Vitality Farm – The Store

This is simply the retail face of the co-op. However this shop was set up with the explicit aim, through profitable sales of products that you probably already purchase from the supermarkets, instead of paying shareholders, this money is used to re-invigorate local food producers with the hope of restoring not just local food sovereignty but maybe biodiversity too.

What we sell and why

Together the co-op, store (and farm) along with everyone that interacts with us is considered part of this ‘Sentient Company’ where good communication is as vital to our growth and resiliency as water is to our environment.

Vitality Farm – the Co-op

The Co-operative is both the legal structure and a methodology to connect the community (food purchasers and co-op staff and volunteers) with ‘guardians of the environment’: local food producers that understand health, both yours and that of tomorrow starts with their management (restoration) of the soil…… and everything that goes with it.

Vitality Farm – the Farm

The little farm where this all started. A small tenant farm of 95 acres of ‘challenged’ pasture, where the partners learned the need to mimic nature to get health back in the soil to make sure their children had access to food they could trust. This culminated in 2014 with the successful application to the Savory Institute to bring (w)Holistic Management to the UK. Year on year the improvements in the pasture and the resiliency to both flood and drought gives hope beyond this one small farm. It is currently home to our office and distribution facility.

It is the insights from the (w)Holistic decision making framework through the lens of the ‘covid years’ that founded the co-op and store as a not for profit……. For the farmers of tomorrow are not a nice idea, they are a necessity.

What we sell and why

We would love to say ‘everything we sell is locally produced’. However over the last 50 years almost all actual food produced for local consumption has ceased. One small farm selling something that would have once gone to local shops and the infrastructure upon which their depended has gone…… one after another. The push to keep pace with growing commodity production, using imported ‘cheap’ resources from fertilizer to soya based feed, more modern large equipment, better live weight gain, better yield. This has denuded our country of the very farmers that once cared for the soil as they did their families, animals and us.

With their loss and increased ‘external inputs’ we have lost so very much more than the topsoil flushed to the sea, no longer able to hold itself together under the attack of plough, chemical and short sighted man management.

Biodiversity is being lost at 10% a year. It is biodiversity that makes our very existence possible, yet the ethos ‘profit before tomorrow’ does not stop to take breath.

We must find a way. We must try!

We need so very many more people back on the farms, caring for the soil, land, and animals like never before.

Who is doing anything about this?

?????

Exactly.

So the answer can only be us. You and me, simply changing our food buying habits: consciously because we care!

Thus the co-op will over time sell what ever you want, so long as it aligns with our ethos of ensuing a healthy vibrant tomorrow. What that means is we will not stock EVER any highly processed unnatural food. If it was grown in a lab or is highly refined, you will NOT find it here no matter how much you ask.

To that end, we have started with organic food (certified) but as we grow new farmers and producers we intend that everything will be grown according to natures rules. From dairies that pasture raise their cows, to grains that have old fashioned genetics that we can all eat without issue, these are just two practical examples. That though has its own challenges. These whilst nutrient dense foods are able to do so much to restore the environment, they are low yielding, and we are in one of THE most expensive parts of the world to both farm and live. Who wants to work long hows for little pay and no quality of life?

We do understand that for many, organic is simply not affordable, and there are many great non organic products, some of which like the farm on which sit, are doing the job in the right way. They just don’t want the hassle of the paperwork. We would like to see all food produced this way, not to certification but where the farmers verify through theirs soil, biodiversity and food nutrient density, they are doing good. And verification is simply its own metric to be able to see the gains: not a chore and a set of rules.

Thus for now we are stocking non organic produce using local farms, dairies, bakeries, butchers, market gardeners and as many local producers as we can find! And yes will will also stock produce from around the world, but that too over time we want to be assured those farmers are also working aligned with our aims.

However just like Rome was not built in a day, we have to grow this brick by brick, person by person. And not give up.

So. How do we also bring back some of the fundamental infrastructure to take these primary products and yield them to your door with diversity?

The answer is exactly the same as the way the supermarkets and other large corporations have grown. By ensuring there is surplus after all the costs of sales. However unlike the supermarkets and corporations we have no shareholder to answer to or pay. We can put all the profit back into the infrastructure needed.

From inception are able to keep our eye on a prize more important to every sentient human on this planet. A healthy vibrant environment for the future. We understand resources are much more than money. It is our collective desire, time, intellect, skills and experience as well as the tangibles such land and equipment that we can bring to equation that can turn this fragile situation around.