Time flies by and before you know it another year has gone…well that’s certainly how it feels for Victoria Amran who has been heading the West Cornwall Farmers’ Market Project since January 2010.

The WCFM Project is due to end in June 2011 after 18 months working to promote rural food markets and the producers who trade at them. The innovative project was the first of its kind in the UK and it’s now hoped the project will be rolled out across Cornwall in the coming months.

“Initially the idea of the project was to bring together all the farmers’ markets in West Cornwall and help them get better publicity and coverage by creating an umbrella organisation,” explained Victoria, who is now in the process of starting three new farmers’ markets in Mullion, Cury and Constantine.

“We now have a major advertising campaign on Pirate FM as well as a website which attracts hundreds of people everyday. The project has also been very successful at working with individual market traders to help them grow their businesses and make them more sustainable in the long term.”

More than 5000 people in West Cornwall use a farmers’ market each week, with numbers increasing hugely in the summer months. The WCFM Project is now working to attract new customers who would like to buy more local food but think they can’t afford to or that the markets are not accessible for them.

Victoria added: “There are many very good reasons to shop locally and I think this column has promoted most of them over the last 15 months! In times of economic hardship it is even more important to support the small businesses which make up our community. Farmers, fishermen and rural traders are suffering from rising prices – please support them by shopping locally.”

The West Cornwall Farmers’ Market Project has been funded by a grant from West Cornwall Local Action part of the Rural Development Programme for England, funded by the EU and Defra, and managed by the South West RDA.

For more information about farmers’ markets in West Cornwall please visit www.wcfm.org.uk or contact Victoria Amran on 07787 561770.