September 2024 – Greendale Farm Shop
In 2024, the Devon Food Partnership received funding from the Agri-Food for Net-Zero Network+ to engage local food and drink businesses with sustainable practices. Working closely with the Food Drink Devon Sustainability Working Group and other stakeholders, we designed an event with an accompanying digital booklet to highlight local case studies and support opportunities. The event was called People Planet Profit to reflect the importance of social, environmental, and financial sustainability to businesses.
The event, hosted at Greendale Farm Shop, sold out with 50 local food, drink, and ancillary businesses coming together to learn and share experiences. This revealed the need for further support to enable the sector to become more sustainable. To address this, we have continued to work with the Food Drink Devon Sustainability Working Group to organise and develop further People Planet Profit events and resources on more specific themes including waste & packaging and marketing.
The event was centred around four case studies from local, inspirational businesses:
- Greendale Farm Shop – a farm shop near Exeter powered by an on-farm anaerobic digestor and committed to local, sustainable food.
- Two Drifters Distillery – producers of carbon negative rum using 100% renewable energy and low carbon packaging and transport.
- Sharpham Dairy – the UK’s first dairy cheesemaker to become a certified B Corp, dedicated to supporting the community and environment.
- Owens Coffee – South Hams based coffee roastery sourcing only organic and fairtrade coffee from ethical estates and using 100% recyclable packaging.
To accompany the event, a digital booklet was produced to capture the insights from these case study businesses and opportunities for food and drink businesses to access support.