Meet The Kindling Trust: encouraging a new generation of sustainable growers
Where does our food come from and why is locally grown food important? The Kindling Trust are making it their mission to answer this question by making locally grown produce more accessible than ever and finding inventive ways to get people growing.
Through their market garden in Stockport, the Kindling Trust has started a wave of local-grown goodness which extends right across Manchester thanks to outlets like Veg Box People and Unicorn Grocery. The Kindling Trust use their land to grow organic seasonal food, train a new generation of sustainable growers and run volunteer sessions where people can come along to learn about growing, get stuck in and meet new people.
We caught up with Aoife, the trust’s lead grower at a volunteer day in May 2024, to find out more about what they do and how they got started!
How would you describe the Kindling Trust?
The Kindling Trust is an answer to social injustice around food, the concept of food sovereignty and people’s access to healthy food that’s grown locally. The Kindling Market Garden here is an example of small urban farming, and it’s these kinds of farms that have fed humanity since the Neolithic period. It’s the complete opposite of the current food system in supermarkets. Growing on a small and local scale gives us the opportunity to give back to the community, growers and planet.
The Kindling Trust has this market garden and they’ve just bought a farm which is over 70 acres and is community owned by a couple of hundred people. The idea is it’s sustained by these shareholders and the organisation making it easier for people like me to grow. Our main objective is to grow food for people in Manchester, and that if we’re privileged enough to have this land then we also have a duty to share it. That is why these volunteer days are so important to us.
Have you always had a background in growing?
I used to work in marketing and public relations for years before being made redundant. I’m not the first person to say it, but it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. It gave me the opportunity to follow something I am genuinely passionate about, which led me to study with The Kindling Trust, and now I’m one of the growers!
What do you think are the main benefits for you and the volunteers who get involved?
It’s good to put your hands in the soil, it’s good for you! People love to learn about this stuff and learn about what they can do at home.
We get a lot of people who come here through Veg Box People which is our sister company that sells a lot of our produce directly to the public. Often these people live in flats in central Manchester and love being on the site and engaging with nature and with food.
The benefits for us engaging with people and having these volunteer days are massive. We only have three members of staff here having these volunteer days allows us to get through jobs we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise too, or would take us a long time.
Why do you think it’s important to know where our food comes from?
I think it’s important so we can make more ethical decisions and it’s becoming harder to make those choices. The supermarkets have a monopoly and love to blame the consumer, but it isn’t the consumer’s fault. We're forced by convenience and availability to use the supermarkets, and they have power over their suppliers. They have control over what suppliers grow based on how things look on the shelves and this is leading to a reduction in varieties and monocultures.
What advice would you give to people who are interested in growing but might not know where to begin?
First of all, just be rubbish at it! You have to make loads of mistakes to get good at this, and we still do. Start small, and don’t be overwhelmed!
If you’re lucky enough to have an allotment space, talk to the people who’ve been growing there for ages and see what their tips are. Come along to days like this at our market garden, I’ll always sit and talk to people at lunch about what they are growing. For people who are more committed and interested in it, I recommend the RHS courses.
How do you associate what you’re doing with climate action?
I think for us it’s all about eating seasonally and locally overall and just making that simple change can have a massive impact on the future of the planet.
How many places in Manchester do you distribute food to?
Our biggest customers are Unicorn Grocery and Veg Box People, and we also sell to Manchester University. All of our salad and summer crops are available in the Manchester Museum, and the Whitworth Art Gallery We also work with organisations such as Open Kitchen a lot, especially during the summer when they’re catering weddings, and we’re always looking to work with more restaurants
What does climate action mean to you?
You start thinking about climate action and it makes you panic doesn’t it, it’s this thing that feels so much greater than you and it’s because it’s been designed and sold that way, as if it’s individual decisions- ‘your carbon footprints are the problem’. We can’t see it as an individualist thing, it’s a collective problem and we need to all work together to solve it. There’s so much pressure on the individual, but there’s so much more to it, and so much work we can do together more networking, meeting each other and getting involved in action together. And don’t be disheartened!
You can find out more about the Kindling Trust and their volunteer days by clicking here.
