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This week our gleaners gathered organic beetroot, generously donated by local farmers.

If we want farming, wildlife and communities to thrive, we must address the root causes of climate change while continuing to invest in nature’s recovery. This is not a choice between food production and nature. Healthy ecosystems underpin healthy food systems. The challenge is to create landscapes that can produce food, support wildlife and remain resilient in the face of increasingly extreme weather.

For more than a decade, Food in Community has been rescuing surplus fruit and vegetables from farms, orchards and market gardens and ensuring they reach communities across the South West.

We believe food security in the future will depend not only on growing more food, but on wasting less of the food we already grow.

That belief is driving the next chapter of our work.

In 2025, with support from DEFRA, Food in Community began developing a new food production facility near Totnes, Devon, scheduled to open in the second half of 2026. This exciting new development will enable us to transform surplus fruit and vegetables into nutritious, extended-life ingredients, ensuring that even more of the harvest nourishes people, supports regional food security and creates value from food that might otherwise be lost.  The facility is designed to transform seasonal abundance into improved year-round resilience, transforming farm surpluses into nutritious products that can be used long after the harvest has ended.

Why is a Food Production Facility Needed?

Climate change is bringing greater unpredictability, with periods of abundance sitting alongside periods of scarcity, and increasing challenges around crop quality, availability and distribution.  Our production facility is being designed for exactly this future: capturing harvest gluts when they occur, preserving their value and ensuring that more of the food already grown can nourish people throughout the year.

Farmers regularly face situations where perfectly edible produce has no market due to oversupply, changes in demand, cosmetic specifications or labour shortages. These gluts are a natural feature of farming, but conventional supply chains are often too inflexible to respond quickly enough. Even redistribution has its limits. When a glut occurs, there is often an abundance across an entire region, making it difficult to find enough outlets before highly perishable produce deteriorates.  Transporting fresh produce over long distances can further reduce quality, freshness and nutritional value. Yet that same produce could remain a valuable food resource if washed, prepared, frozen or otherwise preserved close to where it was grown, allowing it to be enjoyed long after the growing season has ended.

The new facility is being designed around the realities of surplus food, drawing on more than 13 years of experience working with horticultural surplus. Rather than operating like a conventional food factory with a fixed supply chain and narrow product range, it will provide adaptable production space capable of responding to whatever produce becomes available. This flexibility is at the heart of the project. It allows us to work with the harvest as it happens and make the most of opportunities when they arise.

Valuing Every Part of the Harvest

When a farmer plants a seed or plant, they invest far more than money. Every crop represents months of planning, work and expertise. It depends on healthy soils, water, sunlight, biodiversity and careful stewardship of the land. Yet every year significant quantities of perfectly edible food never make it into the food system.  By creating routes for surplus produce to be sliced, diced, frozen and preserved, we can help ensure that more of this effort is valued.

Using the whole crop means making the most of everything that has gone into producing it. It means respecting the farmer’s hard work and making farming more economically sustainable. It means valuing the seed, the soil fertility, the water, the ecosystems and the energy required to grow food. Rather than demanding more production or bringing more land into cultivation, we make better use of what has already been produced. The produce rescued and repurposed over the lifetime of Food in Community has saved enough embedded water to fill more than 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools. In an increasingly drought prone world where pressure on resources is high, these things will help.

This approach also delivers important environmental benefits. The more efficiently we use food grown on existing farmland, the less pressure there is to increase agricultural production elsewhere. In the long term, making the most of every harvest can help free up space for habitat restoration and biodiversity recovery.

What Will the Facility Produce?

The facility will focus on producing simple, nutritious ingredients from surplus organic fruit and vegetables.

Depending on the season and available crops, produce may be washed, prepared, cut, frozen or otherwise preserved for use by community organisations, caterers and other food businesses. The emphasis will be on creating practical ingredients that maximise the value and usefulness of surplus produce while retaining as much of its nutritional benefit as possible.

Strengthening Food Security

Food security is often discussed in terms of producing more food, but it is equally important to make the most of the food we already grow.

Every year there are periods of abundance when farms produce more than the market can absorb. Without the right infrastructure, much of this food can be wasted. With the right infrastructure, those same gluts become an opportunity. By processing and preserving surplus produce, we can extend the lifespan of seasonal harvests and ensure that nutritious food remains available long after the growing season has ended. Food that would otherwise be lost can be transformed into valuable ingredients that support communities throughout the year.

This is more than a waste reduction initiative. It is an investment in resilience.

At a time of increasing uncertainty around food supply chains, climate disruption and rising living costs, the ability to preserve nutritious local food for future use is becoming increasingly important. Farmers are also seeking alternative routes to market. While an individual farm may not produce sufficient volume for long enough periods to supply larger customers, a shared processing facility creates the power of aggregation, enabling many farms to contribute together and access opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach.

A Practical Climate Change Adaptation

Global food systems face significant challenges in the decades ahead.

Food systems expert Jack Bobo has highlighted that global food production may need to increase substantially by 2050 to feed a growing population, while using less land, less water and fewer agricultural inputs.  At the same time, climate change is expected to make food production more difficult. Research suggests crop yields may decline, while extreme weather events are likely to increase the frequency of crop losses, quality issues and market disruption. Increasingly, climate change is expected to create situations where food remains perfectly edible but falls outside commercial specifications, creating new opportunities and challenges for growers.

In this context, wasting food that has already been grown is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Food security in the future will depend not only on growing more food, but on wasting less of the food we already grow. The challenge facing society is not simply to grow more food. It is also to use the harvest more effectively. Preserving surplus crops is a practical and scalable way to improve food security, reduce waste and build resilience in the face of climate uncertainty.  Rather than allowing gluts to be lost during times of abundance, this facility will help communities capture their value and use them when they are needed most.

At its heart, this project is about stewardship. It is about making the most of the resources that nature and farmers have already invested in producing food. By capturing seasonal abundance and preserving its value, we can reduce pressure on land, water and ecosystems while strengthening the resilience of communities and local food systems. We believe this is the kind of practical, scalable action that will be needed if we are to meet the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.

More Than a Building

Our new food production facility is much more than a processing space.  It represents a significant step forward in Food in Community’s mission to create a fairer, more resilient and more sustainable food system.

By transforming surplus food into nutritious products, we can support farmers, strengthen local food security, reduce waste, protect natural resources and generate even greater social value for communities. In a world where supply disruptions can rapidly drive food price inflation and place healthy food out of reach for those on lower incomes, building local food resilience has never been more important. We hope this facility can demonstrate how local processing infrastructure across the UK and beyond can help regions make better use of the food they already grow while strengthening food security, supporting farmers and reducing environmental impact.

At a time when climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity are among the defining challenges of our age, making the most of every harvest is not simply common sense.

We are proud to be helping lead the way.

Because making the most of every harvest is part of building the food system of the future.

Inspired to help? Please spread the word and donate today to support our mission.

We run cooking workshops and a community garden at Daynes Farm … and we’ve recently teamed up with the amazing Hannah Walker from Gather & Nourish .

Fermentation offers a simple yet powerful way to preserve surplus fruit and vegetables, something that we work tirelessly to rescue and redistribute here at Food in Community. Each session brought a different selection of seasonal produce, giving us the opportunity to get creative. We experimented with a variety of vegetable combinations, herbs, and spices, alongside some of our favourite wild greens currently in abundance—wild garlic being a clear highlight.

Beyond the exciting flavour transformations, fermentation also delivers impressive nutritional benefits, supporting gut health and enhancing the natural goodness of the ingredients.

During the workshops, we created a vibrant range of ferments, including wild garlic kimchi, tomato and three-cornered leek salsa, pink kraut (featuring red cabbage, beetroot, apple, and ginger), pak choi and leek kraut, and an Ethiopian-inspired cucumber kimchi made with berbere in place of traditional gochugaru.

For many years, Food in Community has been doing incredible work to improve access to nutritious food across South Devon. With recent government funding, we’ve taken a major step forward by building a community food production facility designed to transform rescued organic produce, which might otherwise go to waste, into healthy, ready-to-use meals for those who need them most.

We need more support to help bring this vital space fully to life. If you’d like to be part of a positive shift in the local food system, please consider supporting and sharing our crowdfunder. Together, we can help make a lasting difference.

Donate to crowdfunder here