Our story

Sustainable Food Somerset was originally founded as the Wells Food Network in 2016, following a debate entitled Eat the Landscape at the 2015 Wells Food Festival, organised by Sustainable Wells. That debate highlighted the importance of food to our landscape, environment and the climate crisis, as well as to our local economy and health.

We are a member of the fast-growing Sustainable Food Places network. This is a network of 80 cities and regions - including Bristol and Bath & Northeast Somerset - that are taking a joined-up approach to tackling some of the social, environmental, economic and health challenges facing us today.

After a pilot event in 2018, we launched our first full-scale Somerset Food Trail in 2022 with the help of a network of volunteer 'cluster co-ordinators' and project partners (see below). In 2022, we also decided to rename ourselves Sustainable Food Somerset to better reflect both our focus on sustainably produced food and our ambition to influence food system policy across the whole of Somerset.

OUR TEAM

OUR APPROACH

SFS BLOG

Our Partners

Our partners

Huge thanks to the generosity of our partners. These include: Cultivate (a Take Art initiative), Feed Avalon, Glastonbury Growers, One Planet Bruton, Green Wedmore, Reimagining the Levels, Sustainable Wells, Somerset Community Food, Somerset Local Food, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Somerset Climate Action Network.

Funders of our 2022 Somerset Food Trail included South Somerset, Mendip and Sedgemoor District Councils (all of which will be subsumed into the new Somerset County Council in April 2023) as well as Somerton, Frome (through it's People's Budget), Langport and Glastonbury Town Councils, Wells City Council. the Green Scythe Fair and WWF-UK's Land, Food and Farming Fund.

Read more about the success of our 2022 Food Trail in our Evaluation Report..