Its 8 years since Alexia Robinson launched British Food Fortnight. She says she dreamed up the idea while rowing down the Amazon so she swapped one mammoth task for another. Today it is a fixture in the agri-food calendar and her efforts have contributed significantly to the growing tendency among British consumers to buy more home produced food. This years event runs between Sept 18th and Oct 3rd and seems set to be an even bigger success than those that have gone before.
I popped in to the launch of this years BFF activities in London yesterday afternoon. And Alexia had not only gathered a bunch of ecstatic restaurant owners, hospital and school caterers and supermarket buyers and other interested parties but also The Hairy Bikers and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall - in a wheelchair having broken her leg.
They were all there to ensure this years BFF gets off to a good start but also to announce the fact that in Olympic Year, 2012, the dates of BFF are to be changed from the "Harvest Festival" season in the autumn to the last week of July and the first week of August to coincide with the Olympics.
As Jan Matthews, who is in charge of catering at the Olymic village, said at the launch the event is probably the biggest catering opportunity in the world. And as Adam Leyland, editor of The Grocer added, it provides a chance for the British food industry to show just how much it has improved in recent years. "I reckon our food is better than French these days", he declared.
The Duchess then told the assembled company that she was a passionate believer in great British food and said how pleased she was to have been associated with the initiative.
So well done to all concerned. Now we - farmers, food processors, supermarkets and restaurants - need to get into training to cash in on this great opportunity. And its very relevant to note that the Olympic Committee has decreed that where British food is avaiable for those who participate in the games and who visit them, it must be used. Foreign food except exotic fruit perhaps, is set to be outlawed.