UK: Urban gardeners – seizing the means of food production and loving itBy Gary Roberts
With the cost-of-living crisis driving up food prices and concerns rising about the negative affects of modern agriculture on the climate and environment, more people are considering growing their own food.
By Gary Roberts
The Meteor
May 7, 2022
Excerpt:
Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) was formed in 2019 following an increased demand for educational services to help grow urban fruit, vegetables and herbs and to make growing facilities available to the local community. They always use organic growing methods and aim to improve local biodiversity and soil health wherever they grow.
Mike Hodson, a director of the community interest company (CIC), explained how MUD benefits its volunteers, and society as a whole, with its work and future plans to expand outside of Manchester.
“We take our inspiration from the Wiganer Gerrard Winstanley, a cofounder of the ‘True Levellers’[or Diggers], who in the mid 1600’s started to cultivate land for the common good and those in need.”
The Diggers derived their name from their belief that the land should be available to everyone to cultivate regardless of status and wealth. As Winstanley put it, “The earth was made to be a common treasury for all.”
Sam, 30, from Salford who is a fellow MUD director, along with his sister Jo, said: “We just took over a cultivated patch in Platt Fields from a guy who was leaving the area in 2016. It was a just mixture of knee-high grass and fruit bushes at that stage.”
