Rural2kitchen case study
The Connecting Cumbria team attended the recent North Sheep Association event at Greystoke, where we had the pleasure of meeting Wallace of the Rural2Kitchen podcast on the UK Agri-Tech Centre stand.
Wallace’s role within the UK Agri-Tech Centre is Knowledge Exchange Manager for the ADOPT Fund which provides funding to support sustainability, productivity and resilience in the agricultural sector. Wallace told us “one of the topics that is certainly coming up quite often is connectivity, either be that for utilisation of appropriate technology orsimply to strengthen communication in collaboration”.
Alongside his role with the UK Agri-Tech Centre, Wallace is an agricultural lecturer who spends his spare time promoting the sourcing of local food, backing British farming and creating social media content.
His biggest focus is on the R2Kast podcast which welcomes various guests from the agricultural industry to talk about their experiences. In addition to this, Wallace also works to bring rural education into primary schools across the country.
We talked to Wallace about the importance of online connectivity in supporting what he does, and his support for Cumbria’s Digital Infrastructure Strategy which is seeking to ensure no one and no place is left behind in terms of online connectivity.
Wallace told us “Rural2Kitchen is my vision and interpretation of ‘fieldtofork’ or ‘stabletotable’. I want to take experiences of mine from my home farm I grew up on, or my previous travels with
the agricultural industry, and combine them with knowledge gained from my two food production related degrees to give the public an insight into this wonderful industry.”
“Agriculture and aquaculture together provide almost all food consumed on the planet. I want to open up opportunities for engagement on this, educate people on where their food comes from and highlight all that the agricultural industry does to feed the nation”.
“Being online gives me the opportunity to do this; without digital connectivity the ability to share my work in the way I do would not be there.”
“I meet such a wide variety of people through my work from a wide variety of locations, some of those with good access to online connectivity, others who really struggle with this.
It was great to hear of the work of Connecting Cumbria in combatting this issue through the Cumbria Digital Infrastructure Strategy.
Being online gives people so much, from providing educational and job opportunities, to combating isolation and providing entertainment to all.”
To find out more about Wallace and his Rural2Kitchen work, visit his Facebook page. If you have a question regarding any aspect of online connectivity across Cumbria, contact the team at info@connectingcumbria.org.uk