It’s been just over a year since Maitland started paving a path towards a fresh food revolution.
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And if you’re not feeling proud of what we’ve achieved in such a short space of time, you should be.
It started with the Maitland Mercury’s campaign Feeding the Future – a series of print and online articles that painted the bleak future our agriculture sector was facing.
With the amount of agriculture land shrinking across the region, and farmers walking off the land, the big picture remained – how will we feed our growing population?
Then came farmers Matthew Dennis and Tony Milburn and their 40 tonne pumpkin crop.
These hard-working men were going to cut their losses and plough the crop back into the earth because they barely break even sending them to the wholesale markets in Sydney after they pay all their expenses.
We put out the call for help and you were there. More than 2000 of you stood in line in The Levee to buy a pumpkin and within 12 hours 20 tonnes had been sold.
But that wasn’t good enough for you. Instead of giving up you looked for more ways to place the rest of the crop.
Businesses, schools and charities took a few hundred on board, and the rest travelled down the M1 to a restaurant and bakery in Sydney.
The market showed us you cared about your farmers and you wanted to buy local.
So we worked with Slow Food Hunter Valley’s incredible leader Amorelle Dempster, her volunteers, and the farmers, to urge Maitland council to give its blessing on a monthly market.
And the council delivered.
After the first two pop-up markets, which attracted crowds and saw huge amounts of produce sold, farmers realised they needed to rethink the way they grew food.
Broadscale farmers who have grown only a handful of crops for years started diversifying and growing lots of different varieties to meet consumer needs.
A handful of farmers at the monthly market quickly turned into many, and now we are all anticipating the start of the fortnightly produce markets which will hopefully begin in April.
We would not have achieved any of this alone. It was only possible by working together and we should all be incredibly proud of playing a part in this journey.