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My name is Sammy Elmore.
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And Middle Ground Growers is a veg box scheme in Bath.
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We are planning to get up
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we’re about 150 at the moment,
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looking to get up to about 200 veg boxes
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that we deliver around Bath. By bike.
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The way the farm works is that we have different
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different parts of the land
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and it goes from kind of being really intensively cropped
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to then being less intensively cropped.
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And then we have areas where we actually kind of
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at the moment have just completely let go to wildlife.
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A lot of this valley has been sprayed with pesticides
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and because we're organic farming, we don't
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we don't spray any pesticides whatsoever.
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We intentionally let
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when crops go over when they're going to seed.
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We obviously manage it,
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but we can actually allow them to flower
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and they benefit us as well.
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The more pollinators we have,
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the healthier community of insects we have,
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and that means we get less pests and diseases.
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If you get it right,
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which is a bit of a balancing act,
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you can actually increase
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the amount of food that you grow
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and the healthy, the health of the food
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by having the insects and pollinators around.
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It's bit of a myth that they are, they’re all enemies.
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With growing local
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food, you actually manage to get people like engaged
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with what can grow in their region. By the veg box,
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where they don't necessarily
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have a choice of what they're getting,
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they really start to understand the seasons.
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I think that's the biggest thing that I really enjoy,
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that we hear back from our customers.
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It's just that they start to really understand
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food and seasonality
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and what can be grown within Bath.
