Initial Research

So I've begun by carrying out a bit of simple 'desk research', to gain a better understanding of the problem at hand and find a few areas to research further. From there I'll hopefully have a few insights and specific opportunities identified from which I can begin to develop some initial concepts!

I started off my research by finding a few charities and organisations who are involved in this area. A few useful sources were The Sustainable Food Trust, Soil Association and Sustain.

The Sustainable Food Trust website offered a wealth of information and was a good starting point to help me to better understand what the issues are with food sustainability. A few articles I liked were an interview with Alice Holden, author of 'Do Grow - 10 simple vegetables'. In the interview she was asked 'Why do we need urban farms? There’s always a grocery store around the corner in cities.', to which she gave a very succinct answer about the importance of being in contact with your food in an increasingly urban world. (Interview is here: http://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/alice-holden-do-grow/) Another article talked about the perception of growing your own and sustainable food as a 'middle class' issue, something which would be interesting to look into if I chose to focus on growing your own as a way to eat better for less. (http://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/sustainability-and-class/)

The Soil Association is the UK's leading charity campaigning for healthy, humane and sustainable food, farming and land use. They have a really useful spin off site: sustainablefoodcities.org, which is a campaign 'encouraging public, private and third sector organisations and local communities to work together to improve their food system and to use food as a catalyst to tackle local challenges.' The most useful part was a list of the key issues that the campaign was aiming to address. (http://www.sustainablefoodcities.org/keyissues) 

I'm going to try and use the eight key issues listed as a template for further research, as I feel it gives a pretty comprehensive overview of all the main problems and will help me to focus in on a few of the areas that are most relevant to my project.

Sustain was another useful resource I found. They have a project currently running called 'City Harvest' that's aimed specifically at encouraging urban food growing. (www.sustainweb.org/cityharvest). 

Next steps are:

• Emailing a few of the organisations to see if anyone would be able to answer a few of my questions.
• Reading further into the key areas I've identified from the initial research.
• Carrying out some field research. Find out about community gardening projects or allotments in Glasgow, visit a few to gain a better understanding of the market and identify opportunities.
• Survey people; I've created a simple online survey and have posted in a few forums to try and see what the main reasons are that people don't grow their own food. 
• Research the existing market and what products are already aimed at the sustainable foodie. 
• Perhaps look at some urban gardening blogs.

If anyone would like to fill out my short survey, that would be great! 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZV69MD9