Every Saturday for the past nine years in north-east London, Growing Communities has been putting on the UK's only all-organic weekly farmers' market. Today, at its new outpost in the grounds of St Paul's church on Stoke Newington High Street, it hosts more than 20 local producers and you can pick up organic meat and fish and seasonal fruit and veg as well as more exotic items: raw milk, buffalo burgers and, on a recent visit, mushrooms so alien they might have popped up from a different galaxy.

The market is only the most visible part of what Growing Communities does. The organisation, set up by Hackney residents 17 years ago, started out with a box scheme that now has around 750 subscribers. Unlike other schemes, this one is organised on a pick-up basis, to encourage communal interaction, and its customers automatically become members with the right to vote and stand for the management committee. So you're not the average retailer, I put it to Julie Brown, the organisation's director. "No we're not," she laughs. "It's great that we've been given the independent local retailer award because that's the base line of what we do, but we're also a campaigning organisation. We're trying to change the food system because we think the current one is not sustainable." It may cost a little extra to buy their produce, she says, "but we want to pay farmers a fair price so we can enable them to survive".

"We're tiny in the grand scheme of things," Brown adds, "but in this part of London, people do have an alternative to the big supermarkets in terms of where they get their fruit and veg." The next step? "Our start-up programme, helping other communities to set up similar projects. We're working with six groups around the UK at the moment and are looking for six more groups to work with in the next year."

61 Leswin Road, London, N16 7NX; 020 7502 7588; growingcommunities.org