Food for Thought

Did you know that over 80% of fresh tomatoes consumed in this country have been imported.

Reading today's newspapers with another heavy push on the rising price of food. I just want to know - are sales of food declining in the premium stores like Waitrose and M&S. And how are the sales of organic food holding up?

That's the phrase used more than once at last night's Real Food debate at the first Real Food Festival at Earls Court.

The charge was that all the "side issues" such as GM, food miles and the like are just that. The real deal is much bigger and according to food miles guru Tim Lang a suite of eight fundamentals need addressing as a whole not in part.

But what alarms me at debates such as these is the middle-classness of them.

One delegate ventured to suggest that food quality issues (of the type discussed last night - in other words trying to define what 'Real food' means...you get my drift) aren't just the preserve of the wealthy but the poor too. But I'm not sure I agree. A lot comes down to price.

It's all very well to talk about the importance of reconnecting people with where their food comes from...but to what purpose?

I love it when I spot things like this.

Despite all their much publicised efforts to back British farming and connect customers with where their food comes from it seems some of Tesco's product development specialists could do with learning a bit about food to.

There can be no other explanation why Tesco's organic porridge oats carry a spendid picture of wheat ears!

Posting by Poultry World editor Richard Allison

I popped into my local Sainsbury’s store near Farnham on Saturday for a chicken, as we were having roast chicken for Mothers Day lunch. One thing I noted while browsing the shelves was that there was not a single, whole free range bird in the store.

The only free range chicken was cuts, breast, legs and thighs. This is in line with media reports of booming free range sales stripping stores bare in the weeks following Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV programmes.

However, what was worrying was that the free range cuts were imported from France. Such is demand that retailers are being forced to look further a field, which will have serious consequences on the British sector if it becomes a long-term fix, as highlighted by the NFU.

So has the push resulting in consumers trading up to imported free range products inadvertently increase food miles and threaten British companies? After all, there was still plenty of high quality, intensively produced British chicken on the shelves.

I went to the press launch of the Waitrose Save our Bacon campaign today in a trendy restaurant in London’s Borough market.

As well as samples of excellent British pork, the event featured a sausage masterclass and demonstrations on how to cure bacon by Cumbrian farmer Peter Gott.

What was really good to see was the number of people crowded around the demonstrations, keen to see how a pig is butchered and what goes into sausages.

And while it seemed slightly odd seeing pig carcasses scattered around a very posh restaurant, people didn’t seemed to be put off their bacon sandwiches.

It is great news that cookery classes are to be made mandatory for secondary school pupils.

The move has mainly been introduced to tackle the growing obseity problem but it will undoubtedly bring wider benefits.

People who know about cooking are much more likely to ask questions about the quality and origin of the food they are buying. They are more likely to start to think about issues such as seasonality and food miles.

This has got be good news for UK producers who can prove that their food is some of the freshest, safest and highest quality in the world. It might even help to put an end to all those surveys which suggest that children think that we grow oranges and pineapples in the UK

Listen to the radio today or pick up a newspaper and you'll find headlines moaning about the rising cost of food (or as they prefer to say the 'soaring' cost of food). When are people going to realise that food has been unrealistically cheap for too long?

I've just logged onto the website of one of the big four supermarkets and seen a 300g pack of bacon retailing for 96p and a 2kg beef roasting joint for £4.78.

Who on earth is going to make any money at those kind of prices and what on earth is the quality going to be like?

I’ve just been searching online for an article I read in the Times at the weekend, which reckoned unpasteurised milk is the latest fad for health-conscious Americans.

Thinking I might write something about raw milk’s rising sales, I was rather surprised to come across some other interesting issues about America’s latest craze.

The sale of raw milk for human consumption is actually illegal in 15 states, while restrictions are in place in the 26 states where it can be bought.

This means some people keen to take up the latest health-boosting habit have to go to some rather extreme lengths to get their fix.

The news that Waitrose has today raised its payments to beef farmers by 10p a kilo, giving farmers a minimum base price of at least £2.25 per kilo, is very welcome.

The retailer has also introduced a series of structured payment increases over the next 18 months with the aim of reaching base level payments to its beef producers of £2.50.

The new long term pricing structure is designed to give farmers some protection and allow them to plan ahead.

Waitrose will also pay lamb farmers a minimum of £2.30 a kilo for British lamb for the rest of the season. This is well above the market level which has seen prices plummet as low as £1.70 a kilo in the last fortnight.

Peter King, chief livestock adviser for the NFU, said: “This is a much needed step which will see a supermarket sharing risk with farmers. We will be encouraging other retailers to take similar steps to protect the supply of British beef and lamb.”

I hope the other supermarkets take note.

Advertising is everything. That’s why many global companies spend millions of pounds tempting the public to buy their products.

So what hope is there for the egg and chicken sector competing with global food players like Pepsi and Coca Cola?

My Colleague on a recent in South Africa took this picture of a novel approach adopted by a local poultry company.

Painted on one side of the poultry shed is a mural giving the appearance of a traditional stone building with two partially open wooden doors, revealing some content looking hens and eggs on straw.

It makes bleak reading.

By January next year, the average free range egg producer will be losing a whopping £27,000/year. It’s even higher for broiler units, at over £118,000.

This prediction came from new figures recently outlined by NFU poultry adviser Sam Hawkes.

He explained that the current financial pressure is because feed costs account for such a high a high percentage of total production cost.

So the recent unprecedented increase in feed costs has directly pushed businesses into the red.

My concern is that it could lead to a shortage of British chicken and eggs, as no company can absorb the higher costs.

Processors and retailers would then be forced to source chicken from elsewhere with the end result that British chicken and free range eggs will lose market share, perhaps even disappear from supermarket shelves.

This is clearly against what consumers want, with many actively shopping for Lion eggs and Union Jack labelled (Assured Chicken Production/Little Red Tractor) chicken.

So come on retailers, give farmers what they deserve. They are not asking for a blank cheque, just sustainable pricing which better reflects the cost of production.

Remember the Tesco Shepherd's Pie that had 'British' all over the packaging but was made of New Zealand mince?

Well, we just had a press release from NFU Cymru which says they found the same problem with some lamb shanks in its 'Finest' range and after applying some pressure the supermarket has agreed to reband the packaging.

But wait for the explanation...

NFU Cymru said: “Once this matter was brought to our attention, we immediately contacted Trading Standards asking them to look into the misleading labelling of the product. Tesco has since stated that the lamb was part of a range of products labelled ‘British’ in reference to the way it is prepared, in the same way as pasta would be labelled ‘Italian’, and should not be taken as indication that the ingredients are in fact British."

What a ridiculous statement.

Foot-and-mouth is casting a dark shadow over farming at the moment. But there is some good news on the horizon. Saturday (22 Sept) marks the start of British Food Fortnight which is an initiative that grows year by year and has had considerable impact in promoting British food to retailers and the food service sector.

Here are some of this year's highlights:

Attracted by the 34% sales increases that the event generates, Morrisons, Asda, Tesco, Waitrose and Somerfield are all expected to be running British promotions during the Fortnight.

A mass of British food promotions and in-store tastings are planned in Budgens, independents and even some petrol forecourt stores. And the public is being invited to ‘Taste British Gold’ with free tastings of speciality foods in over 500 delicatessens.

Five of the largest food service organisations (ARAMARK, Compass Group, Sodexho, Brakes and 3663), four major pub groups (Mitchells & Butler, Punch Taverns, Enterprise Inns and Marston’s Pub Company), three of the main tourism organisations (National Trust, Youth Hostel Association and VisitBritain) and the leading catering association (British Hospitality & Restaurant Association) are all taking part. Together they represent over 20,000 pubs and 42,000 restaurants so there will be an abundance of British food on menus during the Fortnight.

7,500 Compass food service units are being given a dedicated intranet site on why it is important to source British food and 1,000 of their largest units as well as their ‘Choice Sandwich’ range will all feature classic British food during the event.

700 Sodexho restaurants are running special British menus with dishes such as Roast British Lamb, Braised British Beef and British Beef Hot Pot.

Brakes is introducing 12 new British products for the Fortnight including British Beef Mince, British Diced Beef & Kidney, Toad in the Hole, British Diced Braising Steak, British Autumnal Seasonal Roasting Vegetable Mix and Romney Marsh Peas; has launched a new ‘Best of British’ website for its customers in time for the Fortnight; and is offering £50 of ingredients to chefs going into schools to teach children about British food.

Retailers and caterers are joining forces as part of the Fortnight’s initiative to teach children about the delights of British food. 60 Budgens’ stores are supplying their local schools with 100 aprons plus locally-sourced ingredients so that their pupils can take part in the national food celebrations; and 50 ARAMARK chefs will be giving cooking lessons in their local schools. Many will be involving their clients, who are some of the UK’s biggest organisations, in the process: Nationwide, J P Morgan Chase, Dell, Boots, Barclays and Nissan are all taking part by offering the use of their catering facilities or even giving children the chance to produce food for the employees’ menu!

Posting by Poultry World editor Richard Allison

Why do we buy eggs by the dozen?

I was set thinking about this today after seeing a news piece on the United Broilers Association (UBA) plan’s to sell eggs on a per kg basis in the Philippines.

Currently they have a similar system as in the UK of selling egg in boxes of small, medium and large.

It states that this move comes due to the sudden increase in the price of corn (maize), the main ingredient for poultry feed.

UBA president Jojie San Diego says: “Everybody’s buying vegetables by the kilo. So why not eggs?"

So this set me thinking whether the UK egg sector would have anything to gain with such a move in the UK. One thing it would do is to standardise pricing and farmers could gain more.

EU farm commissioner Marian Fischer Boel has spoken out on the issue of rising food prices.

Here's a taste of what she said:

Of course, in this whole debate about food prices, we cannot lose sight of the effect on consumers. It hurts consumers in their pockets when food prices go up.

Here, I will say only this: the increases in supermarket milk prices in some Member States are definitely not warranted by the overall market supply situation in the EU. And, as we all know, the contribution of the raw material to the final price of foods like bread is relatively small, so I hope that the supermarkets and discounters will act responsibly.

Concerns have also been raised that livestock producers face much higher feed prices in the short to medium term. Certainly, this is a concern that I share. Having said that, pig and poultry producers all over the world are affected by high cereal prices, even in low cost competitors like Brazil.

This will lead to adjustments in world meat prices. So I hope that the global competitiveness of European farmers should not be overly affected by the current situation.

Finally, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, I hope European consumers will put their money where their mouth is and be prepared to pay a little bit more for EU produce.

Where we win out every time is in quality and in the attention we pay to animal welfare and the environment. That is something well worth paying for.

You can read the rest of her thoughts on her blog.

NFU Scotland has issued some really interesting figures which highlight that livestock farmers need an urgent price increase because of rocketing feed costs.

But at the same time they show that retailers and manufactuers can't use commodity price rises to justify massive increases in retail prices.

A 30p/kg rise for pig farmers – to cover extra feed costs – would represent a rise of only 13p on a typical pack of pork steaks or sausages, 10 pence on a pack of bacon and 4 pence on a pack of sliced ham.

The doubling of wheat prices only adds 8 pence to the price of a loaf (every £10 per tonne increase in wheat prices is equivalent to one pence on the retail price of bread).

If malting barley doubled in price, it would add around 3 pence to a bottle of whisky.

In the last year of its life, a prime suckler beef animal will eat around one tonne of barley. The cost of this has increased from £90/t to £170/t. Suckler beef producers need an extra 25p per kilo deadweight, just to cover that individual cost.

What is all the fuss about higher food prices? Food has been too cheap for years and we as a nation have to just face up to the fact. As the NFU has pointed out:

1) In the last 20 years food has become 20 per cent cheaper in real terms.
2) Sixty years ago the average British family spent more than one-third of its income on food. This has now dropped to less than one-tenth.

If you are on a low income and are having to watch every penny then higher prices may make things difficult. But surveys keep showing that significant numbers of people throw away vast quantities of food because they are overbuying.

Perhaps higher food prices might stop that nasty habit.

FROM WHERE I STAND…. Dinner has been a mighty fine experience at the Grand Hotel in Lviv, Ukraine’s western-most city. It has most definitely not been the jaw-aching experience I have experienced in Romania and Moldova over recent years.

The cold meats starter was tasty, the “medium” steak just that, yielding to the knife and succulent, a far cry from the unidentifiable “meats” consumed in Eastern Europe just a few years ago. Indeed, it was streets ahead of the chewy £15 steak I endured in London’s Covent Garden just two days before.

Most striking of all the three-course dinner, including drinks, cost under 70 Hrivna. That’s equivalent to less than £7!

This blog is dedicated to everyone who battled the mud, the ruts and the rain in Car Park Two at the Royal Show on the evening of Monday 2 July. Other commentators will wrangle and dispute the future of the Royal Show itself. Farmers Weekly’s own columnist David Richardson made an admirable start this morning with his blog (David’s Digest, Tragic Royal Washed Away).

If there was one thing farmers talked about with real passion at the Royal Highland Show this year it was the parlous state of the sheep sector.

Against a backdrop of a largely positive feel at the show with most sectors more buoyant on the back of better prices, many in the Scottish sheep sector fail to reconcile the arguments put forward by supermarkets such as M & S supporting the need for imported lamb.

"They just won't sell hogs," one farmer I bumped into told me, while another was far from optimistic about the future prospects for the world lamb market.

When I first heard that the British Egg Information Service had been banned from screening its famous 'Go to Work on an Egg Campaign', because eating eggs on a daily basis does not constitute a varied diet, I thought it was bit of a blow for the poultry industry.

But I am now starting to think it is actually a bit of coup.

The story has generated a mass of publicity for eggs - all of which is very positive. It has actually raised the profile of eggs in a way that screening the Hancock adverts probably wouldn't have managed.

Consumers recognise that the ruling is a bit of PC nonsense and a responding in a very mature way.

Regular readers of this blog may have realised that I quite like my TV - which is why I quite enjoyed writing a story for FWi earlier this week about Lesley from Big Brother.

But I'm pleased to share with you that there is something come up in the next few weeks which might have a wider appeal to a farming audience.

According to Dairy UK, the BBC has produced an educational documentary focusing totally on milk.

"Ever wondered about milk" has been produced by the Open University, which has worked with Dairy UK, the Dairy Council, the NFU and MDC in researching the programme.

It will focus on the history of milk, dairy farming, milk processing, health and nutrition.

The show will be broadcast on BBC1 on 7 July at 11.30am.

I have taken a call from a farmer asking if Farmers Weekly can get the national press to feature the rather interesting packaging on Tesco's Finest Shepherd's pie.

It's a shame that so far that hasn't happened - because it's something that consumers should be aware of.

For those of you who missed it in Friday's Farmers Weekly magazine, here it is:

(It says 'British' but the mince is from New Zealand).

Farmers Weekly's Local Food is Miles Better campaign may have come to an end, but does its legacy live on?

Local food is now so sexy that the major supermarkets are falling over themselves to shout about their different offerings. In the past week, Tesco and Waitrose have both launched major advertising campaigns.

The Tesco campaign centres on its 'localchoice' milk while Waitrose is highlighting that it is the only supermarket to limit its local food to a 30 mile radius.

Sainsbury's has also revealed that it is planning a British food promotion that features farmers and growers.

Farmers Weekly is holding out for a hero. We have joined forces with the NFU to seek a farming champion. As part of the 2007 Farmers Weekly Awards, we are looking for someone worthy of the title NFU Farming Champion.

For years, shoppers and politicans have taken low food prices for granted. But now weather worries around the world are making it increasingly difficult to ignore how vulnerable our food supplies can be. The latest chapter in this undoubtedly long saga was opened this week by the National Office of Statistics. Its latest report on food prices

Another post from Ian Ashbridge on the concept of "peak oil".

Academics, commentators and campaigners are divided over the concept of "peak oil" - the year at which fossil fuels begin to decline rapidly and we are forced to develop new ways of producing energy. Depending on whose figures you believe, oil extraction may have already peaked - it is variously pegged to be between 2005 and 2030.

But one enterprising academic has launched an innovative new research project into exactly how people might cope without fossil fuels.

Henry Fell, chairman of the Commercial Farmers Union, makes an unlikely Cassandra. Remember the mythical Trojan blessed with the gift of prophesy but cursed because no one would believe her? I couldn't help thinking of Cassandra as Henry Fell spoke during the Agricultural Engineers' Association conference in London on Tuesday.

It's hard to imagine when Tesco's growth in power is ever going to stop.

Not only has the supermarket group announced full-year profits of £2.55bn, but now Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy has been named the most influential unelected person in the UK.

Sir Terry was ranked ahead of Bank of England governor Mervyn King, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre and the Queen, who found herself languishing in fourth place on the list drawn up by a panel of experts for Guardian Unlimited.

Other counterparts on the list include supermodel Kate Moss, X Factor judge Simon Cowell, Harry Potter author JK Rowling and Manchester United FC boss Sir Alex Ferguson.

Three cheers for Farmhouse Breakfast Week which began on January 21. Organised by the Home-Grown Cereals Authority and backed by Food from Britain, this year's event sparked more than 1,000 media articles, valued at £3.3m, all promoting British breakfast ingredients.

By Andrew Watts, Food Chain editor

In the nine months since I became responsible for the Food Chain page in Farmers Weekly I have taken great pleasure in boring those around me with what are dull, yet peculiarly interesting changes in supermarket prices for food.

I can often be heard saying that, yet again, Asda is the cheapest supermarket, of the three surveyed, (Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's) to shop at for our weekly basket of goods and that Sainsbury's is, nearly always, the dearest. (Although Sainsbury's efforts over the past year to realign its prices with those of Tesco have begun to see it compete ever stronger as so is no longer always the case.)

The more observant of you will also have noticed how supermarkets manipulate prices steadily upwards over a four to six week period only to drop the price the next week under a so-called "promotion".

But one item in particular really grates me; I wonder why we even bother to list it - bacon. Never, during my watch, has the price of eight rashes of unsmoked back bacon waved from its rock-steady price of £7.08 - it's exactly the same at all three supermarkets, week in, week out.

The World Bank wants the US to cut its tariff on ethanol imports: That's the subject of a recent post on Simon Robinson's excellent Big Biofuels Blog, writes FW deputy editor Mike Stones. It refers to mounting pressure on the US to remove its 54 cent per gallon duty imposed on imported ethanaol. Yet US energy secretary Samuel Bodman pledged only recently to retain the duty despite international opposition. "No one in the administration is looking to end the tariff ore subsidy prematurely (certainly not before the end of 2008), " he is reported as saying. So much for free trade in the Land of the Free.

Remember Major Major's father in Joseph Heller's magnificent Catch 22? The more government support he received not to grow alfalfa, the more alfalfa he didn't grow and the richer he became. I was reminded of that reading an article in The Times today "EU loophole allows city "farmers" to reap millions in subsidy harvest."
It alleges people who live in cities are making vast profits out of an EU loophole which allows them to claim farm support without owning land or going nearer a farm than watching the TV show Emerdale.

Time: Yesterday lunchtime.
Location: SIMA show ground, Paris.
Situation: Desperate.

It was no good - I needed sustenance and I needed it quickly. Tired of tramping the 22ha (54 acres) of showground and shouldering my way through the tens of thousands of visitors thronging the machinery and livestock lines, I needed reviving and soon. I found the answer in that classic French dish tartiflette.

FW business editor Andrew Shirley has his say:

Prince Charles' recent criticism of fast-food business McDonald's highlights the food-health tightrope that anybody involved in the farming industry has to walk at the moment.

And it seems even those, like the prince, who have repeatedly championed British farmers, can sometimes slip off that rope.

On a recent visit to Abu Dhabi, which apparently has the second-highest incidence of diabetes in the world, the prince suggested that banning the burger seller might help the health of the Gulf state's population.

However, love or loathe its food, McDonald's is a major buyer of milk and livestock from British farmers, and losing such a major customer would certainly be bad news for the industry.

Perhaps his comments were meant as a throw-away line and more importance was attached to them than he meant, but the media quickly latched onto them and gleefully levelled charges of hypocrisy at the prince.

It turns out that some of the products sold under his own Duchy Originals label contain more fat than a McDonald's Big Mac.

The health of the nation is more and more under the spotlight, commenting on it can be a very dangerous business.