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Protecting Shropshire

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18 December 2009

Buying from local traders and farmers will help keep our town centres, farmers and landscapes alive.

Our market towns have excellent markets. For example, Ludlow has a Christmas Eve market in Castle Square. The Indoor Market in Shrewsbury and Oswestry markets offer excellent local produce. (The Indoor Market is Shrewsbury's best kept secret; a haven hidden inside a 1960s monstrosity!) There are several other markets open during the week.

If you buy from local shops, much more of your money goes into the local economy to support traders and farmers. You’ll find food of excellent quality at prices competitive with those of the main supermarkets. Take some bags with you and there will be very little packaging waste.

In the short term, you’ll have fine food for Christmas. In the longer term, you’ll help keep our local traders and farmers going. That means that in the future we will have more local shops and our markets survive, providing an alternative to the clone shops and supermarkets that are beginning to turn Shropshire’s towns into clone towns like everywhere else. Local shops support our farmers who nurture our landscapes. Shop local and everyone in Shropshire and the counties around us wins.

We’ll be talking more about local food in the New Year, with exciting developments coming to Shrewsbury, and we’ll be continuing to battle alongside OS21 to save Oswestry town centre.

• More on local food from CPRE National
• CPRE Shropshire local food campaign