During the course of this initially 12 month long project funded by Farming The Future we worked with Sustain, Capital Growth (London), Bristol Food Producers (Bristol), Glasgow Community Food Network (Glasgow) and ShefFood (Sheffield) to develop new opportunities for peri urban farming in each city.

We worked with project partners to understand the barriers they face, identify land opportunities and local actions, and develop national policy to enable agroecological farming at the edge of cities as part of a green economic recovery.

In Bristol, Sheffield and Glasgow we undertook research into the current scale of peri urban farming and agreoecological food production and opportunities and issues with respect to access to land for peri-urban farming. We then produced a briefing paper and held an action planning workshop with key stakeholders in each city. Following the event the briefing and action plan were published as a report including this one for Bristol and this one for Sheffield.

In London we worked with Sustain, Capital Growth and other partners to take forward actions from a similar report produced in 2020.

As part of this project, the Landworkers' Alliance also hosted a peri-urban practitioners’ forum to build supportive networks, identify issues and share knowledge within the sector.

In 2022, with further support from Farming The Future we supported the implementation of the action plans developed in each city. In 2023, we received a small amount of additional funding to support the development of toolkits for people interested in ‘fringe farming’, and to continue contributing to the collaboration between project partners.

Read more about the toolkit here.

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