Local growers are being provided with a link to catering-service buyers in south-east England as part of a government strategy to increase the uptake of locally grown food in schools, hospitals and care homes.
They will soon be invited to register on a two-way website by the Defra-funded South East Food Group Partnership, said public-sector procurement manager Melissa Love, speaking at a seminar in Surrey last week.
The seminar was the latest in a series of contact meetings, which also cover Kent, Sussex, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. A group will be set up in the autumn to pitch for catering contracts due to go out for 2008.
Love estimates that these counties buy more than £150 million of food, of which only 10-15 per cent is locally sourced. But up to now local growers have found it difficult to serve this high-volume, low-price sector because they lack the necessary scale.
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