How to cook healthy meals for the family and support local British farmers

The weekly food shop can be hectic when you’re trying to feed a household, but shopping responsibly means you can cook more nutritious and delicious meals for the whole family while also supporting local British farmers. Supporting farming and agriculture in the UK is important for our economy and climate, and also helps us to reconnect with our food by giving us an insight into where it has come from and how it has been produced.

British farmers who follow traditional, low-input regenerative farming (small-scale, not factory farming) produce a diverse range of high quality and delicious food, all while ensuring optimum food hygiene and safety, traceability, animal welfare standards and environmental protection.

Here, we outline some ways in which you can better support local farmers and all their hard work – and source the finest quality ingredients whilst you do.

Find out what’s in season

We all have our favourite fruits and vegetables but buying the same produce year-round means relying on crops grown abroad, and the further food travels to get to us in the UK, the greater its carbon footprint. More than half of our food now comes from abroad, but if we were all to make our food shopping more seasonal, we would more easily be able to buy local and do our bit for the planet.

Buying locally does mean you’re restricted to what can be grown in season here in the UK, but planning your meals accordingly means you can reconnect with the British seasons and enjoy a diverse range of fruits, vegetables and legumes in your cooking throughout the year. Always keep an eye out for seasonal produce that can easily be found in local farm shops and try to do your meal preparation around what they have available to cook and eat more sustainably.

Buy British

The Campaign to Protect Rural England defines ‘local’ produce as that which has been grown or raised within 30 miles of where you live. This is a great rule to live by if you can, but for those things that you can’t buy locally, the next best thing is to buy British. Buy from your local butcher and greengrocer to source good quality British meat, fruit and veg, and ask them where their produce has come from to source the most local ingredients. If you’re shopping in a supermarket, look out for labels or stickers that distinguish British made produce from imported foods.

Visit farmer’s markets

One way to shop locally and support British farmers directly is by visiting one of the hundreds of farmer’s markets across the UK to buy your ingredients. Farmer’s markets come in a range of sizes and rules can vary about where the produce comes from, but generally stall holders must sell their own produce, which means they are a great place to buy local food.

As well as fresh fruit, vegetables and meat, you’ll also find preserves, bread and cakes, so there’s plenty for everyone here. Farmer’s markets are fun to explore and make you feel more connected to where your food comes from as you meet real-life farmers and interact with them.

Buy Meat Online

Meat boxes are a newer means of buying locally than farmer’s markets or farm shops, but they provide an easy way to purchase premium quality British meat. Simply choose from a selection of cuts and get them delivered fresh to your door, ready for use in all your favourite family meals.

Buying meat boxes means you are supporting small-scale, local farms who follow traditional farming practices, so you can support British farmers and ensure that the meat you eat is delicious, nutritionally superior and better for the planet. We’d recommend The Dorset Meat Company for the finest quality grass-fed meat, which is expertly produced with your health, animal welfare and the local ecology in mind.