Todmorden: The Incredible Edible Town

No, this isn’t a vision from an inspi­ra­tional sus­tain­able treatise—it’s a real place. On the maps it is known as Todmorden, a mar­ket town of approx­i­mately 16,000 peo­ple located in West Yorkshire, England, sit­u­ated between the north­ern cities of Manchester and Leeds. But to many who live there, it has become hap­pily known as Incredible Edible Todmorden—a real-life exam­ple of how far local agri­cul­ture can be taken.

Edible Todmorden was the brain­child of local res­i­dent Pam Warhurst, who sim­ply decided one day that it was time to take action.

“I’m just a sin­gle mom who works in the pub­lic sec­tor,” Pam told Organic Connections. “I also had my own café and have done a lot of envi­ron­men­tal stuff over the years. About four years ago I hap­pened to be at a con­fer­ence in London where they were remind­ing us about the state of play of the envi­ron­ment, and how it wasn’t so great for our kids. Every now and again you get one of these moments where you think, ‘Better do some­thing about this.’ So rather than wait for any­body else to kick off with anything—because there didn’t seem to be a lot of urgency around help­ing our kids to a bet­ter future—I made up Incredible Edible.

“I thought, ‘Why don’t I see if we can get the whole of the town of Todmorden—however long it takes—to change its behav­ior, to think about how we could live dif­fer­ently, get jobs dif­fer­ently, react as a com­mu­nity dif­fer­ently?’ Then I thought, ‘How the heck would we do that?’ I got the idea we should use the lan­guage of food. We all eat; we all buy it or cook it or grow it or like it or dis­like it—but we all eat. That is what it was all about. And it’s an exper­i­ment, and it’s vol­un­teers, and it seems to work.”

Pam’s Story

Before trans­form­ing her town, pub­lic and envi­ron­men­tal issues had been part of Pam’s life for some time. “I’m an econ­o­mist by train­ing,” she said. “I’ve never done that because it always struck me as absolutely ridicu­lous to believe that you could make a sci­en­tific exer­cise out of human behav­ior, which is all eco­nom­ics is, as far as I can see.

“What I did do is I got into some local pol­i­tics. Twenty years ago I was leader of my local coun­cil, so I know how the pub­lic sec­tor works. I know the pub­lic sec­tor is filled with really good peo­ple who are seri­ously con­strained on what they can do. So I don’t bad-mouth them.

“In 1992 what really struck me was the Rio Summit. I recall them say­ing, ‘You know, we’ve got some huge prob­lems ahead for our chil­dren, around cli­mate change.’ They said—and I remem­ber this very clearly—we must change the way we act. We must use fewer resources; we must do things differently.’

“I got involved in rural stuff; peo­ple asked me to help on green­ing up urban areas and con­nect­ing urban peo­ple with the coun­try­side for health rea­sons. At the present I chair the National Forest Commission of Great Britain as my day job, and I do this [Edible Todmorden] the rest of the time—which is a lot of the time.”

The Three Plates

When Pam returned from her piv­otal trip to London, her first step was to cre­ate a plan of action. “I got off the train in Todmorden and went straight round to some­one who’s a real good friend of mine. I said, ‘What would you think if we spent the rest of our lives try­ing to make this town an exam­ple of how ordi­nary folks can live their lives dif­fer­ently? It’s com­pletely mad, I expect, but maybe we’ll learn enough lessons to try and per­suade other peo­ple to do things dif­fer­ently them­selves.’ She said she was up for it.

“We decided we could divide the way any town works into the idea of three spin­ning food plates—like in the good old days of the circus.

“If we thought about community—the way we older folks live our lives and what we do in our homes, in our back gar­dens and our front gar­dens, and along the side streets and where we shop—that would be one plate, one area of action.

“Then we looked at the skills we’d need to live in a dif­fer­ent future. What’s being taught now in schools? Can we do some­thing about that? What do we know that we’ve forgotten—like how to pre­serve fruit and how to graft trees, and all the sorts of things that would be really handy if you had a bit of a prob­lem with the envi­ron­ment in the future and you wanted to do more stuff your­self? That was the sec­ond plate.

“And the third plate is a busi­ness plate. If we can cre­ate more local jobs, if we can actu­ally get peo­ple sup­port­ing local farm­ers and shop­ping in their local shops for local food, it will give peo­ple a chance to con­sider stay­ing in their home­town. They could become a veg grower or some­thing, what­ever it might be, or even a soil scientist—let’s be ambi­tious. So if we actu­ally think about com­mu­nity, learn­ing and busi­ness together, that cre­ates an activ­ity that makes a town really work.”

The First Plate

Once the plan was for­mu­lated, it was time to get the word out. “We decided to start with things you could point at, because this is merely an exper­i­ment and we don’t write papers and we don’t do strat­egy documents—we just act. Hence we thought that rather than spend a long time try­ing to explain to peo­ple what the heck we were doing, we would cre­ate pro­pa­ganda gar­dens all over the town. It says to peo­ple, ‘This is what you could grow if you wanted to. And actu­ally you could make the cen­ter of your town look jolly inter­est­ing if you grew more fruit trees and straw­ber­ries and veg­eta­bles and what­ever else it might be.’

“So we had a pub­lic meet­ing. We put an advert in the local paper that said, ‘Do you want to make this a bet­ter town? Do you want to grow more of your own food? Why don’t you come along tonight?’ And 60 peo­ple turned up! I sim­ply talked to them like I’m talk­ing to you. The whole room exploded—they loved it; they absolutely loved it.”

Action began straight away. “It started by cre­at­ing town cen­ter sites—some that we asked people’s per­mis­sion for and oth­ers where we asked nobody’s per­mis­sion. We started with grass verges* that looked hor­ri­ble and were basi­cally dog toi­lets, and we made them into herb gar­dens and they looked lovely; so, who’s going to com­plain about that?

“We went to the local health cen­ter where they had recently built a new £6 mil­lion build­ing, but they’d sur­rounded it with prickly plums, which basi­cally you can’t eat. All the doc­tors are keen on eat­ing healthy food, so we asked them if they would mind if we planted food around the health cen­ter. They said no, pro­vid­ing it didn’t cost them any money. So we did some fundrais­ing, kicked in our own money as well, and we planted it up. We got apple, pear, cherry, rasp­berry, straw­berry and herbs. Kids and fam­i­lies walk to the doctor’s now through an edi­ble land­scape that they can help them­selves to, if they want. Kids are start­ing to see how things are grow­ing; so many have only seen stuff in plas­tic in a supermarket.

Click any image to enlarge.

“We did the same at the police station—they’ve got a bit of ground there in the front, and we asked if they would mind if we did some plant­ing. We planted maize [corn] in front of the police sta­tion, which was hilar­i­ous. The police really loved it because cit­i­zens of the town started to talk to them. Food is a lev­eler. And what’s really inter­est­ing is that the police now say that in four years, van­dal­ism in the mid­dle of town has dropped and they’ve put it down to these pro­pa­ganda gar­dens, because peo­ple don’t van­dal­ize food in the same way that they might van­dal­ize pretty plants.”

The work con­tin­ued. They placed “Help your­self” planters out­side the rail­way sta­tion, and veg­eta­bles around park­ing lots. The fire depart­ment saw what hap­pened at the police sta­tion and planted their own fruit trees.

Then it came time to show it off. “We cre­ated an edi­ble green route around the town,” Pam related. “It shows the pro­pa­ganda gar­dens. It tells the sto­ries of bees and pol­li­na­tion, and it’s got a few really lovely wooden sculp­tures along the way. It also takes peo­ple past the small shops in our mar­ket; so they get to see the whole town, not only the supermarket.

“What has hap­pened is—like it or hate it—people have started to talk about food and local food and have begun to see spaces in the town differently.”

The Second Plate

Pam’s sec­ond spin­ning plate was education—which also took off with a roar. “While all this pro­pa­ganda gar­den­ing was going on, we were talk­ing, we were putting pieces in the paper, we were blog­ging and doing all this stuff that folks do. We put up a great web­site, which is run by a fab­u­lous lady who is 68 years old. This changes people’s lives: this lady never got out before and now she takes tours around the town.

“At the high school, we’re build­ing a big unit at the back on derelict land where we’ll be grow­ing fish, veg­eta­bles and fruits, with aquapon­ics and hydro­pon­ics. We’ve set that in a land­scape of maple trees, hazel trees and bees. The kids are on the social enter­prise that runs it and they’re help­ing us build it. The head teacher now says that local food is the cul­ture of that school, and what­ever the les­son being taught, it needs to ref­er­ence good food being grown and the poten­tial of food bring­ing com­mu­ni­ties together.”

The Third Plate

The third plate was one of really ramp­ing up local food sourc­ing. Pam explained: “If you spend your days walk­ing through edi­ble land­scapes, and if you begin to under­stand the power of local food to bring the com­mu­nity together, then you start to think, ‘Well, I’d like to sup­port my local mar­ket,’ or, ‘I’d like to find out what my local farm is sell­ing.’ And that is what has hap­pened. For exam­ple, we started a cam­paign called Every Egg Matters, because first, more than any­thing, it made us laugh; but we started it because we wanted to show­case local res­i­dents who did egg pro­duc­tion. We thought that the peo­ple of Todmorden would really sup­port local pro­duc­tion; and we didn’t have any big bucks to do big cam­paigns, so we were just going to do some­thing that kind of grew organically.

“We cre­ated this styl­ized map of Todmorden with six of the main roads in it. We put on that map loca­tions of peo­ple who kept chickens—but small num­bers between 12 and 20, where they were sell­ing at their gar­den gate, where they were sell­ing to neigh­bors. We began with 4 pro­duc­ers and now we’ve got 64. It has got­ten peo­ple to be more aware of the Todmorden egg, if you like, and so they’re going into shops ask­ing for the Todmorden egg.

“It’s all about lit­tle shoots of eco­nomic con­fi­dence. We now have small local busi­nesses mak­ing cheese, bread or beer that weren’t there before. So that’s kind of how we do it in Incredible Edible. We start small; I believe in the power of small actions. I think it’s really impor­tant that every sin­gle per­son has got a lit­tle piece of the jig­saw that can make the future a bet­ter place. And the power of just using food is that it’s not com­pli­cated. You don’t have to have a degree.”

The World Taking Notice

Now the world is tak­ing notice of this out­stand­ing exam­ple of local agri­cul­ture. “All the time we’ve got peo­ple from every­where on the globe giv­ing us a ring, com­ing to visit us, walk­ing around the town,” Pam said. “I was invited over to Barcelona in Spain. I met some young peo­ple at the uni­ver­sity there, and some pro­fes­sional design­ers and archi­tects who were bril­liant. They have decided to do this project, Incredible Edible, in the mid­dle of Barcelona—a city of 4.5 mil­lion peo­ple. They said, ‘We love it. We’ve fooled around with blind­folds on for too long. Let’s make our own city bet­ter and let’s get peo­ple grow­ing their own food.’

“It’s a really good story of really good peo­ple, ordi­nary peo­ple, con­vinced that we’re going to do some­thing to make a dif­fer­ence,” Pam con­cluded. “You can see the dif­fer­ence in our town—from the spaces that peo­ple are grow­ing in, from going into shops that sell seeds and find­ing they’re sold out. We’ve got the coun­cil now ask­ing, ‘How can we do this in other places?’ We’ve got the health cen­ter say­ing, ‘We want to brand your green route as a healthy walk.’

“Over all the years, the con­clu­sion I have come to is this: If you want to bring about real change, you have to engage ordi­nary folk. Don’t do things to them. Don’t insult them by not telling them why you’re doing things. Help them to under­stand through sim­ple mech­a­nisms, because they’re not stu­pid, and because they will look after their chil­dren and they will look after their town.” 

You can find out more by vis­it­ing www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk.

*verge: (British def­i­n­i­tion) a nar­row strip of turf bor­der­ing on a side­walk, path or road.