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Hamish Evans - Cultivating the Middle Ground and regenerative farming
39 Plays21 days ago
Usually our guests on Check On are from inside the restaurant, but for today, we are going to be talking to an industry professional who sits just outside the brick walls.
Hamish Evans runs Midle Ground Growers in Bath UK. Hamish talks to us about the importance of protecting and regenerating the soil, so that we can get the most nutrient dense and beautiful produce to our plates.
We chat hot topics like 'what does it mean to be certified organic?' and 'is all organic produce equal?'
Hamish is extremley passionate about sharing his knowledge to the next generation or growers, so that the food system can flourish.
Please enjoy, Hamish Evans.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Check On Podcast. I'm your host, Kasey Fraser. If this is your first time listening, then welcome. If you're a day one listener, then welcome back. Now tonight, we have Hamish Evans on the podcast.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hamish is the owner of Middle Ground Growers in Bath, which is a regenerative farm growing fresh local veg. but going to break down what organic truly means, how he thinks eating habits are now shifting, and the real changes needed for a better food future.
00:00:29
Speaker
Now, Hamish really knows his stuff, and I think you're all going to find this one really, really interesting. So please enjoy Hamish Evans.
Life on the Riverboat and Farm Plans
00:00:48
Speaker
How are you? Are you good? Good. Yeah, very well. Yeah, it's nice misty morning here. I live on a riverboat, so I'm down on the Avon. Nice. Very nice. Yeah. How are you? Yeah, good. Good. I've just been out and seen the chickens. Ah, cool.
00:01:02
Speaker
Ah, nice. How many chickens have you got Just three. Oh, lovely. Chickens are amazing. Little dinosaurs, aren't they? Oh, they're so funny. So, so funny. We just sort of laugh at them when they try and jump to get the worms that we give them or try and jump to get out.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah, they're good good characters, aren't they? Yeah. I think we're going to get chickens again soon. ah yeah? On the farm? Yeah, planning to. Yeah, we've had 50 layers before on the old farm and they rotate through the orchards. So um it was really great.
00:01:31
Speaker
But um then there's all the avian flu stuff. So we kind of... um We just paused for a little bit, but think we're going to get back into it soon. So yeah, looking forward to that. Nice.
00:01:42
Speaker
Is that good? That must be good for the for the ground as well. I guess they kind of get rid of some bugs and stuff like that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and they just provide a lot of fertility if you you keep moving them around regularly and enough and a lot of pest control for the orchard.
00:01:55
Speaker
um Yeah, good fun. Can't let them near some of your plants though because... No, no, you've got to have an electric fence in sort blocks. So it's kind of when the crop's finished, they can go in and do the cleanup business basically.
00:02:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah, they will literally eat everything destroy part of my vegetable garden. Oh no. yeah They loved it, yeah. What time do you have to wake up early to get to the farm?
Winter Farming Techniques
00:02:19
Speaker
um Yeah, I mean this time of year it's not so bad. It's like because it's still dark till like 8 o'clock. So actually we start at 8... um So yeah, I'm kind of up at sort of 6, 6.30.
00:02:31
Speaker
But am yeah, summer is a little earlier, but there's a lot more light then. Very dark at the moment. And what's growing in the and the garden at the moment? We've still got quite a lot actually. We're still pretty, yeah, it's probably our best winter yet in terms of like keeping the supply going. So we's still got a lot of leeks, lot of brassicas, cabbage, broccoli.
00:02:51
Speaker
um lot of root crops in the store lot of squash in the store um drew some artichokes yeah we've done a bit better like we've just got a bit better storage systems this year so we actually bring it all in for like more year-round supply um it's also been incredibly wet so we had some late crops were a bit tricky to to establish but yeah we're we're good we've got enough range but it's not i'm not crazy busy this time of year how long have you been have you been farming for I've been farming for well about eight years really but probably like five years more full-time um so I was kind of doing more small-scale very tiny market garden whilst doing other things for a bit whilst I kind of got into it yeah.
00:03:35
Speaker
How did you get into it?
Hamish's Farming Journey
00:03:37
Speaker
um On the recording should I go into full story? Yes yeah yeah sorry always be recording because we might get some juicy things to start with. Cool okay cool um yeah well I'll share i can share the kind of like startup journey and how I got into farming.
00:03:52
Speaker
um So I was actually growing as a teenager. I was working on ah some like sort of local organic farms and doing lots of volunteering, community allotments. I loved working outdoors. It was kind of a good balance to um doing school exams and that sort of thing.
00:04:08
Speaker
um I moved onto a boat when I was 16. So i was kind of quite um immersed in nature from that age and yeah, I think I just sort of discovered that like love of being outdoors and that lifestyle. And was very into the self-sufficiency. i was like oh, I want to grow my own food. I want to just eat what's from the land. And I was very like kind of idealistic about that. Now, now for me, it's more about like community sufficiency and, you know we grow lots of some things and then we, you know, trade and exchange
Community and Market Gardening
00:04:37
Speaker
and things. But, but back then it was very much like getting into it from the motivation of that more kind of permaculture, smallholding, wanting to grow quality food for myself and family.
00:04:45
Speaker
um But yeah, then I wanted to kind of turn it into a livelihood and best, the best initial way to do that was through market gardening. um And I was very inspired by, I'd been traveling, I'd been to lots of cool market gardens and organic farms, quite small scale stuff around the world.
00:05:00
Speaker
And in like places like Asia, where it's very much like that smaller scale, very productive hand tool kind of led farming is really um productive, good for the soil, good for the people in the community, engages lots more people with the land.
00:05:13
Speaker
um So yeah, got really interested in that and tried to set out doing it as a livelihood, started on like a 10th of an acre, just like leased a tiny bit land, which is basically an allotment. It's very small, sold some cabbages to the local shop.
00:05:26
Speaker
And then sort of, it went through a mad doubling process. So it like doubled, you know, every year for like five or six years. so now we're on 15 and a half acres. Also there's various sort of plots that and we're looking to lease and things as well. So we're growing much bigger scale, doing 180 veg boxes. and And it, yeah, sort of went through this like crazy doubling process and then also like catalyzed during COVID. We would it we started doing a few veg boxes delivered by bike.
00:05:54
Speaker
um I just got into growing more of a range of foods and year round. We've got polytunnels, we've got chickens. We're in like a big established orchard we are renting. We're now on like co-owned land with us, the sort of founders of Middle Ground
Environmental Inspiration for Farming
00:06:09
Speaker
Growers, the business. So it's kind of shifted from that very tenuous kind of leased land um towards much more long-term planning and um yeah sort of it just it just took off really because we're doing and lots of like bike delivered organic um fresh local produce that people were really ah craving there's lots of rising awareness about health and about soil health or about environmental stuff um so we kind of
00:06:37
Speaker
yeah, got a lot of community support really and doubled really quickly. We went from 30 veg boxes on, you know, half an acre, which is very, you know, productive because of the methods we were using. Then we're doing 70 boxes on a couple of acres.
00:06:50
Speaker
um Then it just kept doubling. And then we sort branched out into more like supply working directly with chefs, which is really beautiful part of our kind of whole operation. It's kind of growing food for the people want to do seasonal menus and kind of design design the menus around like the land, which means you get the best quality produce and things like that. um And yeah, that's the that's the kind of the long and short of like the startup. I think from a personal perspective, I got into it for one, initially that like livelihood thing and wanting to work outside and loving just being very practical and being in the earth and that sort of thing.
00:07:28
Speaker
And secondly, it seemed like the best thing I could do. I think at the time I was very like, sort of, you know, in in the kind of like ecological grief, realizing what's going on. I'd also studied like, um you know, kind of environmental ah issues and social movements and economics at uni at undergrads. And I was kind of like very much in that kind of disapare face of, oh man, what's going on with them?
00:07:51
Speaker
We can't even, we gonna can't grow food for another and know few decades at this rate. We were losing the topsoil, all these things. So it seemed like doing farming in a different way was like the best way I could actually be part of that solution. So I think that's how that's been the main drive and it's still a big drive.
00:08:07
Speaker
um And a lot of that kind of you know ecological despair and stuff has actually turned into very much just like a lot of like active hope and I feel like quite like, yeah, much more enjoyed being part of the the process of the kind of like regeneration. regeneration um So yeah, that's been a nice and i shift.
00:08:26
Speaker
Once got the hands in the soil. Did you have people around you that you would see doing things similar? Like, i'm I'm just wondering, because at 16 years old, I was, you know, hanging out with friends and going and riding horses and stuff like that.
00:08:41
Speaker
What sort of drew you into that at 16? yeah, i think growing up on the canal in a boating community really helped. there were lots of, um, I guess it was much more alternative community, um,
00:08:55
Speaker
and I had the kind of like freedom and independence. I was on my own like very tiny boat that sort taken a loan to of secure that. So I kind of got out the rent trap as well. So I didn't need to like immediately follow the same kind of career path or think about those things. I could actually have a lot more freedom with what i actually wanted to do.
00:09:14
Speaker
um But yeah, did have lots of good role models. um From that young age, i wasn't like working on sort of more commercial organic farms and I was more like working on community allotments and learning from lots of experienced growers and gardeners and think people that would really, you know, garden for the whole lives and really had great knowledge
Taste and Quality of Homegrown Foods
00:09:34
Speaker
around that.
00:09:34
Speaker
um And yeah, I think being around the canal, being around lots of people that are doing like very practical stuff, outdoors work um and like loving it was really important. Also, my mum's a gardener.
00:09:47
Speaker
um So she's very, uh yeah keen on that and we kind of grew up with this I guess like more local food culture very much like cooking from home at young age doing like guess so we're sort of in an ingredients households um you know where when I was younger it was like oh I just want like find something to to eat or to snack or it's like it's all just like base ingredients and whole foods and he got got like okay we're gonna cook cook cook some shit okay like two hours later I'm gonna have something to eat so I really had to think about the uh the slower foods
00:10:18
Speaker
thing I guess which probably infuriated me when I was younger and then now I realize it's probably the the origins of wanting to live and eat healthfully and grow food for community and things like that so I think all that yeah all those factors helped but um yeah probably at that age I wasn't necessarily doing it from like full awareness of all those things like that sort of comes later it's just like a sort of sense that like oh I love doing this I love like doing this growing work, um got inspired by some cool projects and farms, had some great mentors and and elders and other farmers to kind of role
Trends in Home Gardening
00:10:54
Speaker
model that. um
00:10:56
Speaker
So yeah, lots of different influences and inspirations, I think. It's really funny, you just sparked a memory for me that I completely forgot about. When we were when we were very young, we were coming back from primary school, me and my brother, we used to have ah at my nan and grandad's house, they'd have a vegetable garden, just a very like modest vegetable garden.
00:11:13
Speaker
But they would be um like sugar snaps and corn and cherry tomatoes. And I remember coming home from school and just going straight out there and picking a piece of corn off and just eating it like raw from the cold and just things like that. Yeah. Yeah. And that tasting is such a crucial thing, isn't think I remember similar when growing up and once you've grown up with like eating raspberries from the garden, and like the freshest tomatoes and the taste of a carrot that's totally different to what you get, you know, in in the mainstream food supply, then that you can't like untaste that. You can't like go back. Maybe it's like the same with like, you know, chefs that are used to using ah these really amazing quality ingredients. Like once you yeah you go back to the other stuff, it's like, ah, this is just not the same experience. And
00:11:55
Speaker
any kind of new, you know, like through your body and for your taste that like, this is a different thing. Like the food has like an aliveness and it's fresher. It's way more nutrient dense. It's like a different sort of category. I think that's, it's quite a good driver of change really. Once people taste, taste that difference, then that's a big factor for how people then shift, shift habits and things like that.
00:12:17
Speaker
I don't know if it's post COVID or just my algorithm on Instagram has changed, but I see so many young people nowadays, I say young people, people my age, 30, really getting into growing their own vegetables and sort of really making it part of their like daily hobbies and daily life. Have you noticed
Critique of Large-Scale Farming
00:12:37
Speaker
more of a trend about that as well?
00:12:39
Speaker
um Yes. Yes, I know. Yes. It's good to hear that observation. So I think, um, sort of mainstream narrative or what was maybe made out to us is that like you know this generation and stuff is just moving completely away from all that they're just interested in you know tech and AI and future stuff and know but I think actually the the truth is that's not for a lot of a lot of people are actually very like disillusioned with that whole trajectory which just kind of leading to like ecological collapse and like kind of you know no meaningful jobs and
00:13:11
Speaker
all those sort of things. I think actually, yeah, I think, I actually think you're right from my observation, but again, I'm in my own, you know, bubbles and worlds and maybe algorithms and things like that. But, um but i mean, we definitely noticed it because we have lots of, um we train new growers now. So we train a few growers each year to kind go on and kind of bring these like ecological growing methods, start their own little farms. We kind of believe in that kind of multiplication rather than us just getting bigger and bigger. So we have huge interest for that. Like so many young people wanting to not just,
00:13:41
Speaker
um get into it um you know on a part-time basis to people really wanting to do it as a livelihood which i think is a big a big shift I think at the moment there's there is still like a big gap in that i think there's still like a lot of people that really interested it from like the lifestyle perspective and i think that's like really good because that's a really good like way into it as well and also my idea would be just like you know so many more people are growing millions of people are growing like You don't need one farmer to grow for like thousands of people. That's a huge, huge burden. You need lots of smaller growers for each community, each village and things like that. But I think there's, at the moment, there's still this big gap. There's the sort of skills gap and there's the gap of the people that want to kind of upscale it so just like a, not huge scale, but just like an appropriate level that means they can get a livelihood and they can actually take that passion into something else. Because often otherwise you have like the hobby growers that might still have to like subsidize that income through
00:14:33
Speaker
I don't know, running, doing some banking or accounting at the time or things like that. And maybe that's, you know, nice to have that like balance. But I think, um yeah, for to really make like this sort food system change, I feel like having that like the step into the livelihoods, maybe it's like the same of you know, sheffling and things like sort of shifting from that hobby to like making it um a kind of viable livelihood and doing it well um it's really nice like bring more people into that but in the uk we don't really have like the often the good like sort training setups there's not funding flat horticulture traineeships or for proper learning pathways you kind of just got to like break your way into it somehow and overcome all these weird like barriers to startup and economic things um so yeah have i have noticed that that shift i think more people are
00:15:17
Speaker
getting into it's almost like the more disconnected we come from the soil and the more disconnected the more the food just becomes this kind of alien thing that we don't know where it's come from the more people are questioning that and they're like oh where does that like they just go back to the roots of it and then they're like oh it's actually really difficult to like trace that food or to like actually work out what's going on so I'm just gonna grow it myself I'm just gonna or you know get to know the farmer down the road and that's so think I think that's a really exciting part of the movement um but it's kind of two trends happening at the same time so it's kind of we've got a and i keep keep feeding that one I guess
00:15:48
Speaker
I think that's a really interesting thought, um how you said about training other people to sort of each community has their own vegetable grower, rather than upscaling and getting bigger and bigger and bigger and trying to sort of supply for a really large area. Because I guess that's probably where the problem started, is that places just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And of course, the bigger that you get, the more problems you run into, the more cost effective you have to become. And then that's where maybe potentially people started cutting corners and that's where you know part of the problem started yeah I think so i think um I mean I think farmers have been forced into getting into that in terms of like through the economic system through the the subsidies based on land size through kind of like having to produce like a huge commodity crop and tons and like trailer loads rather than just like
00:16:40
Speaker
producing food for the community. And it's a strange thing because we're told that way it's like more efficient. But then if you look at the actual efficiency of that big sort of gigantic, it's not even big scale, it's like gigantic scale farming, like mass farming.
00:16:53
Speaker
It's obviously worse in some countries than others, like in sort America scales, but also we have big factory farming and, you know, large scale stuff here. um But, you the actual inefficiency of that system is crazy huge because the farmer can't possibly get to know intimately like all those areas of land or all those animals once you have past 100 animals you're not going to know and care for them enough or you're not going to same with plants every plant that growing is a relationship and once you've got like a million it's a bit tricky and you just on a tractor separate from the soil you don't you're just looking at a gps screen and it's it's a very different way but i think farmers have been forced into that and then it's become a very inefficient system that's then reliant on um you know huge agricultural subsidies this kind of like it's
00:17:34
Speaker
um It's become reliant on huge inputs, it's reliant on chemical companies, and it's hugely inefficient because you've got these things like in storage and shipping containers going from one side of the country to the other and then sometimes getting moved back again twice to another distributor and then like loads of energy in storage, loads of, you know recently note like even like apples, they're like the moisture is like taken out of them.
00:17:55
Speaker
and and then for like storage and then they're stored in nitrogen and then they're like pumped back with moisture. So they've taken out all the nutrients and then they've just put in distilled water or something. So that just to like transport them globally and keep them fresh like a year or more.
00:18:09
Speaker
So that's like, yeah, so that it was on um some BBC documentaries quite interesting about um food, um where it comes from. But I think that's like example of like that will happen in all the different things, whether it's you know, tomatoes been sprayed with stuff to then keep them in storage for longer.
00:18:25
Speaker
And it's a huge energy system. It's hugely complex. It's like so many people involved and then farmers get less than 1% of the revenue from that. Often that was a study in the UK, like, you know dairy farmers in the UK even are getting less than 1% of the actual price of that farm product. So it creates this artificial economy that's very inefficient.
00:18:45
Speaker
And yet the simplicity of like growing some food at an appropriate scale um and then just like delivering it buy bike down the road or delivering in vans around like a region for a regional producers cooperative or something. It's like suddenly like a very efficient system that over time, i think the economics will shift and that will actually show be way more effective, but we have to like, at the moment we're having to build those systems. it's quite a lot of, a lot work and it's not propped up with the same kind of support and subsidies and all those things that are very much geared towards the sort of big system. um
00:19:20
Speaker
Yeah. But I'm not necessarily against like, I'm not against big, big scale in some senses. I think we've got to like upscale as the more, you know, kind of like regenerative organic growing that's kind of actually does have to upscale to actually get those resilient regional supply chains, but it can upscale in a way that is like multiplying, bringing more people into it. um Yeah, upscale in a way that's like diversifying what's going on on the farm, like kind of going back to like traditional mixed farming where you have rotations of animals with the veg, with the cover crops.
00:19:49
Speaker
So you can actually have a bigger scale system can be like, not necessarily a bad thing, it's just more like how it's done. So it's not like this kind of small scale versus big scale. i think it's kind of more about we need different scales of farming sometimes, especially for us, like in a peri-urban context, we're near the town, we kind of make sense to be at a kind of small to medium scale and provide where, you know, land is very sparse and provide lots of food direct to customer, um but different in different contexts.
Seasonal Eating Benefits
00:20:18
Speaker
I wonder if it will be, you know, like if that's how sort of the food system is moving towards, which I really hope it is. I wonder if it's going to be a little bit of a sort of adjustment period for your average consumer, you know, like if they want to go and get tomatoes in December or January. But, you know, they're sort of used to being able to go in and get that from the supermarket because they've obviously been stored.
00:20:41
Speaker
But I wonder if it will be a little bit of an adjustment um to sort of start eating with the seasons a little bit more. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, from my experience with that, of eating from the season, when I was in my sort of more self-sufficiency thing, I was like challenged myself to, I'll be like, I'm just gonna eat from the land and the food that I've grown for this like ah six months. um It's actually an incredibly um difficult in many ways because I was in the sort of self-sufficiency mindset, but actually from a community sufficiency, community resilience perspective, and it's a lot easier to actually do that and to do it year round.
00:21:16
Speaker
um you know, can have more, some growers growing the more like storage crops for winter, some growers doing other things, got sort you know, the regenerative sort of other like farm foods beyond the veg as well. So that's, yeah, that sort of shift makes it little easier to kind of eat really well and quite diversified diet year round. It doesn't have to be this thing of like, people think environmental actions become this thing that like,
00:21:41
Speaker
has to limit or make a life small, it's got to be a compromise or it's got a, you know, this like low impact thing. And actually I've sort come more to believe on this, like the sort of more like regenerative thing, actually, the more we can almost like widen our kind of ecological handprint rather than like reducing our ecological footprint all the time. we can actually, the more we're eating like those regenerative and that range of foods through the year, it can be a really abundant, healthy, amazing, diversified diet
Regenerative Agriculture Potential
00:22:05
Speaker
through the whole year. and I've seen that's very much possible.
00:22:08
Speaker
um But our impact is, huge in a good way because the food we're eating is like carbon sequestering it's good for the soil it's good for the um good for the people it's much better for our health so have to eat we don't have to eat as like much or as much like processed stuff or all these things because we're not constantly craving these like nutrients that we're lacking so we don't need we have more energy from less um and but there is a thing to be said of like the also the joys of that more simplistic way like ah rather than you know i didn't really go and
00:22:39
Speaker
food shops and things much but if we go in there it's just like so kind of overwhelming in a way just like the constant choice and millions of things all the time and sometimes it's actually nice to have like a just be kind of like oh it's just so simple I don't have to like think about cooking or planning or meal but all these things because I'm just like this is in season we've got this we've got a nice range of stuff I'll just like cook with this stuff and make it into something that don't like follow any you know necessarily much like recipe or just like follow what's there and that's like a very simplifying process And it's also much more enjoyable, I think, and much more varied because then I'm like, oh, yeah, I have like gone without you know cucumbers for a few months. And that's kind of OK, because in the summer, was just like millions growing all around. And it's just like eating like 10 a day, just munching them off the plants. And I'm kind of like, by September, October, I'm like, I'm done with the cucumbers. out I'm quite glad it's the winter's coming. in That's fine. I've really enjoyed that season, but I'm not i'm good i'm happy to go into like winter veg stew season. and Actually, my body needs...
00:23:35
Speaker
the types of veg that are growing in that season. So that actually there's been good studies into this of like the actual stuff we need is just the stuff that's in season when we're really lower on like vitamin C and different things through the winter. We actually need those kind of broccolis, brassicas, greens, leeks, all the stuff that's growing at that time of year. So so I found like much more like enjoyment from that kind of season of eating. in And then you're like really, and then when the next cucumber comes in like June, you actually have been a few months, you're like really like craving that fresh stuff and it's summer. So your body's craving that like,
00:24:05
Speaker
watery hydrating um with different sorts of vitamins that you need for the summer and then you like that first cucumber just tastes like amazing it's like an experience you'd never have of just eating this thing that's just off the shelf all times of year always available same you know the first tomato comes like wow this is like the best experience my life which sounds a bit a bit extreme actually that's kind of kind of what it feels like and you know when the courgettes come around again or so it's i think it but it's difficult to sort of bridge that because we've become so used to and so conditioned to that, like everything always um available all the time. So we're very much like everything from our chefing to our setups of expectations and how we shop and how we cook and all these things are very much set up for a different kind of mindset. um
00:24:53
Speaker
But I think, yeah, that's the power of like community support agriculture and having, you know, we have that sort of like scheme with our veg boxes where we, People do get you know seasonal veg. They've got also elements of choice. They can add on extra stuff. you and They can add on different types of veg. They don't have to just get like, we're not purists about it. You don't just have to eat you know just turnips and things through the winter. Actually, there there is a good element of choice. There is a good range and people can of add on extra stuff or take off stuff. So it kind of meets people where they're at a bit more, which has helped us to upscale and actually get more people into it rather than just the sort of purists, CSA, community support agriculture.
00:25:27
Speaker
thing that will only reach a certain amount people because you've got like bring people along on that journey and like kind of also educate and like them about this and then they into and they're like yeah like it does that first cucumber is like a really nice thing and then you can bring them along towards the more maybe more like long-term sort of more radical stuff that's you know maybe pure more pure seasonal eating and perennial veg and different types of veg and um foraged foods and things like that but think it's a sort of journey sort take people on really which we've got to do do as a community I think I feel like you should write a book.
00:25:59
Speaker
Oh, thanks. And I mean, specifically for me, telling me yeah how to make sure that my garden grows. I will one one day when I'm less busy with the farming, sit down and write things.
Mission of Middle Ground Growers
00:26:13
Speaker
Can you, for those of you who don't know who Middle Ground Growers is, can you tell us sort of just a short summary of Middle Ground Growers, what the ethos is, what it is that you're doing there, um some of the key points about it?
00:26:27
Speaker
yeah sure so we're a um yeah we're based at 15 and a half acre farm in Somerset on the edge of Bath and ah yeah we kind of set up with this mission grow food for community and so at the start that was very simple it was on small area of leased land as I was saying and were doing you know we're trying to grow differently grow kind of agroecologically sort of um yeah very different principles to growing we're very like permacultural in the start so and still are it's kind of that sort of ethics of people care earth care fair shares so it's all about um yeah care for that land which is going to grow the produce for long term build the soil health over time um and kind of bring the community along on that mission um and sort of you know educate and connect people to the land at the same time our kind of four main things are like
00:27:18
Speaker
ah cultivate, regenerate, educate and pollinate. So the cultivator is growing that really healthy, nutritious, organic, regenerative food. ah The regenerate part is like regenerating the land.
00:27:32
Speaker
So we've had, you know, soil tests, biodiversity tests on our land. We're increasing soil carbon. We sequester more than we emit from the whole business. and We're increasing biodiversity. We're storing water cycles. We're cycling spring water up to the farm to water the veg and things like that.
00:27:48
Speaker
um And then thirdly, educate. So we do our traineeships, we do our workshops, we have like monthly sort of regenerative themes, workshops and all things from growing to perennial crops to economics of starting a farm, all these different things.
00:28:04
Speaker
So the education piece is really key for us, having these like new growers come in, have an opportunity to work on a sort of different kind of farm and then support them to start their own thing. um And that's the pollinate part. So that's like the final part of it. So we kind of like try and multiply that movement.
00:28:19
Speaker
We want to sort of build, you know, in a long time in the long term, these kind of like regional supply webs around Bath and Bristol um to kind of have like a bit of a producer's cooperative.
00:28:30
Speaker
um So, for example, we'll you have lots of different sub-enterprises at the moment. We have like a a beekeeper. We can sell the honey through the veg boxes. We're working with like local producers.
00:28:41
Speaker
uh, bakers and people producing eggs and different things. So we can add that into our veg box range. So the longterm thing is like beyond the veg is like, how do we stack these enterprises both on our land, but also within a region, um, to kind of like supply those things. And some of that's been, you know, driven by really amazing relationships with like chefs and wholesalers and our veg box community. Cause, um, you know, realizing that, yeah,
00:29:07
Speaker
there's very little, that those supply chains or supply webs are kind of very much lacking. So we want to kind of like fill fill those gaps with something that's more resilient rather than the kind of fa the current system where it's very like linear sort of supply chain and suddenly there's, you know, a storm in Spain and the polytunnel lands are gone and then those tomatoes are off the supermarket shelves for months and things, which is, you know, we've seen signs of, but it's kind of going to come more and more with climate change and things. So it's,
00:29:35
Speaker
I guess we're trying to bridge that bigger context, which seems quite big like something that's very like rooted in the land here and sam connected to the communities. so um yeah, that's kind of middle ground growers. We're a team of about seven.
00:29:52
Speaker
um So we yeah, we sort built a lot of livelihoods on a small acreage of land. So we're just on 15 and a half acres, but we've, we're employing a lot of people because we've got a, you know, diversified set of enterprises and,
00:30:05
Speaker
lots of different outlets, have farmers market, we have 12 shops and restaurants and then we have 180 VegBox subscribers and various other things supplying for events and festivals and all sorts things. So it's a very kind of complex, diverse business but also that makes it very resilient like when COVID happens and shopme restaurants close or something we've still got a lot of direct supply and um etc, etc. So we're trying to build that resilient, diversified business with different kind of skill
Balancing Technology and Ecology
00:30:34
Speaker
sets. So we've got a yeah, great team of growers.
00:30:37
Speaker
um Also people that are better on the kind of business and administrative side, people that get on the sort of more sales, people that want take on certain aspects of the land, like do more of the kind of field scale growing veg or care for the trees and the perennial crops and the berries and the herbs or people that want to focus on the market garden.
00:30:55
Speaker
um So it's a kind of collaborative farming model that brings a lot more people onto the land when you compare it to bigger scale farms in the region that, you know, 600 acres, they could barely provide one livelihood just because of the economics of, you know, that scale of farming and yeah maybe not having those direct supply chains. It's it's a sort of different vision of farming of like that kind of market gardening, which is much more labor intensive, but we see that as a positive, I guess, bringing more people into it.
00:31:26
Speaker
Speaking of being labor intensive, um how much of your daily work is done by machinery and how much is done by you guys by hand? um Yeah, so as as we've upscaled, we have like embraced kind of like a more ah like appropriate level of technology. So what's um systems and tools that enable us to kind of do the job like efficiently, but still ecologically. So we you know we went from very much just hand hose and forks and things, and delivery bikes,
00:31:56
Speaker
to now we're kind of like at a bigger scale so we have a kind of more of a middle way of um you know we we have a tractor to cultivate some of the field beds and which we sort of do like a minimum tillage system so it enables us to grow like a lot more crops we have a transplanter so we can actually plant out like thousands of plants um in a short period of time which frees us up to like care for the land more it frees us up to actually look at you know focus on the quality of the crops and the plant care and the doing the harvest right and the quality all this all the stuff like that so that's actually really helped us in a way so that's where it becomes quite complex whereas embracing some level of technology is actually can be really beneficial and and potentially help things but then going too far and getting too separate from the land um it can suddenly become like counter productive both by efficiency or from soil like if you overuse the machinery it's like compacting the soil overworking it needs to much more runoff and problems and things like that so we have to
00:32:55
Speaker
With that, we just got to constantly like discern and kind of keep to the kind of values and principles we grow by. um so yeah, it's it's very mint sort of minimal technology. The market garden, which is actually where we produce um a lot of the crops, actually just on two acres of the whole land, but it's um it's kind of this like biologically intensive approach. So it's like um more like a garden, but a big bigger a scale. So it's like two acres of no-till food production. So all organic, no-till, there's no chemical inputs or anything like that but it's very much focused on that small space and we you know top up with compost every year it's kind of the no-dig gardening approach but at bigger scale and then we use these kind of intermediary tools like's kind of market gardening tools a lot of them are powered by ah drills which we charge from the solar panels or like little tilthers and griddlers that kind of mark out the beds and mean we can plant
00:33:47
Speaker
and shape them those beds really quickly and efficiently but still kind of with these accessible hand tools that new engine growers can use really easily without days of training so it's really nice and easy then we have these seeders that push along the beds so we can grow a lot of crops on that two acres but that's where most the labor goes into that market garden whereas the field scale which is on you know more like seven acres that's a bigger rotation of more like staple crops and more like you know your leeks and carrots and brassicas and things like that so that enables us to grow more year round but that field scale thing is a bit more run by the tractor it's lower labour it's still got um yeah no inputs basically we actually we use cover crops and we use minimal tillage and we sort of we mow in um the cover crops and the mulches and that really like helps to kind of us to cycle fertility in the long term we're looking at kind of using ramiel woodchip
00:34:43
Speaker
um so again that's just like wood chip that's chipped from our coppice on the land and they can go back onto the soil if you have 15 of your land to ram your to coppice then you can provide the fertility of your whole land so we don't need all these inputs or fertilizers or chemicals and things uh we have lots of biodiversity on the farm which means we can manage kind of you know these supposed pests and diseases from a very balanced ecological way um so yeah we've kind of embraced a mix of methods again similar with the business side of things we've got a few different types of growing on the land from that kind of market garden no dig side which is very much similar to how we started and very productive it provides a lot of the greens and salads and fresh stuff which we want to supply you know we can pick on the day and deliver by bike and it's very ah fresh and easy and things like that and then also the more staple crops we've kind of that's the bit we're like more like learning a bit more is like learning all the kind of um
00:35:35
Speaker
you know, i've been doing it a few years now, but still there's always new learnings each year. I've learned in the sort of more like field scale rotations, which is a bit more kind of traditional veg growing, but trying to do it in a very ecological way, ah learning how to like use the sort of tools and machinery, but in a way that's um not harmful for the soil. And actually we've, we've tested that. We've tested the soil. The organic matter's improved over the years. We've, from our cover crops and our practices, it has improved.
Soil Health and Nutrient Quality
00:36:00
Speaker
you know helped actually so it's actually regenerated whilst growing a lot of productive food for people which we were kind of cautious about that because we weren't sure of the field scale with the more kind of tractor-based stuff and the more like cultivating land and working the soil a bit a little bit more with you know more like low intervention technology was yeah we're worried that would like actually be tricky to keep soil health pumping but actually it is like incredibly like at a slower rate than the market garden but the soil is and improving there so it's really hopeful because it's like oh we can upscale these systems we can grow ah really good amount of food like really high yielding per acre and without those inputs but we can do it in a way that's like yeah enables that like labor to be optimized a bit because even though my deal with vision is like you know they've got millions of growers and loads of people doing it the reality is like not many people are sort of ready to leap into that sort of full-time growing and there's a huge skills gap so we kind of need ways to make
00:36:55
Speaker
growing quite efficient in that way so rather than us hand-howing eight acres and doing all that we can actually optimize that a bit put our energy into some of the wider land care and use yeah kind of use the tools that are there um and in a good way really and we're hoping it' sort of shift that to we've got like an old school like diesel international tractor which is 650 horsepower so it's quite like It's considered a small tractor in modern farming terms, but you know for us it's quite quite quite big compared to the hand tools.
00:37:28
Speaker
ah But it's something we could easily, you know if we can get the startup funding and things like that, we could easily replace that with an electric tractor. We've got loads of solar panels on the farm barn. So we could actually have this, once we've actually, we can secure that funding, we could actually have this very cyclical system that's really not got any of those inputs. It's kind of just coming from the solar energy, which is what we're doing as farmers. We're just harvesting sunlight.
00:37:50
Speaker
solar energy charges the tractor charges the hand tools and has this very like cycle system so the potential there um just need bit more bit more kind of funding and uh support and things like that for all those things with the with the whole no dig concept is that for the the produce as well as the soil or is that more for the soil um both yeah so but it both reflect each other so this soil health um the better your soil health um that reflects in the quality of the produce because that's equivalent to the sort of nutrients and micronutrients um and quality of that food is very much interwoven with the soil it's come from that soil and there's this you know whole amazing web of interactions happening underground which um means that like those nutrients are directly going into into those plants um so what we have at the moment is most of the you know commercial
00:38:47
Speaker
kind of commodity food that's grown as like a bulk crop for the world commodity markets and the, you know, potatoes, carrots and things like that. They'll be, yeah grown in very depleted soil. We've got very big soil crisis, I guess, you know, people saying, oh, 40 years of heart harvest left and things like that.
00:39:06
Speaker
And it's because this topsoil has been eroded and because it's been, the soil has been so heavily tilled and plowed and mechanized and sprayed that actually we've just got not much life left in it so actually then the food is reflected in that so we have like very poor quality food and then that's why i have all these in it you know 4.2 billion health costs in the UK and all these things which is way bigger than the farming budget for actually making good soil and all these all these things but um yeah so we do it on ah in know on our scale we we do it for the quality of the foods for the quality of the soil
00:39:41
Speaker
And it makes a huge difference because once you've got that soil food web intact from less cultivation, ah less groundwork, and we're using these like, you know, composting methods and wood chip and keeping the soil covered at all times with different cover crops and vegetable crops and things like that, having a good diverse rotation means you've got different rooting depths. You've got, kind of feeding your soil microbes with different sort of things. um All of those things mean we've got this really amazing, like amazing, like a live pumping soil. We have like the soil test people come out and they're like amazed, like the amount of worms in like a square meter. It's like through the roof. Um, so that's, yeah, that has a huge effect on both the abundance of the produce. We can actually grow a lot more per acre. It's a much higher yield insight. And we've done the research for that and sort of compared it to more commercial yields. And it's from that two acres, it's huge. It's, um, yeah It's crazy the amount of stuff you can produce in a market garden when the soil is really healthy.
00:40:39
Speaker
So it's both helps us, you know, from an economic perspective, because we can have more crops for area, but also from the soil health perspective and for like the nutrient density and the kind of quality of the crops and the taste of the crops.
00:40:53
Speaker
And yeah, all the alllthough all those things really, sort it all starts with that soil piece really, which starts with the kind of methods um used with that soil. That's really interesting. I guess sometimes it's easy to forget that the soil health very much directly reflects the the nutrients and the vegetable and the the fruit and everything.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely. um I thought that it might be fun to ask um ah some frequently asked questions about organic farming. So basically what I've done is I've jumped on Google and gone through a few different websites and looked at the top ah FAQs about organic farming. I want to be clear, these aren't necessarily my questions.
00:41:35
Speaker
They're what the general public want to know. Great. um Some of them I guess we've already touched over, so I might just move on to some. um is organic farming food for the customer or is it more for the environment um both I'd say yeah it's is's for human health and planetary health um so I guess for us you know we're we're organic certified we grow without chemicals without this sort of um high inputs or fertilizer or things like that we rely on the you know on the soil health and the good practices instead um
00:42:14
Speaker
But for us, it's about like much more than just organic um because you can you can be organic and not necessarily be doing all of the other like soil health stuff or like sourcing your other, whether it's inputs or packaging or transport well. So we try and like do a much, it's sort of much more broad, I guess, which sort of where the weather regenerative um and sort of agroecological things come in. um But it's yeah, I'd say the answer to your question, I think, um yeah, it's both really like we,
00:42:43
Speaker
the costs, the true costs of like really like um commercial classics or supermarket food, the true costs of that are huge, ah but they're very much hidden and masked by this kind of artificial economy I mentioned. So one is the cost to human health. As I said, all of these huge health costs, a lot of them are dietary related. A lot of them are based on us not having that kind of, fa you know, life force and balance of vitamins and nutrients and energy that, you know, we need. It all starts with like kind of what we're eating.
00:43:12
Speaker
a lot of those health costs so that those costs are all going into that and then it's made to seem like the sort of food is app you know cheap and plentiful supply and all these things and then it's the hidden true costs are very much hidden and but then they come out in our health and our things that and make our lives more difficult and in society have a huge um cost as well obviously which could be going into solutions but it's sort of coming to like kind of solving the problems of our current crazy system um and the second big hidden cost is the yeah the cost to the land and the soil, which often means then farmers will be reliant on buying in much more fertilizer because their soils are depleted. So it's kind of a vicious loop for farmers, which means they're into debt and they no farmers like want to be in that situation of kind of in this
Challenges in Organic Farming
00:43:59
Speaker
vicious loop. But a lot of farmers have been very much forced into it by the kind of, you know, the economics and how the subsidies have been arranged to kind of encourage them into one direction.
00:44:10
Speaker
um But yeah, it like the simple answer your question is like the the organic growing is so we don't have harmful chemicals. Instead, we have like really ah good quality start to our kind of food system and health.
00:44:24
Speaker
But also it means like we can grow much longer term because our soil is not depleting. It's increasing in health and fatality. So we can, yeah, we can keep doing this for a much longer time ah horizon, whereas sort of the sort bigger sort of commercial crops,
00:44:40
Speaker
tend to be they'll have to kind of move on and find another bit of land or they have to like open up new forest areas or they have to bring in lots of fertility from elsewhere so it's kind of quite colonial they've got to bring in fertility from an ah and another another place so it's quite hidden land use is huge um and the hidden costs are huge so yeah it's's it's it's for both human health and planetary health um Aside from sort of pesticides and things like that, why is organic vegetables better for us than just supermarket vegetables? Is it because the supermarket vegetables have sort of sat on the shelf for quite a long time and as most people know, the longer that it sits on shelf the shelf, the nutrients decrease?
00:45:22
Speaker
Is that sort of the reason why chefs and anyone should be sort of looking for more organically grown vegetables? yeah i guess there's lots of different reasons but that is one of them um that doesn't necessarily come from the organics because you can there's a distinction in organics between what i'd call like more like real organic which is um you know also integrates it's more agroecological it kind of integrates like the soil health stuff it integrates community it's very direct supply it's regionally produced it's um
00:45:55
Speaker
produced on a very different sort of level of of quality from the soil that's the sort of more a real organic but then you get you know we have seen actually you can get like this this other kind of form of organic which is this like huge commercial organic which is comes with some of the same problems so you can have you know whether it's like yeah organic almonds from California that have come from this um you know huge like genocide of pollinating bees and they're on this huge scale then there's like no soil left and it's all irrigation fed from depleting aquifers and all these all these crazy things um very fire prone and hazard hazard like so you can have and that's like certified organic because it's replaced you know pesticides and things like that with some other like organic certified sprays um which they probably are better like they're less harmful to the soil less harmful to human health and things like that so it's like a step in the right direction but if you haven't then sorted that like
00:46:51
Speaker
huge supply chain and efficiency and the sort of commercial nature and the reliance on other inputs, then it doesn't necessarily solve it. So it's, so you can still have that like huge long shelf life of this like commercial organic produce.
00:47:03
Speaker
So it becomes, i sort of hesitate say this because it makes it much more complex. It'd be much more easy to say like, oh you've just got to choose this type of food. You've just got to choose this certified thing, but it becomes more complex. And the only real, like the only sort of antidote to that for me is like to really get to know like where it actually comes from. And if you can source it from that, like,
00:47:20
Speaker
farmer it doesn't even need to be like right direct if it's from like a producer cooperative or a kind of trusted outlet um then it can be like regenerative and organic and agroecological all these things um it's very much possible but the organics is a good like step in the right direction um and it will it does it does have these checks at the end of the day it's the only like certified thing we have that's like much more established scheme for like more nature friendly and human friendly produce so it's it's kind of what we've got to go with at the moment so it does it will like have these checks and things that mean it doesn't have the sort of more like toxic and harmful chemicals it'll mean it's probably grown in conditions that are actually much more conducive to that environmental health and soil health um it probably means the organic systems tend to be a little smaller scale even though you have these massive ones but they tend to be set up
00:48:15
Speaker
in a very different way so they tend to be like fresher uh more nutrient rich um and all those sort of things so yeah it's like a sort of step in that direction I'd say but um sorry to blu have to blur blur the lines and make it more complex in a way but I guess that's why we're doing what we're doing is um yeah because it's sort of organic plus with other stuff as well So like if where I live, sort of in my very direct immediate area, we don't have any sort of farm shop really.
00:48:49
Speaker
So when I go to Tesco, I see the the organic Tesco bunched carrots. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're fully grown without pesticides or it's sort of a better option, but it's not necessarily the best option. Is that right?
00:49:04
Speaker
ah Well, if they're certified organic, they will be grown without pesticides. um They'll be grown without those kind of, yeah, the ones that have been much more like research to be very harmful to soil and to environment and things. So they won't, you can, you can have like a good assurance with that organic that it, you know, it does have like quite rigorous checks and stuff. You know, we get certified and it is checked very thoroughly. So it it is a form of assurance. So you can know that it is like a much better quality,
00:49:34
Speaker
produce and it doesn't have these um harmful things in and it's probably been growing in a much better way for the environment because organics tends to rely on because in the absence of those like for example pesticide it has to take an approach that means you've got like natural predators it has to take an approach that's much more biodiverse like yeah you just struggle to like manage a good organic farm without the sort of those natural aids so it tends to like have to be more nature friendly in that farming approach which also means, you know, reflects in the soil health, which reflects in the nutrient and the human health and all those things are interlinked. So, yeah, I'd say like if you're in that situation, because we don't have, you know, those like all of those local supply chains everywhere, we've kind of like lost a lot of those. We've lost the local market gardens and all those things. So if you're in that place where there aren't really, there's so many options, then yeah, definitely looking on the shelves and that kind of organic alternative is better.
Regional Supply Webs
00:50:29
Speaker
And, you know, looking at where the source
00:50:31
Speaker
if those things are from, even better. But sometimes that's a little masked, just say, like, complex big supply chains. um But, yeah, certainly better. um But, yeah, I guess it doesn't have to necessarily be, like, you know, pure, like, from a farm shop or from, like, direct from the grower, necessarily. Like, I kind of more believe we can set up these more kind of like producer cooperatives for a region where, um you know, it's actually, it makes it the kind of like easy and affordable and simple and, you know, just like way easier solution. You can just get it from down the road and, so but, you know, there might be this intermediary like producers cooperative to make it more accessible at that scale because not everyone can like access or to get it from the local farm, all these things that you kind of
00:51:14
Speaker
need to build those systems for that. And that might be like improving current supply chains, but I think it also means like creating those new supply webs. Like for example, if you have a regional producers cooperative that as a chef, you can, you know, and you don't have to order from like 50 different people because it's all like local supply. It can get quite complex, right? You can, they have to, you know, we've heard from our chefs how many suppliers they have, cause they're trying to do things differently and trying to get it from lots of places. But if you have this kind of combined regional regenerative produce, that's been,
00:51:43
Speaker
um you know, I guess like the sourcing of it's done really well and you've got that kind of assurance then as a chef or as a consumer, you can buy from there and maybe it's set up with this really good like home delivery system and online farmer's market checkout thing. it's It's maybe way more efficient than having it all stored in shells and all these sort of things. But that's our kind of vision for that more regional thing. So like if you're a chef or a consumer, you can then like kind of select those items from a whole range of different foods from that region.
00:52:10
Speaker
um And you can kind of get that, in a kind of simple system rather than yeah what we currently have is the kind of system makes it more difficult for us to like eat well and more expensive to eat well and it makes it very like polarized and like for certain types of people whereas actually yeah we've got to build and those new systems that make it the most like accessible easy efficient thing in my view um that's what will actually cause the shifts because most people are in the situation where you don't have that necessarily choice or there's not even the growers nearby. so you need kind of some sort of building of that new thing. Yeah.
00:52:48
Speaker
yeah I remember that, I mean, even now still, it's a very kind of hard thing as ah as a chef, you know, you've got very tight margins to work towards, but you want to try and get the best sort of product for you and for your guests.
00:53:02
Speaker
So you end up having ah million different suppliers and then all of those suppliers have, ah you know, quite a high minimum delivery. So you end up having to kind of order more than what you wanted to get from that supplier. It's a very kind of hard system to try and figure out how to make it um economically viable for the restaurant but also ethically viable for for what you're trying to do it's yeah you end up having a list of 50 different suppliers yeah yeah definitely yeah that's a key part is to like simplify it because think it's also why we need like more growers that understand chef and chefing that understands growers and maybe more people that are doing ah hybrid mix of both or things like that because
00:53:41
Speaker
once you know we've like developed those like relationships with you know incredible local chefs that design their menus around the seasons you know we've worked with you guys and vincent and we've worked with uh like oak and land racing corkage and like really great chefs i've got to know over all these years and it's like understanding each other's sort of systems and things and if we can understand like actually the complexity of those things about chefs ordering things and their own economics and all those things then we can understand a bit more what's site also needed so we can look yeah that's also kind of what's fed the idea of this more like regional producers cooperative to make it a bit easier and we also try and make our ordering very easy it's just a very like online click and check out and then you get it the next day it's you know we can set up these these systems to be like so it's not more complex to choose the better ethical option um but obviously there's a bit of bridging there's a lot of work to them to create those systems because we're a little further behind of these you know bigger sort of subsidized things of
00:54:39
Speaker
You know, when you're competing with someone that's like Tesco, they've got three billion profit from the year, which is bigger than the UK agricultural budget. um It's like, it's a crazy power imbalance to try and create the new systems with a lot less resource, which is where the kind of, you know, when it's when you really need that community support, you need people to trust in you building in that and it's not perfect at the moment. It's sort of a stepping stone towards it.
00:55:02
Speaker
um But yeah, we've like, we've loved working with those sort of chefs that are trying to do it differently. And it probably does come with compromises at start. It probably does come with like slightly more adjusting to more like complex things, a little more thinking, maybe some systems to like, you know, developing those more like unique ordering systems and supply webs and stuff. But once, you know, we've been really like supported by the chefs that have been wanting to like take that leap with us, even in the early years when we were just very new to growing.
00:55:31
Speaker
remember they'd come out to the farms and they'd come and um you know see how it's grown differently and things like that they'd want to take that faith in us and that leap and then we build those relationships over time and then actually that's resourced us to create a much more efficient system and it's kind of on its way to becoming something that's very easy for chefs so it's yeah we're kind of in that in-between space but I think it's the potential of that kind of like relational approach, like chefing and farmers and more understanding each other's situations and getting more chefs on farms and more farmers understanding, you know, the kitchen stuff, I think is really important. I think there is a growing movement of that as well, isn't there? if Like, you know, also for that the balance and the sort of lifestyle thing, if you can have more integration with the actual food where it's come from and the chefing and the cooking with those ingredients, the better quality food,
00:56:18
Speaker
The better the sourcing, the better the customer experience. So it can create like a ah good regenerative economics like those restaurants that we work with because they're so unique and they supply seasonal food and they're like very high quality. People notice the different with the taste. So they've done really well. I'd say they're doing really well in an industry that's so difficult at the moment. and It's so difficult to find.
00:56:38
Speaker
yeah But they've like got these regular customers and people that, so they might have put that initial work in that extra effort to like do those more difficult supply chains. But actually it's really yielded a lot from them. They're like renowned for these amazing like seasonal menus.
00:56:51
Speaker
um Same with the farming. You have to like put that more effort into the more complex systems. like The more ecological farming does initially cost more. It does come with all these other responsibilities. It's not the same as just a factory production line, which is maximum.
00:57:04
Speaker
you know production focus it comes with more but then it yields more over time because then over time we've got better soil health we've got um we can grow more abundant crops so that's that's the potential of it guess um yeah and it starts those relationships with the the chefs and farmers and customers and all of those things which is a to me a better vision than just sort of like I just buy this bulk food from this place and it's just very alien and it goes to the people that eat it and then they go home and that's like yeah that's we could do a lot better with the food experience I think
00:57:36
Speaker
I find in the last couple of years that um at least sort of the British guests, they're looking way more towards ah provenance about where their meat is coming from, especially in private dining. You know, we we love being able to tell them where the vegetables come from, where the meats come from. They want to know.
00:57:54
Speaker
where their things are being sourced from. And I think that's a really exciting thing to see that, you know, not just chefs, because we always sort of, well, most of us love to sort of explain where everything came from. But from a guest perspective, I've really loved seeing that shift and being able to kind of say, you know, we went out to middle ground growers to get these turnips and all of those kinds of things. I think it's really exciting.
00:58:19
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. is And it is it's driven, you know, by, by both. And it needs to kind of drive us from that, like, you know, chefs sort of wanting and demanding and asking for more of that.
00:58:30
Speaker
um And like seeking out their supply chains. Cause then I think farmers do like also shift, like they do respond to that. Like, for example, you know, thinking of like neighboring meat farmers that ah might have, they one day, you know, had that kind of like farm shop, they had the direct supplier, they at the farmer's market, but then, you know,
00:58:49
Speaker
the sort of other food system took over from the farmer's market the farmer's market you know dropped in regularity and then the they were kind of forced into a very different way of farming people they didn't think there was like as much sort of demand and the economics was driving them away from doing that sort of thing they moved to just all their meat just goes off in a truck to they never know where it necessarily goes so I think the farmers do like respond to that and they do like want to do that more like local sourcing just as like the chefs want to do the more local provenance thing. So it's like there's a combined, the same aims and visions really, it just needs the kind of the factors around to support it. And also, you know, consumers and customers and people that the the eaters really can drive that at the root of it as well.
00:59:32
Speaker
ab So it's kind of all of that together. If you can like do that, then that kind of provenance and local sourcing thing can kind of become a lot better. um And it's really, it's very rewarding gratifying for all parties involved, I think, when you can know the source that food. And also for us, from the growers perspective, you can more like, you know where it's going rather than just going off on some bulk truck thing to wherever, um you know, it you get that kind of like gratification, like you sort of hand over that, you know, veg to the customer, to the chef or,
01:00:02
Speaker
and then just to like see how they transform it like to see what you guys do with like the the turnips in winter we're like what if people could know what you could do with the simple vegetable that people that might have a bad rep but it actually is like and incredible how it could be transformed and that's something we can't necessarily like you know do as the growers we can like sort provide the good base quality ingredient and then like that's where the collaboration comes in then we see how it's transformed and it's just um It's incredible. We go to some of our, some of the restaurants we supply will then like go and have like an end of season feast there. but Oh my God, I like vegetables in this incredible dish that's just transformed. And that then makes the like seasonal, seasonal eating the sort of simple, in a way more simple eating, like actually way more like quality experience and you feel very like nourished from it. So it's, yeah, I think hooking on that is got potential to kind of transform that food system, I think.
01:00:55
Speaker
You must have a lot of pride going when you when you go to restaurants that you've supplied a vegetable to and you see what they've done with your produce. It must make you really proud to see sort of where it's going and what it's doing outside of the veg box delivery market.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. It's been a really nice aspect of it, that but relationship with chefs and at a very local level, it's, you know, places that will you know, I like cycle past on my way to football or yeah it's all very like linked and interwoven. So it's a very different form of relationship to like just a place where you don't know where it's going.
01:01:27
Speaker
um It is, yeah, it's very rewarding to see, to see that. And um again, you like, you taste the difference, you see the difference, you can get that kind of much more direct customer feedback than whether it's just like
Farmer-Chef Relationships
01:01:41
Speaker
going off. So that also allows us to improve because we can then like actually work with chefs on like the varieties they really liked then grow for the next year. So it's a very like reciprocal, um reciprocal thing because we're much more flexible and adjustable. We're not just growing for like a contract to just grow X amount of carrots only on this bit of land, which is awful for the soil and things. But instead we can be much more flexible.
01:02:02
Speaker
You know, we run our own business and farm. We choose the crops, we choose the varieties, we sow the seed from this side. And it's like we can actually respond more to like maybe niche crops that a certain customer certain customer wants or like types of even types of salad leaf and things like that like choosing the ones that um will be you know most like wanted or good for a dish or growing chimido wrapper for a sauce or something like that so it's um yeah it's it's much more kind of exciting and flexible and also that kind of local relational based food system um is also much more flexible in that like i guess a lot of chefs have had that like frustration where you have this like from this huge
01:02:41
Speaker
wholesale or this huge system that it's just like some items just suddenly cut or some there's just no responsiveness you can't even sometimes get through to it the grow or the human or things like that whereas we can kind of like if there's an issue we can kind of like explain that because like you know cycle by later in the week because I'm actually just going past it it's a lot more flexible or if someone wants to like change something could just like message me or call me um so it's it's got the potential for that more like flexibility and efficiency which is really good if you're like a chef working with really fresh ingredients you want to get stuff every other day and you want to, um yeah, there might be sort of changes because you've got like a very, ah small amount of customers or you've, i don't know, there's just like different flexibilities with like a sort of more independent maybe restaurant or chefing business that you kind of need that flexibility on the other side rather than just like, yeah, sometimes it's a bit limited, the options and the flexibility and the varieties and the diversity of projects you can get from like a,
01:03:37
Speaker
and maybe from a big wholesaler and then there might be these like supply chain issues and supply chain sort of fragility or you you know suddenly have like a drought in x part of the country that's totally beyond yeah awareness or control and then that's yeah impacts that kind of food supply chain but it's um yeah can be sort of more flexible and more enjoyable to have that um more relational based approach i think I think probably one of the most frequently asked questions that I've seen come up while I was researching this topic is, and I know it's a very kind of complex question, why is organic vegetables um traditionally a lot more expensive?
01:04:21
Speaker
um I think it it goes back to a little bit of the stuff was talking about earlier about like how the system is set up to very much like subsidize a certain type of production um so even though that type of production is very inefficient from an ecological perspective it's not going to last very long because the soil is depleting it's very inefficient in a in a way of like all the transport systems and energy systems like that that kind of the more kind of um commercial commodity sort of degenerative produce um it is also hugely subsidized it's a bit like in the
01:04:55
Speaker
to compare it to like in the energy world like the reason fossil fuels and everything have been so cheap for the abundance of fire is not necessarily because it's like an easier system it's because it's been massively subsidized like billions poured into it and the whole infrastructure has been designed around it with huge investment and huge support a huge research huge engineering stuff's gone into it so it's similar with the food system whereas you know renewables haven't had all that and now they're only in recent years they've begun to get a little bit more of that infrastructure support subsidies and things and then suddenly renewable energy is cheaper um it's not because like the nature of sunlight has changed or the nature of coal in the ground as it is because the economic system around it and all of that stuff has shifted so i'd say similarly with the food system like at the moment even from like all of like the research and that sort information investment and the
01:05:49
Speaker
um money investment and the stocks and that all the different factors that sort actually impact the food system a lot make those kind of like bulk commodity crops that are lower quality and are coming at the cost of environment and are coming at the cost of human health but it makes them artificially cheap because they're in this kind of wider economic system um i think again with like the same with the renewable energy stuff like that thing can kind of begin to shift like as there's more like investment in regenerative agriculture there's more community support for and awareness about organics there's more education around it there's maybe like a little bit more research going into like how we can grow better perennial grains that don't harm the soil how we can grow more you know diversified crops whilst improving the soil health and there's more farms modeling that and showing that now as well so I think it is beginning to shift a bit like in the energy ah field as well but I think at the moment we're in that in-between space where as an ecological grower as an organic grower you've kind of
01:06:45
Speaker
you're taking on all the responsibility and are taking on the externalities, which are currently just ignored. So like things like to protect your soil health or manage your hedgerows or do do all the ecological stuff or like use spring water and cycle that round and dig the ponds and do do all the, do all the work and the money and then time investment that, that comes with growing better quality food ah does kind of come at, ah it costs the farmer more.
01:07:10
Speaker
So often, And then they don't have that huge support infrastructure of like all of the, you know, best technology resources, information, research, subsidies aren't going to that. So there's a kind of double blow for like those ecological producers, which is why they need like that more community support to then shift the system to be the one that's the norm and the easy and the affordable thing. So we're kind of in the bridge at the moment.
01:07:32
Speaker
And I think that's why it's kind of more, It can appear more so expensive, but it's kind of a psychological trick as well, because the real cost of cheap food is very much hidden because it's costing the and NHS billions. It's costing us loads in our own health. It's, you know, it's reducing our life quality and all these things. it seems artificially cheap, but it's coming in these huge costs and there's less, you know, than the it's coming to result without others like less bird life is more pollution in our rivers which affects everyone so there's these hidden costs from that industrial farming system um and also the cheap food is very much mediated by like supermarkets and and that kind of corporate power so like sometimes supermarkets for example you'll see like at christmas sometimes the parsnips be sold at like such a ridiculously cheap rate which is actually um they've
01:08:23
Speaker
they've reduced the rate to like below what they're actually even buying that produce for as a supermarket because it's like a loss leader.
Economic Challenges in Organic Farming
01:08:29
Speaker
It gets people in, they say, oh, that looks cheap. So I'll come into the supermarket and I'll buy loads of other stuff and I'll buy loads of process food that i don't need.
01:08:36
Speaker
And, but it looks cheap because I've seen that the fresh stuff's always at the front at first the supermarket. So because supermarkets can mediate that price and kind of um take the loss on that and then market the other thing and then get people to buy loads of crap they don't need, it means that they can make that like veg look very cheap. Whereas if you're selling it as a farmer directly, you can't sell it below your cost production. You can't like, yeah, you can't just keep like sort reducing it. You've got to get your income and your livelihood as a farmer. So it's, yeah, it's partly wrapped up in the supermarket system. It's partly wrapped up in the wider economics.
01:09:08
Speaker
um But it's also like, it's, it's a sort of myth that it's like cheap food. It comes at these huge costs. And conversely, the uh you know they like the organic or regenerative or direct supply food from the farmers um is a is a massive investment in your health so you're buying the food but you're also buying like that investment in like quality of life in taste in food and everything and we used to be more in a food culture where we'd like actually 40 percent of income was spent on food um yes you know in a lot most parts of Europe including the UK it was that kind because food was seen as that investment in you it was actually you know it's everything it's like the food was your major cost but now we've seen this like huge inflation of other things and huge inflation of like rent costs it's linked to housing market it's in like huge you know people just spending a lot more money on other stuff so like you know people spend a lot of money on their like the Netflix and the phones and all the things like that but then
01:10:05
Speaker
the the actual amount people spend on food has then dropped to like less than 4% now. So it's less than a 10th of what it was a few decades ago when we had a food culture. So the amount of money people spend on food is like so much more tiny, but it's partly linked to like all of those other things inflating and going nuts whilst food has been kept kind of
Transitioning to Regenerative Practices
01:10:24
Speaker
artificially cheap. Actually, that's why farmers are also in crisis now and in debt and, you know, many farms going out of business and things because it's not kept pace with the rate of inflation.
01:10:33
Speaker
um so it's a very yeah it's a very complex like kind of systemic thing not very easy to easy to answer but i do kind of have hope it's also shifting because at the end of the day these more ecological organic systems are actually more efficient in many ways they're much more ecologically and economically viable in the long term because they're building the soil doing more for biodiversity there's also like shifts in subsidies now there's like a bit more payments for environmental stuff so there's there are actually big shifts coming and with the more demand for it, it's like a chicken and the egg, actually a much more demand for it and people willing to take that leap, then actually that will reduce the price through that economic system that we have today.
01:11:11
Speaker
um So it's, yeah, it's a kind of chicken in the egg and you've got to start somewhere. I guess one way that we get around it and try and make food much more accessible is we have like a sliding scale scheme for our veg boxes. So people can, some people in our community might pay a little more they have bit more disposable income and want to like support that kind of growing and the environmental benefits and health benefits and bigger benefits they get from that style of farming and some people can get a much cheaper box um that might be for a time in their lives they really need that kind of like support and cheaper food have less disposable income it might be for the long term that they yeah they want that like organic quality produce for them and for their kids and
01:11:51
Speaker
for investment in their health, but they can get a much cheaper box because we have this kind of sliding scale mechanism. um So that's, I mean, you know, you couldn't necessarily, you wouldn't really see a supermarket doing or like integrating social justice into that food thing. It's just like a price in the free market. And it's very different to this kind of solidarity economy, um which again, you could do at a much bigger scale. You could do a producer's cooperative. You could have that sliding scale rolled out, um but it does need the bigger economic system to shift as well.
01:12:19
Speaker
as well as these kind of things we can do within our own farms because it can't the cost can't just fall on the farmer once it's already you know as i said like farmers hit from all angles you've got um rising costs of production but food prices just kind of going up a little bit but not really proportionate to the rates of all the other things and costs and things and then the costs of farming well um which kind of not taken into account in our economic system um also just means that farmers are in some ways incentivized to do it the wrong way.
01:12:51
Speaker
um But I think I do kind of have hope that that is ah is shifting. Yeah. So with ah with the more um sort of mass scale farming, is there a way that they could turn it into ah more regenerative, oh my God, regenerative farming? Difficult word. Yeah.
01:13:14
Speaker
Well that's never happened on the podcast before. So like if everybody starts buying from local organic farms what does that mean for the farmers that have been doing it for the last 20 years but aren't making any money off it because it's not a correct system?
01:13:29
Speaker
Yeah I think actually that there's huge potential in the kind of more transition to that regenerative approach so it doesn't necessarily mean like yeah getting rid of this, it's not this polarised thing, of like getting rid of this type of farmer and having much more of this type. it's um It's actually most, or even all actually, all the farmers I've met and I've worked with bigger scale farmers and a National Farmers Union and things like that.
01:13:51
Speaker
And actually all farmers care for the land greatly. And actually it wasn't so long ago it was very much different, more traditional and ecological practices on their land. And now there's just so much more information. There's so much more like soil health science. There's all these things we know.
01:14:05
Speaker
um about and all much there's all these new techniques but also quite old techniques of farming that um can be regenerative can like boost ecology whilst growing really productive food and a really good yield as well um so i think there's there's great potential rather rather than just necessarily like starting it all again or things like that like we do need those new systems we do need many more new growers and much more people on the land um but we can also like working with what we've got is a lot of power in that and like sort of bigger scale farmers shifting to that regenerative approach.
01:14:38
Speaker
um To me, that's like where the real potential lies because often those farmers have like incredible like knowledge. They've also got the kit to do it. They've got, you know, they've got the knowledge of that land.
01:14:51
Speaker
um They've probably, you know, probably their grandparents were farming in a, a traditional ecological way as well so they've actually got the sort of um the much more longer term knowledge so i think that yeah there's actually actually great potential in that um in that sort of regenerative shift and there's all these exciting sort of movements happening with that it's like the farm cluster movement which is like farmers in the region gathering together to see what they can do about like a whole landscape regeneration like regenerating the river and we're doing like a bioregional project called we are avon which involves that but it involves like collaborating with farmers to um
01:15:22
Speaker
also like come together with the producers cooperative so they can like supply more locally but whilst also regenerating a bigger scale because ecology works beyond the farm gate ah so I actually think yeah I've got a lot of hope for like more like um ah yeah I guess like chatting to existing farmers or farmers that it's actually this system isn't working for them like the current industrial food production system many farmers think they out of business with it their soil is depleted um It's very much not working for them or for their succession, like new growers or the next generation don't necessarily want to take on because they've seen how debt driven is. They've seen how mechanized and how um sort of monotonous because it's just one crop or one thing.
01:16:04
Speaker
It's like a factory, a factory. No one's like, you know, work in that factory system, but they do want to work in this. You know, we have, dozens and dozens of like applicants for any job or traineeship or anything like that and yet the mainstream farming narrative is all no one wants to get into farming it's not exciting it's not a alert but in the sort of new regenerative like the more sexy farming like suddenly loads if people want to get into it so it's really interesting so that gives a lot of hope because we need all the new growers but we also need those like current stewards of the land and those like bigger scale farmers and many of them are doing it as well and leading on that change to like sort of shift towards the sort of soil health focused practices um
01:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, which is is is kind of happening, but we need it much more kind of supported and
Understanding GMOs and Alternatives
01:16:45
Speaker
aware of. And rather than kind of putting farmers against environment or producers separate from consumers, it like it needs much more integrated approach, I think.
01:16:53
Speaker
It's a very complex system. Yes. Lots of moving parts and lots of things that need to change, I guess. Yes, absolutely. um One of the other questions that I came across is what what are GMOs and why do we use them?
01:17:11
Speaker
ah Yeah, so genetically modified organisms um and that they kind of became more like popularised and used with the kind of shift to industrial farming. So it kind of came from the very like same actors, like the the big kind of global food companies and agri-food business, um the ones that they were kind of like developing genetically these like different crops which were suited to that industrial food production model.
01:17:39
Speaker
um So it's very much the the manipulation of genes um and kind of like characteristics of like plant seeds and plant breeds, whether it's like a ah GMO wheat or a vegetable or something, it's like the manipulation of them has very come like hand in hand with like how the environment's been manipulated for this kind of factory production model. um So it's like those and types of GMO seeds and stuff have been modeled for that because they've been often they've been bred for this very much like productivity output yield um or like weights of crop or something like that which doesn't necessarily mean quality of crop is just like this huge weight you like a big water mass or something um and they've often been bred to be very unecological and very much dependent on the big companies to buy that seed you know the gmos get patented so you can only as a small farmer for example you might be
01:18:33
Speaker
in one of the millions of farmers in India or something, who's always relied on your own saved seed, which is not genetically modified. It's been adapted naturally through like generations of adapted to that soil.
01:18:45
Speaker
and it's it's been made in harmony with the environment rather than in a lab. And the ones that are made in the lab a lab are one, you can only buy them from that seed company. So suddenly farmers have to spend a lot more money.
01:18:56
Speaker
but two, they've been bred not with the characteristics of the place, but they've been bred with like this very single focus factory production outlet. So often that's been very disastrous for human health and planetary health again, because those crops have just been made for this, like for extra weight, extra yield, not for giving back to the soil. Like they've actually got less like biomass or leafage and also all of that biomass is usually what feeds the soil for next year's growth.
01:19:22
Speaker
um And they've often been bred so that you can't actually save them and use them next year. So that's a very intentional thing. It's a bit like, you know, iPhone's been designed to break this kind of planned obsolescence thing. It's the same with seed and farming. It's like, oh, we'll plan it so that it breaks and doesn't work again.
01:19:39
Speaker
And you can only use it once and then you got to buy more. So it's kind of, it come hand in hand with that, like very much farmers, the power shifting from farmers. I want the seed power's gone. That power has shifted from the farmers to the big companies.
01:19:53
Speaker
and it's a very different it breeds a very different production model because it breeds like very particular types of seeds that are for like very much factory produced uh often they'll be linked with like a chemical so it will only work if you use this chemical and then you have to buy more so or they will only you work if you use loads of fertilizer because it's not adapted to the environment so it's kind of the genetically modified seeds and stuff have been developed with that um with that in mind rather than like the health of the soil or the sort of longer term farming so they're yeah very much like sort short term more short term things and it's actually huge like a huge part of our food system is from those um GMO crops and things like that including in the UK so um yeah and the the real antidote is that kind of more um community seed resilience and you know by like you know non-GMOCs from a farmer perspective but that's also supported by like consumer demand and from people
01:20:47
Speaker
being aware of it because most people aren't aware of it and like demanding that as well um comes from like more like regional seed savings things like regional seed banks uh good seed growers that are you know doing it where they actually cultivate that seed over generations and they like um they're actually making it so it's suitable for the soil and it's really like it's really exciting what you can do because you can actually like do you can kind of, there's two ways those genes that that seed can change. One is through that natural selection, mostly like you're breeding it in the soil, can actually develop really cool like pest resilient, pest resistant, um hardy crops that are really good for like our hardy winters and stuff like through just like growing them naturally in their place. And you could produce like more perennial versions of these wheats and stuff like that through these things. So you you can use like appropriate kind of that seed saving science
01:21:36
Speaker
from a natural perspective to like create a lot of benefits for like more climate resilient crops, for example, for climate future. um But it's been taken by the kind of big ag and big science companies as a kind of profiteering opportunity. So then the, that's become then like more kind of a genetic engineered crops, which have a very different outcome.
01:21:58
Speaker
um Yeah, very complex issue, but that's what it's kind of about. So how do we know as, guess it's two questions in one, as a chef, how do we know if we're not getting our puppies from middle ground growers, how do we know that it's a non-GMO crop and also just for people growing their own things at home? All right, just my solar system on my boat going. Yeah.
01:22:26
Speaker
ignore it not much sunlight I'll ask that one again um uh so two questions I guess one as chefs how do we know what we're buying do we have to ask our producers and also as someone just at home wanting to try growing their own things how do they know if they're buying non-gmoc um yeah there are think there are various certification things in place I don't know a huge amount about them actually but I know you know, some some foods and stuff are labeled like non-GMO, things like that, and they're labeling, there are like movements to try and get that much more clear.
01:23:03
Speaker
um There's quite exciting things about like, you know using a bit of appropriate technology with like, get be able to scan stuff in shops or from supply supply chains or websites or something. So you can actually see the provenance, see that where it's come from, like quite easily without having to necessarily follow down a rabbit hole.
01:23:20
Speaker
But sometimes you do need to follow down the rabbit hole to actually, especially if it's like a main supplier, to kind of check. um And it usually depends on like where that producer is getting their seed from.
01:23:31
Speaker
um So often if it's like linked to the sort big ag companies and things like that, then often it'll be, it'll be a sort of ah a hybridized version that you can't save seed from what will be a GMO or something like that. um But yeah, usually that's again where the kind of like the scale sort of thing comes in. Cause when you're a huge,
01:23:53
Speaker
when you're at huge scale often the only option to buy like tons of seed for that huge operation is from the big companies have kind of monopolized that seed model so it's quite it's actually tricky and it's not the farmer's fault because they're sort of probably forced to do that um but there are like other options available there are like people that you save that seed save their own seed on farm um or like there's lots of seed companies that are certified like non-gmo and stuff like that um often it's the organic seed companies because it comes hand in hand but um there are also other big seed companies that they're sort of tuned into that so yeah i guess it's sourcing it back to the sea like it's it's a good point really bringing in the gmo because it's kind of like as a chef or a consumer you can source the product back to that product like that beetroot where it's come from but then there's also another level it's like where's the seed come from where's the input for that beach you come from where's the you know quality of the soil comes so it's kind of like tracing it back even further um
01:24:50
Speaker
So yeah, there's a few few ways. There are is like GMO certification. um And it is, yeah, I think people are kind bit more aware of it. There's quite a lot sort of education work to be done on it really.
01:25:01
Speaker
And the real danger is for me, it's more like in the more like global pictures are like in the global South very much like um small scale agroecological farmers and things have, you know, often been forced out of their sustainable ways of farming through that kind of like GMO model and all the stuff that comes from it. So yeah,
01:25:21
Speaker
It's more of the sort of wider stuff around it that happens with like that dependency and again, falling on farmers and often making profits for the sort of big agricultural companies rather than you know improving the soil or things like that. So it's coming from a different motive.
01:25:37
Speaker
yeah Are most of the fruits and vegetables that we get from, say, the big supermarkets, are they most likely genetically modified?
01:25:48
Speaker
um yes I'd say so again I don't know like expert on the sort of more GM side of it but I'm uh yeah I'm assuming most the sort of commercial veg um had sort come from
Heirloom Varieties and Perennial Crops
01:26:01
Speaker
those like more commercial seed companies and that's usually sort of like patented crops that have been uh quite modified I mean it's it's interesting because also all of our food has in a way been like you know the genes have been changed over time but it's more of like innate it's like how that's happened if it's happened in harmony with the natural environment to make them more like healthy resilient long term and things like that because you know even like all of our vegetables come from their like wild ancestors like know carrot comes from this wild carrot that's got this tiny piddly white root and it's been bred to like
01:26:33
Speaker
have more of a a sort of root substance over time most of our brassicas come from like um this one like coastal uh brassica plant it's um it's sort of it's kind of like a flavorless bland kale like uh plant like sea kale I think it's called and then that's been bred into like loads of brassica varieties so like some of them favor the shoots for the broccoli or the seed heads some of them will favor the kind of stem for the kohlrabis and things some of them will favor the root for the The other brassicas, like, you know, turnips and ra radishes are brassicas as well. it's, yeah, that kind of has happened over a long time.
01:27:10
Speaker
um And in some cases, happened very much in harmony of nature kind of like just sort of improve those crops over time for human food. And sometimes it's happened very much out of harmony of nature in like a very artificial environment, which won't ever be very long term or successful for for growing or for health.
01:27:31
Speaker
heirloom seeds or heirloom vegetables chefs tend to get very excited over putting heirloom tomatoes or heirloom something on the menu what is the difference between like a normal vegetable and heirloom vegetable I guess well one example is sort of like with tomatoes I guess the more like heirloom varieties um that it's kind of like maybe opposite to how like the GMOs have been like, had these certain aims in mind. It's just productivity. It's just weight. So it's just this thing, which can lead to a very flavorless and non-sustainable bulk commodity product. Whereas the sort of more heirloom varieties or the more like natural, um naturally farmed and seed saved over years and decades and generations, those ones will have been saved with very different characteristics in mind. So often like an heirloom tomato might've been really just selected for like
01:28:29
Speaker
flavor and quality and ah plant resilience to climate things and to all these different things which are very ah good for our health and for the um for the farm as well and for the soil.
01:28:40
Speaker
um So those like early varieties yeah will often have been like sort of more favored from that direction. So um yeah it's more like the ethos behind that seed so the early ones will have often been like from that you know save seed from that tomato plant each year developed this variety. So you can kind of also then like have these like regional varieties, like, you know, have these like, you know, tomatoes that have been developed in a certain soil type for that region or similar with like trees and apple varieties. you have like beauty of bath. It's like an old apple variety. It's way more resilient to pests and climate in our area. So it's so much more holistic seed approach. And actually it's like more diversity rather than like growing this one thing with one aim. It's like actually loads of diversity of seed means it's very resilient.
01:29:24
Speaker
And with seed savings, naturally you can do that um you know in your own garden or or um on your farm you can actually have that huge diversity which breeds a lot more ecological health um the diversity is good for our diet it gets different veg varieties have different nutrients all these different things and it's more exciting and fun as well rather than like you've got a choice of two types of tomato or one lettuce or something like that right instead you've got like all this like whole huge range of taste flavors um all these different things uh from like a more and it starts with that seed diversity really my final question to you is um what is something you've discovered about food recently that's excited you it could be like a new seed a new vegetable a new fruit or anything
01:30:15
Speaker
ah Yeah, what's exciting me at the moment is doing a lot of like learning and research on perennial vegetables. um So veg rather than, you know, most majority of our veg comes from these, ah you know, annual ah varieties, which we replant every year, buy the seed every year. We cultivate the soil every year and we plant. And in some ways, the annual veg thing isn't, you know, it's not the most sustainable in a way. Like you can do it well and you can do a lot better.
01:30:44
Speaker
but often it is like reliant on that quite long-term thing where it's compared to like a forest or a food forest or a, you know, perennial garden, which has got crops that are growing back from the same plant every year.
01:30:56
Speaker
um Those like perennial varieties, like you've got, look at the health of the soil in a forest, for example, that's like an indication of that because it's not been cultivated every year. It's not been like grown as intensively. um So I'm really interested in that kind of like shift or like that sort of like perennial revolution in like,
01:31:13
Speaker
It's happening for grains, like grain production. There's been lots of research like from on the Rodale Institute, which is like looking at rather than these annual grains, and which yeah grain production can also be very unsustainable. It can be very monocultural and things like that. But you can have instead like perennial grains, like Cerns is one of them.
01:31:31
Speaker
that are being developed over time, like naturally, and they can like, they keep their roots in the soil, which keeps the soil life pumping. It's really good for ecology. And they develop that like kind of resistance in place and resilience.
01:31:44
Speaker
And um it produce it can also produce like a much more healthy crop because they're much more deep rooted. They can often tap into more resource in the soil. They can actually produce better food, more varied diets and kind of they're closer to their more natural ah varieties I guess so the same goes for veg like there's actually all these perennial alternatives to a lot of the veg we grow there's like perennial kale options there's perennial leeks perennial onions these like walking onions there's perennial spinach spinach hablitsa perennial salad leaf we grow a lot of like sorrel and things like that because that's it's also a lot more hardy in the winter often perennial crops because they have a deeper root they're lot more hardy year round so you can get much more variety
01:32:25
Speaker
um and things like, you know, globe, artichoke, asparagus, all those kind of examples of perennials, also top fruit and soft fruit and
Chef's Role in Sustainable Food Systems
01:32:32
Speaker
nuts. So we can move to those and more perennial crops, it's like way better in so many ways. So that's, yeah, that's probably been the sort of exciting food learnings recently. We're actually doing a workshop on perennial crops soon and we're trying to gradually over time, like shift some of our production of like the annual veg to some more perennial options. um to so sort of doing some trials with that and seeing how it goes. But yeah, it's got potential to be like rolled out at like quite a good scale as well. There's these like models of restoration agriculture, for example, in the US with Mark Shepherd.
01:33:06
Speaker
There's like hundreds of acres and it's kind of integrating tree rows of nut crops, which could be used for, you nut oils or flowers with like understories of berry bushes and then like asparagus growing in between and then animals grazing as well with perennial grasses, perennial grains to feed the animals. And it's like this really abundant system that mimics nature because it's using these perennial crops and nature uses mostly perennials and some annuals whereas on our farming systems we use mostly annuals some perennials so if we can shift that over time i think that's really exciting um and there's cool stuff been done in the chefing world as well like more chefs kind of been interested in these varieties like um using those more like peral perennial
01:33:44
Speaker
spinach is and greens and onions and root crops and things like that um it's really interesting but again it's like there's so little of the like resource and research and all the things going into that even though it's like such a big part of the solution so um yeah the more like people that like demand that and like be open to those because they're also different flavors the different tastes the different culinary practices so we need we really need the chefs to like show how those perennial crops can be um used really well.
Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration
01:34:13
Speaker
And there is like lots of cool work being done on that. My friend Jack's also setting up these education platforms, got like nomies and plastic they're called. And they're like working with chefs to like parentenial educate about perennial crops.
01:34:24
Speaker
um And lots of our chefs are also like beginning to ask more about, you know, whether it's like getting globe artichokes or more perennial options or using more nuts rather than,
01:34:36
Speaker
you know, other sort staples and things like that. It's, yeah, it's very exciting. And those perennial crops like sequester so much carbon, like actually like shifting from annual to perennial means you can store so much more carbon in the soil and actually like sequester way more carbon than we emit, you know, as a species, it's like, it's huge, the potential of it, but it does, yeah, again, it's like requires that sort of like dietary shifts, similar with what we were talking about with the seasons. It requires those like mindset shifts and like taking the leap and like,
01:35:03
Speaker
sort stepping into that different food system, which is much more better and joyful and connected and community based and everything like that. But it just takes like the, um yeah, the initial kind of like leap to set up. Those perennial systems take more work to set up and then they yield more and are more sustainable over time.
01:35:19
Speaker
um But yeah, that's probably what's the exciting food learnings the moment. i'm just nerding out on all things perennial. So watch to watch the space for perennial veg revolution. We'll have ah lots more perennial crops.
01:35:32
Speaker
That sounds really exciting. i think it's um i think it sounds like it all comes down to... sharing of knowledge and gaining information um from from all aspects, from you know your average buyer that buys your veg box, from you to learning how to do new practices, from us chefs learning how to cook things that are sort of a bit different. um yeah It's all just a bit of sharing of knowledge, isn't it?
01:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, i think that's the key, really, because we're all like learning you know, these are also new techniques and it's like new different types of food systems. some of are also like very you know old ancient practices of like sustainable soil health cultivation and mulches and all these things are kind of like relearning a lot of stuff as well and relearning how to like cook with like actual natural base ingredients and all those sort of things. But yeah, I think you're right. The knowledge sharing is very key to that. And also like between farmers, that's the exciting part when we have these like regional kind of regenerative farm cluster groups that people are really
01:36:30
Speaker
excited to like learn from each other and be like oh I've done this different practice for my soil and that's like made an improvement here and then other farmers kind of we I think we learn is that like social creatures we see that other people do that we see other people like we might see ah another top chef in our city like oh they're like using those a perennial veg and then that really ripples out and then they like there's learning across it about oh this is actually how you can use that veg well This is, sam yeah, all these different things. I think, again, it goes back to, like I guess so we were talking about earlier, like the relational thing. If you've actually got those relationships in the food systems, you know, the sort of chefs, you you know, the other farmers, you're linked together with some sort of collaboration, then all of that's like way more possible. So it's, um it's a different approach to the sort of like, the sort of factory supply line, which is um very non-relational, very sort of fragile and unresilient in a way. So it's, um
01:37:19
Speaker
yeah, like creating more resilience through ah those relationships, I think.
Engaging Chefs with Farms
01:37:24
Speaker
We'll all get healthier and stronger together. We will, yes. It's a great journey to be on improving, like, this is just improving our health, but with all these other wider benefits.
01:37:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thank you so, so much for coming on. That was really fun and I learned a lot. um So hopefully we can, maybe we can look at doing it again and I'll find some more frequently asked questions.
01:37:46
Speaker
Yeah, great. Yeah, thanks for that. It's been a good chat too. Yeah. And I hope it's useful for um yeah chefs and people who can reach out to us on Middle Ground Growers i and little bit all the channels and Instagrams and things like that.
01:38:00
Speaker
And we've got lots of cool workshops coming up. um And yeah, if in the region, then and get in touch with us about some lovely regional produce.
01:38:11
Speaker
It's such a beautiful farm to go and visit, you know, like if you're a chef in the Bath area and you're looking for a new vegetable supplier where you know exactly where it comes from, um it's a really cool place to go and visit. I would highly recommend it.
01:38:23
Speaker
Thanks, Katie. Yes, do come out and visit. We like to integrate the integrate the chefs with where it's from. It's great. Awesome. Well, I'll let you get back to go out to the farm and pick some vegetables for everybody.
01:38:36
Speaker
Yep, that is the plan for the afternoon. i've got a harvest for our veg boxes. and Yeah, winter harvest. It's a little slower, but it's ah it's good. Very good. Awesome. Well, you have a good day then. We'll chat you soon.
01:38:48
Speaker
Great. Thanks, Casey. See you soon. Thank you. Bye. Cheers. Bye.