Fostering Collaboration:
Promoting Local Food and Brokering Goods & Services
The Cotswolds, and its mixed farming landscape, is a rich larder of nutritious and sustainably produced food, feeding a growing rural, peri-urban and urban population. Sadly, this local farming and food system is under threat. The loss of local abattoir facilities is a particular concern.
Can the Cluster help re-invigorate the system?
Galvanise people, increase the profile of products and producers, improve systems?
What can the Cluster do now to build more connected markets, more knowledge and skills, an increased number of entrepreneurial farms in the future?
Cluster members and stakeholders, are vital in all the recommendations made in the Red Meat Supply Chain Resilience Report. It highlights the NECFC's central role in fostering collaboration and promoting existing local food producers and networks.
During 2025/2026, with support from West Oxfordshire District Council, we are ramping up efforts to design how the Cluster can help members develop routes to market for their produce, services and other offers.
To develop the right approach we are consulting stakeholders, ready to:
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Build a Cluster online directory for food production and sales, exchanging skills, equipment and opportunities
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Run communications to promote the produce of our farmers and help them to develop routes to market, and collaborate with and feed into existing networks/initiatives
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Deliver a small number of high impact supply chain networking events in 2026 bringing producers, buyers and consumers together.
