Right now, you might think that food and drink businesses would be cutting back on everything — and right to the bottom line. But it could be that community, sustainability and animal welfare are not mere buzzwords but values that we really want.

Some producers and chefs who supply these needs are certainly reaping a number of rewards, and not just financially. “Virtuous circles” is the buzz-phrase for the concept. You give and then you get. Everybody wins.

Many businesses have long made a big noise about “giving a bit back”. But this trend is rather more altruistic. It is about companies sharing values with consumers, rather than just another dollop of greenwash.

Take Jordans, the wholegrain cereal company. Its latest promotion, The Big Buzz, draws attention to the plight of the honeybee and gives away to customers bee-friendly plants, lavender and rosemary, and seeds for flowers that will help to feed the insects. It has funded bee exhibits at Kew Gardens, BuzzWorks, a community bee garden in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and Pensthorpe Nature Reserve in Norfolk, where children and adults can learn about bees and all the ways they help human beings, not least by pollinating our plants.

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By drawing attention to the company’s eco-credentials, the campaign is also good marketing. But there is substance to the style. Jordans’ grains are either organic or from “conservation grade” farming, which means that 10 per cent of the land is devoted to encouraging wildlife. The scheme now covers 50,000 acres, within which wildlife numbers are raised significantly: bumble bees by 13 per cent, birds by 41 per cent and butterflies by 8 per cent. “Consumers like the fact that they are supporting British farmers, wildlife and countryside,” says the company’s founder, Bill Jordan.

The honey company Rowse has an even more direct stake in the future of honeybees and is also giving away bee-friendly flower seeds. Crucially,the company has donated £100,000 to fund research into varroa, the disease that is threatening the insects, and has campaigned successfully alongside the British Beekeepers’ Association to push the Government into pledging £10 million towards further research.

Rowse’s campaign netted the company a PR industry award and helped it to make headlines. But the underlying purpose of its focus was deep-rooted. “It wasn’t a commercial opportunity, it was a genuine need,” says the Rowse chairman, Stuart Bailey. “If we’d just sat there and done nothing, it would have been a bad reflection on us. It’s not just about honey, it’s about pollination. The environment is a jigsaw and this vital piece is missing.”

Virtuous circles work most tangibly in local communities. The Potting Shed pub, near Malmesbury, in Wiltshire, has joined the trend for going back to the land. The owners, Jonathan Barry and Julian Muggridge, first dug a vegetable plot to supply the kitchens of their pub and hotel. Now they have gone a step further by making ten raised-bed allotments and giving them to people in the village, including one plot that has been offered to the primary school across the road.

At first, Barry says, he was unsure whether the idea would be taken up. But the scheme was advertised by cards on the pub tables, the local paper and by word of mouth, and in the end, it was oversubscribed. Despite living in the middle of the countryside, it seems, the villagers in Crudwell did not necessarily have the garden space to grow their own veg. And as so often, giving has a snowball effect. The woman who keeps horses in the next-door field has now offered fertilising manure to help out her new neighbours. As for the Potting Shed, it has the freshest salads and veg from its own plot and an association with good, green food that is part of the pub’s very name. It has helped to make the place a proper “local”.

“You need to make yourself indispensible, not just to be a place to have a meal once a month, but to tie yourself into the local community,” says Barry.

Such localism used to be central to the traditional world of beer and pubs, but has been dwindling in a time of international brands and national pub chains. Harveys, an award-winning brewery in Lewes, East Sussex, still epitomises old-fashioned values that now seem rather cutting-edge.

Awarded the accolade of champion bitter of Britain by the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) for two years running, the brewery could well sell its beer far and wide. But it has remained resolutely local. Most of its business is within 60 miles, cutting down on beer miles and making it possible to recycle bottles. (On a Saturday, you see toddlers being wheeled in their buggies into the Harveys brewery shop perched on crates of empties.) The ingredients are locally grown and the spent hops and malt are given away to the local agricultural college for use as fertiliser and cattle feed.

Harveys is also well known for supporting causes. The brewery recently created a special-edition beer, Quids In, for the launch of the Lewes Pound, the local currency that is part of the Transition Town movement to encourage more local, green living. “We have a symbiotic relationship with the local community,” explains the head brewer, Miles Jenner. “They are our bread and butter and we support them — it’s as simple as that.” Giving away waste saves money on disposal and lessens landfill. Again, it makes sense all round.

To give another example, Luscombe, the organic drinks company, donates 60 tonnes of pressed apple waste a year to the dairy herd of its neighbours, Riverford Organic Farm. The cows sometimes graze the Luscombe land, providing good manure that helps the trees and promotes other wildlife. “We hate waste — who doesn’t?” says Luscombe’s marketing manger, Rebecca Wellstead. “And it’s nice to put it towards something good.”

The benefits of virtuous circles are more diffuse than just the financial. Mark Lea is a farmer in Shropshire who has become increasingly part of the local community since turning organic ten years ago. He runs a small shop that keeps prices low, supplies the local primary school, St Andrews, where he is a governor, and hosts 50 to 60 schools a year for farm visits, including a six-day course over a year for eight-year-olds. This is part of the Soil Association’s Food for Life campaign, which is powering the school dinners revolution.

The benefits, Lea insists, are not from sales. “We subsidise everything we do from the community angle,” he says. “But it is without doubt the most rewarding part of our business.”

And the business has grown — Lea now employs ten local people, whereas before there had been just one employee. He gets a great sense of purpose from seeing children learn about food and farming, he says: “My opinion is that the state of diet and public health in this country is partially caused by the breakdown of relationship between producers and consumers. We have a lot of food-ignorant parents who are incapable of inspiring children in a way that would improve their diets. I hope the next generation will grow up with more connections and a greater knowledge on which to base their decisions.”

Of course, the food and drink world has not suddenly gone all caring and sharing. Times are hard, belts are tightening and budget supermarkets are booming. Yet what seems to be surviving the economic downturn is a sense that there are values to food and drink beyond money. And that is what, even in a recession, we buy into.

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