Local Food Production - How to Set Up a Food Hub 1 - Food Lochaber

Local Food Production
A local food hub can be a great way of starting small and working with others to sell croft produce in your local area. They can provide an easy route to market, leaving you more time to concentrate directly on food production, and can be a useful opportunity for sharing experience and expertise.

Food Lochaber is a not-for-profit enterprise, part of the Lochaber Environmental Group charity. Since 2019 they have been supporting and promoting their area's local food production by running a regular online food market as a small collective of local crofters, smallholders and grow-your-own gardeners, selling fruit, veg, herbs, bread and cakes, frozen meat (beef, lamb, venison, occasionally hogget and goat) eggs, dairy, preserves and more, to local customers.

Marian Austin (Food Lochaber's founder volunteer director and crofter-producer) and Mandy Ketchin (their part-time administrator) will talk about how their online market hub works, the benefits for producers (like taking a lot of the time, worry and hassle out of selling and marketing, and being able to market even tiny quantities of occasional seasonal surplus) plus the challenges involved in setting up a food hub (for example how to meet the administrative costs, and how to operate effectively in a dispersed rural area) and all the practicalities of running a hub on the Open Food Network platform.

Book early as spaces will be limited and we anticipate a high demand for this workshop.

Ticket prices:- £5 Members/£15 Non-Members
Once your booking is complete, a link will be sent out with your confirmation email. If you do not receive an email, please check your spam or junk folder. You can contact us at hq@crofting.org if you require any assistance.

N.B. Some people have found that it is not possible to book tickets on Apple's Safari browser. Please try with a different browser or contact the office on hq@crofting.org or telephone 01599530005 if you have any difficulties.

Wondering why we ask you to pay for this workshop?

The Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) is a registered charity and relies primarily on membership subscriptions for its income. We need to keep finding other ways to cover our costs.
The SCF (originally the Crofters' Union) has been championing crofters for 40 years and we want to continue to do so for the next 40!

Membership of the SCF gives you multiple benefits including:- a voice at national level, reduced price training, access to advice from a panel of expert crofters, a free 30 minute legal consultation, news and updates that affect crofting with The Crofter magazine twice a year and monthly e-newsletters.

Join Now! https://www.crofting.org/membership/

This workshop is part of our Crofting for the Future series and is 75% subsidised through the SRDP Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Fund (KTIF), funded by Scottish Government.

With grateful thanks to the Pebble Trust for additional funding support for our Crofting for the Future project in 2026-2027.

The Pebble Trust has a vision for a more sustainable, fair, and low-carbon society, where constraints on fossil fuels lead to a more localised economy with stronger, more resilient communities.