience of town store chains and superstores such as Tesco,
Morrisons and Sainsbury’s Transcript

a. Outline behavioural research strategies to investigate consumers’ food choices
b. Formulate recommendations for communications to encourage local sustainable production of organic food
4. Bearing in mind the limitations of CoFarm, outline a strategy CoFarm could design to achieve a nationwide distribution of sustainable local farms