Why MUD is trying to do more training

Written By Manchester Urban Diggers

Written by Sam Payne

Over the past year, MUD has been exploring funding that is focused not just on facilitating our gardening clubs and therapeutic horticulture sessions, but also providing more in-depth training sessions and courses. Our main focus would be commercial market gardening and community food growing. We’ve been fairly successful over the past few years as we’ve managed to draw small pots of funding from Natoora (2024, our year-long New Growers programme), the Wates Foundations (2024-2027, general business development inc. on training provision), The National Lottery Awards for All (2024, training for people in the probation service) and Patagonia (2024 & 2025, development of our training provision). It seems clear that providing more vocational gardening and food-growing training aligns with some common priorities of funders in the sector, but what has it got to do with MUD’s overall mission?

MUD is working to transform our profit-driven food system to one centred around empowered communities, greater personal wellbeing and a healthier planet. We do this by creating grassroots, people-led farming projects with agroecological principles where we grow and cook food to share, eat or sell. 

When myself, Jo & Mike started Platt Fields Market Garden (see blog) we were very lucky to get the opportunity to take on an old bowling green and blissfully ignorant of what was to come. Looking back, we’ve realised that without some key moments of luck, privilege and alongside many years of hard work(!) we wouldn’t be where we are today. We’ve tried to distill from our experience the resources needed for a person to start a project like ours and created this map. Let us know if you think we’re missing something! The focus for this is more on commercial food growing rather than community growing.

A new food producer will need access to resources, training & routes to market.

Routes to market

The majority of the food we eat day-to-day is bought from major supermarkets. The combined grocery market share of the largest 10 food and drink retailers was 96.8% in March 2025 whereas supermarkets only accounted for 41% market share in 1969. The dramatic reduction in independent groceries supplying our food is indicative of how important the “route to market” for farmers / growers is. It is interesting to think about the many reasons this shift happened but if we think about the purchasing power, or the oligopoly, of these supermarkets, we can see why it may be linked to a reduction of market gardens or small-scale farms across the country. 

In order for supermarkets to be competitive (i.e. offer lower prices) as well as increase shareholder profits they must be able to cut costs across the board - this could include examples such as;

  • Lowering logistics costs - reducing suppliers (less pick ups, shorter routes)

  • Lowering procurement costs - reducing suppliers (less liaising, supplier relationships)

  • Lower material costs (i.e. the price they buy produce at) - using their power to force prices down, using cheaper alternatives (e.g. plastic bags rather than brown paper bags, imported produce from countries with lower wage bills)

  • Lower salaries - reducing the wage bill overtime by not having inflation matching wage increase

  • Scales of economy - (e.g. buying much larger quantities to supply many stores but at a lower profit margin for the supply)

And so supermarkets prefer to deal with large farms offering lower prices. The consequence of this is that to enable lower prices, many of these larger farms use industrial farming methods, which maximise yields and decreasing labour input through high usages of environmentally damaging pesticides and fertilisers.

You can see how strategies by supermarkets over time might lead to a reduction in sales for small scale food producers or market gardeners leading to closure. 

Access to Land

In a previous blog about Gerrard Winstanley & The Diggers, I tried to briefly examine land ownership in Britain over the past 1000 years (how’d I do?). And in the past century, land has been consolidated into the hands of ever fewer people/organisations whilst the number of small farms has dwindled rapidly. Between 1950-1980, 128,000 of 296,000

farm holdings – or over two fifths (43%) – of all farms were lost.  This trend continues - as data shows between 2005 and 2015 numbers of farms;

  • less than 20ha declined by 33.5%; 

  • 20 to less than 50ha farms declined by 22%; 

  • 50 to 100ha declined by 11.6% and 

  • 100 to less than 200ha declined by 7.3%. 

  • However, the number of farms above 200ha (around 500 acres) has increased by 5.7%

We can see that the current economic environment is making it unsustainable or undesirable to run a small farm and that small farms are being consolidated into larger ones or otherwise being turned over to different uses (such as creating forests). But before small farmers even start selling food they’ll need;

  • Permissions to farm land either in a rural (or urban) area i.e. to own it or lease it and appropriate planning consent 

  • To live on or nearby / within reasonable travelling distance of the land

  • To have secure & dry storage for vehicles, tools/ equipment and materials etc. on or nearby / within reasonable travelling distance of the land

  • To have cash reserves / seed funding to buy seed, mulches/additives, pay wages etc.

As a new entrant food grower, access to land in rural areas must be through leasing or buying land. The average price of arable land in England rose by 4% between 2022 and 2023, with an average price paid of £11,300/acre and this land is usually bought in large lots rather than just 1 or 2 acres at a time. Additionally buying land with buildings for living on is much more expensive - as we know, house prices are at an all time high relative to income. In the 1970s, according to Nationwide the average house price was around 3.5 times the average salary, while today, it’s closer to 9.7 times the average salary.

This all means that finding appropriate land (inc. living considerations) and then having the finances to buy or lease it in order to farm it has become increasingly difficult over the years.

MUD Gleaning on a farm

The MUD Van out in the wild, gleaning some kale in Lancashire

Training

What are the routes you can take through the education system to become a food grower? We grew up in a typical suburb in Salford with low access to green space, and went through the standard school system - primary & high (state) schools, college and on to university. The national curriculum almost ignores food despite it being essential for life and the industry total GVA being worth over £150 billion, approx 6.2% of UK’s total GDP.

The hired* farming workforce in UK has declined rapidly over the past century;

  • In the 1940s about 900,000 people (1.8% of population)

  • In the 1960s about 400,000 people (0.76%)

  • In 2010 is was 170,000 people (0.27%)

*(excludes farmers, their spouses or farm partners and directors)

Clearly, this reduction is in large part related to technological advancements enabling reduction of workforce and the consolidation of farms. It could also be to do with a shift in farming away from crops to livestock in the UK and an increase in imports;

  • In the 1940s agricultural land was 7.8m hectares for crops vs 6.9m hectares (estimated) for livestock

  • In 2024 agricultural land was 4.2m hectares for crops vs 9.3m hectares for livestock

This reduction of food growers and particularly in vegetable crops means a reduction in trained people within the population and a knowledge gap nationally. There are less people passing this knowledge onto the next generation and the national curriculum doesn’t teach young people or even inspire them to explore this as a future career.

The alternative ways in which you can learn about commercial food growing near Manchester are seriously lacking, with The Kindling Trust being the only provider (though they seem to have recently reduced their offering). Other than that the options are to go to colleges such as Myerscough College (Preston) or Reaseheath College (Nantwich) which are many miles away, expensive to access, and tend to focus more on conventional agriculture than small-scale, regenerative or community-based growing.

Courses like FarmStart often attract people who are already ‘warm’ to the idea — already engaged in sustainability or food activism — rather than bringing new entrants into the sector. There are few clear, funded routes for young people, career changers, or those from urban and marginalised communities to enter food growing as a viable livelihood.

And this is a problem. Because without training, we cannot build the skilled workforce needed to grow food locally, ecologically and fairly.

Volunteers at Platt Fields Market Garden

This is all rather drab…

So why are new trained growers important to changing our food system? (And why would we encourage this in such a hostile market?!) 


Finding an alternative to our current food system seems almost impossible as the issues we’ve outlined here only scratch the surface, and it would take a whole book to research, explain and find solutions to sort it out. It requires a holistic approach, multiple solutions delivered in parallel and simultaneously. 


We need to;

  1. train food producers, 

  2. make available at a lower cost the resources (land, equipment, housing) required to farm

  3. build alternative routes to market

  4. build cooperative networks & resources to reduce costs of selling

  5. increase demand for locally produced food


The economics of being a market gardener are difficult to make add up, but it’s important we try to ensure the long term food security of our communities. 

Training new growers isn’t just about passing on horticultural techniques — it’s about re-establishing a cultural relationship with land, food and community. It gives people the tools to participate in a fairer food economy and helps rebuild local communities and a food infrastructure that can resist the fragility of global supply chains.

At MUD, our vision for training goes beyond technical skills. We want to create accessible, inclusive, and practical programmes that support people to:

  • Learn agroecological principles and sustainable growing methods;

  • Develop business and cooperative skills to run viable enterprises;

  • Connect with local supply chains and routes to market;

  • Build personal wellbeing and confidence through meaningful, land-based work.

Ultimately, training is the bridge between our values and a real, working alternative food system. It’s how we turn ideas into livelihoods, and livelihoods into community resilience.

Manchester Urban Diggers

We make places for people to grow, cook & eat food together

https://www.wearemud.org/
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