Farmaround started life in South London in 1994. A small, independent and pioneering company, we launched the first organic box scheme. The Sunday Telegraph ran a piece on us back then headed “ Is this the Green revolution ? “ 
 
At the time organic food was very niche and deemed a ‘hippy’ thing. Yet all our food was being poisoned by a cocktail of some 600 agrochemicals. The effects on human health were of growing concern with many of these pesticides and fungicides deemed to be carcinogenic. The effects of industrial farming on nature, on our wildlife, and on our fragile and complex ecosystems, were evident. It was ravaging and destroying our countryside and all the creatures in it: grubbing up our hedgerows, trees and woodlands to create inhospitable, barren prairies to enable US-sized farm machinery and aerial spraying. What’s more, our soil was becoming dead and infertile, only capable of growing food with chemical input. And of course, the cruel factory farming of animals was escalating. Today the situation is even worse. Over a billion animals are factory farmed in the UK each year, which is about 85% of all farmed animals in the country. The UK has more than 1,000 mega-farms, some of which house as many as a million animals.
 
Back in 1994 the only places selling fresh organic produce were a few wholefood stores. But it wasn’t very fresh. They were sourcing it through a long supply chain. This increased the price and impacted the freshness, both of which ensured it lingered too long on the shelves, cementing its reputation for being ‘ropey, pricey, and shrivelled’. The supermarkets had no organic supply chain and sold barely more than potatoes. Wondering why, we set off into Kent and Sussex to investigate what organic farms were out there. We found brave, principled organic growers in despair, they were growing beautiful produce but had no market for it. 

I decided the fix for this was to buy from these growers and deliver it straight to customer doorsteps to shorten that supply chain. I went on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, drew up my business model, the box-scheme model - weekly deliveries of assorted organic, seasonal boxes to the door. We distributed leaflets around our neighbourhood of South London. The response was overwhelming and it took off from day one. I started Farmaround with my then partner from our rented flat in Forest Hill - emptying it of its furniture to use as a packhouse. We would drive to the farms and bring back produce picked early that morning. It was harvested, packed and delivered on the same day - a sort of miracle that someone in central London could eat organic spinach for dinner that had been harvested that morning. It was unheard of. Educated by our organic growers and in doing my own research I started writing a weekly letter both about the growers and also about the pesticides. In conventional farming, apples for example, are sprayed around 40 times with different chemicals. It doesn't wash off. This was pre-internet. Journalists among our early customers converted and started to do their own research into the use of pesticides and the benefits of organic farming. The rest is history, as they say. The ‘weekly delivery of a seasonal box of organic veg’ caught on, and over the subsequent years.... and decades, thousands of box schemes sprung up across the UK and beyond.

I have always been an animal lover and through Farmaround we have always supported animal welfare charities like Compassion in World Farming and actively campaign for animal rights - against factory farming and live animal exports - as well as against fox hunting and the persecution of our wildlife. In 2007 I launched award-winning Izzy Lane, an ethical fashion label, the first slaughter-free wool brand - a voice for animals in the textile industry - while also promoting the British textile industry. In 2011 I launched Hen Nation eggs from hens guaranteed to be able to live out their whole natural lives where the industry norm, even for organic is that they are killed at 72 weeks old.

Farmaround has remained a small, independent, ‘boutique’ box scheme, still delivering to many of those very first customers who picked up that leaflet off their doorsteps over 30 years ago.

Isobel
Founder