Cardiff Farmers Markets x Better Food Traders
When you shop at Cardiff Farmers Markets, you’re doing more than picking up good food for the week. You’re supporting a different kind of food system: one that puts independent businesses, local producers, fairer supply chains and the environment much closer to the heart of how food is grown and sold.
That’s why Cardiff Farmers Markets is proud to be part of Better Food Traders, a UK-wide network of independent food retailers and enterprises working to create a fairer, greener alternative to the mainstream food system.
Better Food Traders members range from farmers markets and farm shops to bakeries, veg box schemes, food co-ops and food hubs. What connects them is a shared set of standards around sustainably produced food, shorter and fairer supply chains, support for climate- and nature-friendly farming, decent work and strong local communities.
Those principles will sound familiar to anyone who regularly shops with us.
Across our markets in Riverside, Roath and Rhiwbina, more than 100 farmers and small producers sell directly to Cardiff shoppers each week. Buying this way gives customers the chance to know more about where their food has come from, while helping money flow directly to independent growers, farmers, makers and food businesses.
Building a better food system together
Being part of Better Food Traders also connects us with people tackling many of the same questions around the UK: how can we make sustainable food more accessible? How do we create viable routes to market for smaller farmers and producers? And how can local food businesses survive and thrive alongside a supermarket-dominated food system?
Earlier this year, our Market Manager Carol Adams joined members, growers, food partnerships, researchers and campaigners from across the UK for the Better Food Traders Annual Gathering, held just down the road at Penarth Pier Pavilion.
More than 60 people travelled from across the UK for the gathering, which focused particularly on Wales and on how short supply chains and new routes to market can help build a more resilient food system. Cardiff Farmers Markets was among the Welsh food organisations invited to share its experiences alongside businesses and organisations including Cultivate, The Vale Grocer, FIKA Bakery, Good Small Farms, Food Sense Wales and Sustain.
The conversations weren’t just theoretical. Participants looked at the very real pressures facing independent food businesses - from energy and employment costs to business rates and supply-chain disruption - while sharing practical ideas about how local food enterprises can work together and become more resilient.
What does this mean when you shop with us?
Better Food Traders asks members to prioritise sustainably produced food and local, climate- and nature-friendly farms; work towards fair prices and decent employment; consider people and planet alongside profit; reduce waste through more circular ways of working; and remain rooted in the communities they serve.
For Cardiff Farmers Markets, that means continuing to provide a direct route to customers for farmers and independent producers, while giving Cardiff shoppers an alternative place to buy the essentials they need each week.
From vegetables, eggs and bread to meat, poultry, cheese and preserves, buying even part of your weekly shop through a farmers market can help support a food system in which producers retain a greater share of what customers spend. Better Food Traders cites research by Sustain finding that three times more of the food pound goes to farmers when customers buy through a local Better Food Trader.
And you don’t have to completely rethink the way you shop to be part of it.
Choosing a loaf from a local baker, your vegetables from a grower, or your meat directly from a farmer is already supporting a shorter, more transparent food chain.
Find us every week at Rhiwbina on Fridays, Roath on Saturdays and Riverside on Sundays - and help us keep building a stronger local food system, one weekly shop at a time.