I owe the word ‘locavore’ to Crumb magazine in Bristol. It means someone who eats locally produced food, who chooses the market stall over the import. I like it because it captures something I’ve always felt: that food is really about relationship.
The sweetest pea I’ve ever eaten came from my mum’s back garden. The most flavourful beef was from the Devon Ruby herd at River Cottage, cattle I walked past every day. The best bread I’ve ever tasted came from a clay oven my friends had built. Provenance isn’t abstract. It’s in the flavour.
I grew up around farming. My first job was on a pig farm in Dorset. At university in Cornwall I lived on permaculture farms, working for my rent. Buying local wasn’t a philosophy then — it was just life.
Running Poco taught me that ethics and budget aren’t incompatible. There were times when rising ingredient costs made me compromise — not always buying local or free-range to keep the business afloat. But I learned that with a seasonal approach, cheaper cuts and a whole-animal mentality, you can cook with exceptional ingredients without spending a fortune. That tension clarified my values. Now I won’t use an ingredient that doesn’t meet my principles. There’s always another route, another recipe.
Five good reasons to buy local:
- The food tastes better — picked ripe, with less distance to travel
- You reduce your carbon footprint
- Seasonal food is cheaper and more flavoursome
- You support your local community
- You build relationships with the people growing your food — and that trust is worth everything
At Poco we source as locally as possible. Our salad leaves come from The Severn Project, our onglet from a Hereford cross, our salt marsh lamb from Cullimores farm in Frampton on Severn. Eggs from Model farm near Chippenham, vegetables from John’s farm on the Dorset border.
If farmers markets feel like too much, box schemes are a brilliant solution. You can get almost everything delivered locally now — vegetables, milk, cheese, meat. And if cost is a concern, cheaper cuts are your friend: shin of beef, pork belly, chicken wings. Fill your larder with root vegetables and greens. This is the foundation of my book, Eating for Pleasure, People and Planet — that cooking well, eating ethically and spending wisely are not in conflict.
On local versus organic: for me it always comes back to quality. A locally produced sausage means nothing if the pigs were kept in pens and pumped full of hormones. The Soil Association’s certification is a reliable guide to animal welfare and responsible farming. But if you know your farmer and trust how they work, local provenance can mean just as much as any accreditation.
