Farmers Markets

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The next time you are in Manchester why not check out one of our past stall holders – The Tibetan Kitchen who now have a pop-up café there? For more details and opening times download their February bulletin.

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The MLFW November newsletter is now available.

There is a wealth of information on subjects like:-

MLFW conference announced, Fighting back on food prices, Calling
all students!, Stocking Local event success, International CSA inspiration and Declaration
of food independence.

Read this interesting Case study titled ‘The Community Farm
shares its success!’ Plus new resources, toolkits and publications, and a
round-up of the latest sector news.

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Possible funding opportunities for North West food and drink producers (if you can see through the technical jargon):

Food & Drink Growth Programme

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) have approved £8.1m to support the growth of one of our regions priority sectors.

The programme will be delivered through 4 main themes and will include a variety of projects that will provide:

Specialist technical support to food and drink SMEs in the Northwest – fund assistance to SMEs to assimilate and use shoppers purchasing data, and fund specific technical advice for approx 250 SMEs and a further 750 in areas such as market data, product development, labelling and packaging.
Regional and speciality food and drink – support for the central regional co-ordination of regional speciality food and drink by Food Northwest and sub regional delivery for the food and drink sub sector. This incorporates the creation and maintenance of a regional source of market intelligence, coordinating a timetable of consumer and trade shows, local food communications campaign and work on routes to market.
Health and safety/food hygiene/business continuity planning – providing SMEs with the tools to risk assess critical aspects of their businesses above and beyond the legal requirements, and develop action plans.
Organic/ethnic – provide support so that the region’s producers can take advantage of the organic/ethnic high growth sectors. Continuation of funding for the supply of information from the Northwest Organic Centre to enable support of up to 60 businesses and individuals with specific organic technical support. To map the scope of the NW Ethnic Food sub sector, leading to the creation of up to 100 private enterprises within mainstream and ethnic food sub sectors and creating 10 new ethnic supply chains.

See more information at http://www.foodnw.co.uk/Projects/Food-and-Drink-Growth-Programme/