Powys Farm Supplies Veg to 1,000 Birmingham Children — SkimNews
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- Our Food Trust launched the Wern farm project near Newtown, Powys, dividing a 15-hectare site into three plots with chalets, shared barn, and solar power to give young growers affordable access to land.
- Tilly Gomersall at Cân y Pridd and her neighbor Lydia Dibben at Tir a Nant started supplying Birmingham city council in late July, delivering weekly boxes of courgettes, salad, spring onions, and French beans to the city's holiday activities and food programme.
- Lydia Dibben said local demand alone can't sustain the farms — the growers have 35 veg box subscribers and sell roughly 100kg of courgettes a week to Birmingham because cost-of-living pressures cap what the surrounding community can buy.
- Powys county council granted Our Food Trust a 95-year lease and changed rural planning guidance so growers can live on the land they farm; council leader Jake Berrirman said going "from flood to drought to fire" drove the authority's involvement.
- The UK imports about 40% of its food and has one of the lowest self-sufficiency ratios among large western European countries, while just 0.2% of Welsh land is used for horticulture.
- Birmingham food system team lead Sarah Newton said feeding 1.2 million people requires strengthening supply chains, with one van of Powys produce travelling 70 miles weekly as a deliberate small-scale pilot of direct grower-to-city links.
Why it matters: The UK imports roughly 40% of its food while Wales devotes only 0.2% of land to horticulture — yet this Powys scheme proves a working micro-link: a 95-year council lease, three small plots, and one weekly van now feed 1,000 Birmingham children with vegetables grown 70 miles away, a model Birmingham's Sarah Newton says needs national coordination to scale.
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