Our latest news, blogs, ideas, tips and opinion pieces
UK Hack Weekend – May 4-5 London
Are you an experienced coder, tester or designer that wants to contribute your skills to a socially and ecologically transformative project? Are you new to software and want to join a project that will help you develop your skills? Do you hate a series of vague...
Learning as a Community
Announcing OFNs free group coaching programme for food hubs. The OFN community is rich with experience in creating values-driven food systems. OFN members work with local authorities to deliver on strategic health outcomes. They coordinate with local food banks to...
5 things you might not know OFN can do…
1. Print all your invoices in one click. This brand new feature is a huge time saver. Instead of clicking through each customer one by one, you can simply select all of the invoices for an order cycle or date range and generate a single PDF that includes them all....
Coming to ORFC? Explore how OFN could work for you and pre-order your sail-freighted olives, oil and nuts.
For those of you who will be at the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) on 4th January we hope that you will join the session hosted by OFN's Lynne Davis. We will be asking four of our users to talk briefly and answer questions about how they are using OFN to...
Open Invitation to all Food Assemblies!
Today Food Assembly announced that it will be ceasing UK trading in September. Since 2014 The Food Assembly have been supporting individuals to become food activists, supporting producers to sell locally, and supporting shoppers to know the people that produce...
How to decentralise our food system
Most of our food is sold through a handful a supermarket chains that operate the same business model, a centralised model that aggregates all products under one roof. Can decentralised aggregation shift power away from supermarkets? Touring the country, it is...
What is the Open Food Network?
Using software and technology to pioneer ideas in building networks, cooperatives and community driven food enterprise, the Open Food Network is growing as an international community. An international community fundamentally working to address very local problems....
George Monbiot – OFN Ambassador
George Monbiot says “For years I have been writing about the need for a fairer, more sustainable food distribution system. It appears that we now have it. The online, open source, not-for-profit Open Food Network is owned and controlled by the people...
Rob Hopkins – OFN Ambassador
Rob Hopkins has been following the progress of OFN since April 2014. In his words “there is a lot of potential for building the resilience of local food economies through internet-based, community-led food hubs – all of which is very closely aligned with the aims...
Mary Clear – OFN Ambassador
Mary Clear, Chair of Incredible Edible Todmorden says “The Open Food Network is not only a great way to get local food to local people. It is also the only open source online food distribution system. It is really important that as we are building...
Meet Field Bakery and Mill at Gothelney Farm
Meet Field Bakery and Mill and discover how and why the Open Food Network UK is part of the story behind this pioneering field to fork collaboration.
Sustainable Food Procurement Hubs in Wales
Over the past year, the Open Food Network UK has been working on an innovative pilot scheme to demonstrate the feasibility of supplying local food to the Welsh public plate. Working with partners from Social Farms and Gardens, Cultivate, Development Trust...
From Just in Case towards local food resilience
Following an inspiring presentation at Groundswell 2025, Open Food Network UK's Nick Weir reflects on Professor Tim Lang's Just in Case report and explores OFN's role in strengthening local food resilience.
Connections and inspiration abound at Groundswell 2025
Open Food Network UK looks back at an inspiring Groundswell 2025, featuring the Procurement for Good project, the Wild Venison Network and more.
A trip to Cultivate, Powys as part of the Procurement For Good project
The Procurement For Good project team visited Cultivate in Newtown and other inspiring community food hubs in Powys, celebrating local sustainable food initiatives, new grower schemes, and the future of public sector food procurement. On a sunny Wednesday in April,...
Visit to Better Food Shed with Procurement For Good
Continuing our series of hub visits as part of the Procurement For Good project, in April we travelled to London to visit the Better Food Shed
Flower Grower Collective: Collaboration. Community. Creativity.
We are very pleased that The Flower Grower Collective (FGC) has been awarded funding through the prestigious Farming Innovation Programme.
Visit to Propagate & Galloway Food Hub
At the end of January the Procurement For Good (P4G) project team travelled to Dumfries for the first of four hub visits.
The Open Food Network has been invited to be an ambassador of the EU Proximity and Social Economy Platform
The Open Food Network is now an ambassador for the EU Proximity and Social Economy Platform! Diesis is a global network of social entrepreneurs supporting the development of the social economy, social entrepreneurship and social innovation. The Network aims to...
Manda Scott joins OFN UK as an ambassador
We are very pleased to welcome Manda Scott as an ambassador. This is what she said about the OFN: "You're being the change we need to see. At a core level, we need total systemic change and shifting our food/farming system to something based in co-operation and...