Farmers’ markets and local food producers in West Cornwall are being given an extra publicity boost this year with a new website and radio advertising campaign to promote their work.
The promotion is being organised as part of the West Cornwall Farmers’ Market Consortium Project which has been designed to target support to farming families and small rural food businesses throughout West Cornwall. The project which is due to end in June 2011 was initially started to increase small producers’ ability to sell food directly to local people.
“When we started this project there wasn’t any website or online database set up to provide information specific to farmers’ markets or the businesses who trade at them,” explained Victoria Amran, the Development Officer for West Cornwall Farmers’ Markets who wrote and helped design the new website.
“By linking the information on the website in with our popular Facebook Page we’ve been amazed by the response with more than a hundred people a day regularly visiting the site – and that’s without a proper advertising campaign. It goes to show that people are interested and they want to be able to find out this information in an easy way.”
“The website was designed and built by K I Design – a small start up Design Company based in Helston. The beauty of this project has been the collaborative efforts of lots of small local businesses coming to together to create something which should benefit hundreds of others in the coming months and years.”
 
The new website will be promoted by a radio advertising campaign coming soon on Pirate FM, which is directly targeting a new group of consumers who currently think buying local food is not affordable for them.
Victoria added: “Cornwall has undergone a food revolution in the last few years with more and more people using farmers’ markets and wanting to support farm shops and small local producers, but there are plenty of families who still think it’s not for them because they believe it’s too expensive. This is simply not true. Seasonal vegetables, eggs, local meat and many other items are cheaper than the supermarkets. We want to get families shopping at farmers’ markets and using local food and we hope this advertising campaign will encourage more of them to try.”
The West Cornwall Farmers’ Market Project is run by the South Kerrier Alliance Community Interest Company, which has now established itself as a leader in developing local community led projects.  The group runs a very successful farmers’ market in Helston, a local transport scheme for the east Lizard area and has facilitated an allotment scheme near Helston. The SKA are now waiting to hear from funders about the proposed plans for the old Cattle Market building in Helston.