Feeding The Local Community

Then (we face) a more countrywide/world challenge – why on earth does this government (any government) think it’s a good idea to reduce the amount of land that’s in farming. If you farm biodynamically, you will already be doing ‘nature friendly’ farming, you will already have ‘wild’ areas and you will already be ‘regenerative’, all the latest buzz words. We need to be producing as much food as possible for UK food security and health and to produce it responsibly. It’s not rocket science.

Common sense is a rarity these days, but surely it is obvious to any observer that cows peacefully grazing out on grass, doing what nature designed them to do and being used as a part of responsible land management and food chain are a crucial part of a climate solution as against units (I can’t use the term farm here because they are not being farmed they are being processed) that house thousands of cows, that never go out, are fed on protein ‘cake’ and grains and produce huge quantities of slurry in a relatively small concentrated area. Witnessing the two, I wonder how each of them make you feel.

The present government’s intention to reduce land in farming by 10% may not seem a lot but the intent is to force farmers to produce less meat and I believe what will happen is that more meat will be produced in unnatural conditions. A totally backward, inhumane step.

We should be encouraging more small scale, responsible farmers and growers rather than relying on food coming from other countries. Do we never learn the lessons, think back to Covid when supermarket shelves were empty. We should all find, encourage and support local growers. Be prepared to pay what they need to be able to survive and be sustainable, it’s a hard job but there are many who would love to do it if they had access to land and a reliable market.

It’s not just the environment that will benefit but your own health too. If I was to suggest just one thing to someone concerned about doing the right thing for the environment and their health, it would be buy local and cook your own food from scratch – is that two things?

There are many small local growers out there, I connect with many through Instagram, I’m always finding more, so there is good stuff happening out there and they need our support through good and bad times. Many were hit very hard by the recent storms, particularly in the north and Scotland, many lost polytunnels which were ripped to shreds by the high winds and as you can’t get insurance for them, a great many were having to crowdfund to get them recovered and at a time just as the main growing season is taking off. Without the support of the wider community many of these enterprises wouldn’t survive and we’d be back in the hands of the supermarkets.

If you like watching programmes that help you understand the issues then I’d recommend these two – there are many more.

*Six inches of Soil – on Amazon Prime and elsewhere, brilliant film about British farmers and growers, producing food with the environment at the forefront.

*Rachel’s Farm – on iPlayer, based in Australia but the issues are the same, although I have to add I’m not a fan of the idea of income derived from carbon offsetting that is talked about at the end.

One American regenerative farmer when challenged by his conventional farming neighbours about ‘Its all very well this kind of farming but you can’t feed the world this way’ replied ‘ Well, I don’t know that I’m supposed to feed the world, I think I’m supposed to feed my local community’.

By Jenny Thornhill , Plaw Hatch Farm in Sussex – Guest blogger to the BDA blog space