At CLOSED LOOP FARM, we provide only the best quality and we want you to enjoy our produce when it's at it's freshest.
However, we don't want to achieve this at the expense of our environment...
Silk and Ted want to acknowledge that we are growing on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation, sovereignty never ceded. We pay our respects to elders, past, present, and emerging.
Food Sovereignty
Food Sovereignty is the people’s right to determine food-production and agriculture systems. People’s will is expressed collectively and democratically, food sovereignty thus advances everyone’s right to access food that is produced and distributed using methods that are both ethical and environmental-friendly. The people have the right to access fresh, healthy, nutritious food that promotes the well-being of both human and biodiversity. The food should also meets their cultural and religious needs.
In Australia, as well as in most developed economies around the world, the infrastructure of critical supply chains are owned by a small number of corporations. Small-scale farmers often have no access to these supply chains. Food sovereignty means small farmers must unite to take control of the means of production, build networks and cooperatives to create their own supply chain infrastructure.
Product Stewardship
As a primary producer, we acknowledge that we play an important role in our products' lifecycle, which involves producing, selling, using and disposing of products. We have a shared responsibility to ensure that those products or materials are managed in a way that reduces their impact, throughout their lifecycle, on the environment and on human health and safety.
About Us
Meet Silk
Silk is the Director and Head Gardener.
Lancefield Edible Garden is her brain child.
Trained in the field of microbiology research, Silk has worked 13 years in universities studying how bacteria help to maintain the balance of life on earth.
Her gardening philosophy is influenced by her love of nature. Here in Lancefield, she is creating a garden that is friendly to the surrounding wildlife by selecting a high diversity of crops, using no-dig methods, and by turning waste into healthy compost.
“The animals take what they need, and we take the rest!”.
Meet Ted
Ted is the Operations Manager, he manages the wholesale side of the business.
With an extensive network within the hospitality industry, Ted understands that modern innovative kitchens need not just a veggie supplier, but a solution provider.
With innovative growing methods, Ted is making it possible for more and more restaurants to access the farm directly, and enjoy the freshness of same-day picking-to-delivery!
Why
Because single-use plastics suck.
The world's first useful synthetic plastic was invented in the early 1900s. Mass production began in the 1950s. Less than 70 years have passed, today we became so addicted to it, more than 200 million tonnes of plastic was manufactured every year worldwide. To put this into perspective, every year we are only able to catch around 90 million tonnes of fish globally.
From recent evidence, our earth is now home to 6,300 million tonnes of plastic waste. Most of them in landfills, but lots were washed into our oceans - today, the Pacific Garbage Patch is large enough to span across latitudes. Quite an achievement in less than 70 years huh.
And it turns out, plastics do break down (!) - into tiny micro-sized plastics. Still plastic :( but way harder to clean up from our land and sea.
Ironically, our food system - although relying directly on the ecological functioning of healthy soil and water - is also a gigantic plastic waste producing system.
How
So let's face it, the way we consume plastics is a bad habit we've only just developed over the last generation.
That habit can change.
To trigger this voluntary change people has to be shown that there is another way, that there is an alternative, that there is a better choice.
Twice every week, we deliver fresh living leaf & herb to Melbourne and surrounds.
These plants are hand-picked and packed only a few hours before delivery.
Time from storage to kitchen: 0 days.
After delivery, we pick up finished pots and containers. They are brought back to the farm.
Unused parts of the plants, stems, roots, along with the organic soil are sent to our compost bay.
Once the reclaimed soil is in the right condition, it becomes the top soil of new rows to grow more veggies!
All plastic containers are cleaned and washed, and ready to serve their next round of the growing cycle!
After harvest seeds, all plant stalks are shredded.
The plant stalks are the best mulch.
Add some egg shells into our compost...
Finally, the nutrient goes back into the soil.
Supporting Local