Get involved and back British food

Initiative is good news for farmers, consumers and animal welfare.

My face is great on radio. There’s no air brushing needed, no makeup and I can come straight from our café with gravy on my shirt.

Promoting British food

I have so enjoyed talking about food and, of course, farming during my spell as the ‘Face of British Food Fortnight’.

The press, magazines and local radio have all been supportive, gentle and great fun. This publicity has not only helped to promote my business but has given me a soapbox from which to carry on the shouting about local food.

Regional cheeses, fresh vegetables, high-welfare meat and homemade cakes are products that many of us in the farming community take for granted.

Fast food and ignorance

Many of us were bought up in households where cooking from scratch was the norm rather than the exception.

The advent of fast food in the 1970s, not just takeaways, but also ready meals (remember ‘boil in the bag’, Vesta curries and Fray Bentos pies?), gradually diverted the general public away from fresh towards convenience.

We invite over 1,500 school children on to our farm every year and you would be shocked at some of the ignorance, even from rurally based children.

Many still have never seen a raw carrot and almost faint at the idea that you can eat it; they have not the slightest idea where an apple grows or that bacon comes from pigs. Although there are some classes who are knowledgeable about where food comes from, there are more who are not.

British Food Fortnight

Hence the invention of ‘British Food Fortnight’ (which this year runs from 17 September-2 October), designed to bring British food to the attention of the consumers of Britain.

The French have always been brilliant at encouraging their compatriots to buy French. The Italians have always been great at buying local and fresh. It is about time that we decided that by buying British we are supporting the local economy as a whole, the countryside and promoting the high welfare of animals.

In my local supermarkets (we have five within a four-mile radius), you struggle to find British food on the shelves. Farm shops and restaurants, like ours, plus all the farmers markets, promote British food endlessly and the numbers are growing.

FARMA (The Farmers Markets and Retail Association) now have over 600 members from all over Britain. There is a groundswell of opinion that British is best and, in the 12 years since we started selling directly to the public, the awareness of local and regional food has grown steadily.

There is still much work to be done and without the budgets of the supermarkets and huge food companies, it is up to each and every one of us to promote British in whichever way we can. Only then can we see the health and wealth of the nation improve.

* Sally Jackson runs the Pink Pig Farm at Holme in Lincolnshire with her husband Andrew.

tlkg pt