About Us
MISSION
The Gloucester Project is a regional development solution aimed at creating self-sustaining regional communities. The Project draws its strength from being a community-developed economic growth model with a focus on food production that:
• responds to food security challenges driven by climate change and peak oil;
• demonstrates the conversion of underutilised land into valuable agricultural land;
• provides local jobs;
• offers support for existing local farmers;
• encourages start-ups of entrepreneurial food producers;
• helps stop the drain of young local workers to the cities;
• offers opportunities to tree-changers escaping from those cities;
• provides income-generating opportunities for rural residents of any age;
• allows a connection point between rural food producers and urban dwellers to access nutritious fresh food with low food miles.
COMMUNITY VALUES
The Tucker Patch is a demonstration market garden in Gloucester, New South Wales and is the public face of The Gloucester Project. Its response to the strategic national issue of food security is to demonstrate the extensive and long-lived benefits of converting underutilised land into valuable agricultural land. The Tucker Patch model aims to help form:
• stable local communities, reversing the spiral of economic and social decline;
• prosperous local communities, with improved liveability;
• industrious local communities, with increased employment being provided locally;
• healthier local communities, with locally grown food freshly available to all;
• better connected and better educated communities;
• communities that have less demand on government assistance;
• happier community members, both rural and urban.
PRINCIPLES
As individuals and as a group, our guiding philosophy is:
• Show honesty, integrity and motivation;
• Promote the benefits of nutritious, seasonally grown food;
• Protect waterways and aquifers to ensure supplies of clean fresh water;
• Build soil by increasing its organic content and nurturing soil organisms;
• Encourage use of open-pollinated plants, heritage varieties and seed-saving;
• Ensure biodiversity of food, farm life and wildlife;
• Avoid use of artificial pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified organisms;
• Use renewable resources and recycled materials, and minimise non-reusable waste;
• Be open to new ideas, build our knowledge and share it.
