Find your place in the field of good food

Our goal is to connect good people with good food. We advertise sustainable food jobs and training opportunities to help jobseekers and employers find each other.

Roots to Work is a project of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.

Trainee Growers

Growing Communities
Hackney, London

Posted: 22 Jan 2026

Deadline: 9 Feb 2026

Compensation: n/a

Living Wage employer

Unpaid Traineeship Part-time Fixed term / contract

Job description

Growing Communities is a non-profit social enterprise run by a small but committed team of local staff and volunteers. We run a weekly organic fruit and veg scheme, our market gardens in Hackney and Dagenham Farm, the farmers’ market in Stoke Newington and the wholesale Better Food Shed.

We are recruiting four organic veg growing trainees who want to learn the basics of food growing and increase their understanding of the food system. The free training will involve learning all aspects of growing vegetables with a particular emphasis on salad leaves. You will learn alongside the Head Grower, learning all aspects of running our urban market gardens, and benefiting from insights from the wider business team.

We are looking for enthusiastic people who are at the beginning of their food-growing journey and are keen to learn how to grow food for a sustainable food system, enjoy working outdoors and working with others.

This free training is one day a week (Monday or Tuesday) for seven months (mid-March to mid-October).

It is open to everyone, regardless of background. We acknowledge that the environmental sector is less accessible to people from minority backgrounds and we’re committed to doing what we can to correct this. We especially want to hear from you if you feel that opportunities like this are less available to you, or you don’t see yourself represented very often in the environmental or sustainable food sectors. The traineeship curriculum acknowledges that systems such as patriarchy, class and racism affect participation in land work, and that it’s important for growers to be aware of the history and contemporary implications of this in food growing.

Application information

For full job and application details, please visit https://growingcommunities.org/jobs

Please mention Roots to Work when applying for these jobs