Wednesday 9 April 2008

Food for Thought

I had the enormous privilege last night of listening to Monty Don speaking on the importance of local food.

Monty was guest speaker at a meeting of the West Wales Soil Association in Ciliau Aeron, near Lampeter, hosted by Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, who farms locally.

Patrick warned the audience about the impending oil crisis – Peak Oil – where oil production will peak, then decline. He suggested that rising oil prices would force the economy towards a tipping point which means that they way we live now, with our dependence on oil, cannot continue, particularly the way we produce and buy food. He then introduced the guest speaker describing Monty, who now has a farm on the Black Mountain, as a vital bridge between gardening and farming.

The meeting was packed, of course, with everyone from enthusiastic amateur gardeners and smallholders to the leading lights of the organic industry, including Rachel Rowlands, founder of the hugely successful Rachel’s Dairy.

Monty began with an anecdote about his recent travels around the world filming for his TV series ‘Around the World in 80 Gardens’ when he managed to collect the wrong suitcase and, when the suitcase was opened, instead of his suits it contained an array of pink saris and beaded cashmere jumpers. He was four days down the Amazon with only the suit he was wearing.

“That’s how I feel now,” he told his audience. “And I’m still looking for a tea picker wearing a suit.”

He described how his trip to the Organiponicos in Cuba had so inspired him. These areas of horticulture within cities produce an incredibly high standard of fresh food for the inhabitants. It was, he said, an example of how people in the cities can produce their own local food and a model, perhaps, for our own future in this country.

Monty continued that theme describing how small producers in Cuba, the Amazon, Mexico and India used traditional, organic, techniques to provide food for their own needs.

He warned that the UK’s fondness for cheap food meant that we paid for it in other ways, with our health, for example, and said that in this country people have forgotten how important and special food is. Families no longer prepare meals from scratch and then eat them together around a table. He spoke about a gardener he had met in Italy where, despite no shared language, they shared a total enjoyment in the quality of the fruit and vegetables he was growing.

“In the UK farmers are regarded as producing ingredients for the food industry,” Monty said. “We have lost our pride in the food that we produce and farmers are not respected as they should be.”

He also spoke about his project to introduce drug addicts to farming, documented in the TV series and book ‘Growing Out of Trouble’. This project is ongoing, with some failures, but mostly success and Monty said he had been astonished at how the addicts did not know how to eat.

“They would take their food and go and eat it by themselves,” he said, turning into a corner behind him to demonstrate. “When they had food they were effectively turning their backs on everyone else when they ate it. They did not know how to sit around a table and share food with others. One told me that she had never sat down to a family meal and when I asked them to lay the table for a meal they had no idea what I was talking about. They had never done that and they did not know anyone who had either.”

He said the project had its most successful times when they all sat down around the table together and shared food. The participants even began to bring in their own food, such as cakes, to share with everyone else. That was something, Monty explained, that was an important part of their rehabilitation, as was getting up at 5am to pick produce to sell with pride at the Ludlow Food Festival.

It was a wide ranging and inspirational talk in which at one point he even dared to tell the assembled organic farmers that organic was not the most important thing, local was prime and that they should beware of remaining in a situation – a ghetto almost – where they talked with each other, but did not invite other parts of society into the discussion. There were a few intakes of breath, but also murmurs of recognition and agreement.

The talk fired up members of the audience who then took part in a question and answer session with Monty and Patrick. Could the UK, or the world, feed itself under these terms, one wanted to know. Others wondered about how the Soil Association could label air freighted foods as organic. Education was discussed, not just of children, but also of adults who had lost their connection with food and the land. Supermarkets bore the brunt of the blame for the loss of a connection with what we eat and how it is grown. But, as Monty pointed out, as the oil prices increase, the cost of food distribution will go up too, so supermarket food prices will rise, making local food more competitive.

After enjoying Patrick’s delicious chocolate brownies and coffee and the meeting formed into small groups, each discussing and issue that had been raised by the talk. Issues raised included that Farmers Markets should be held more often, farms should twin with cities, more co-operation was needed between growers, particularly micro-producers who currently find it difficult to get their excess produce on sale and those new to food production should be offered more help. Allotments and their increasing popularity was another point raised with Patrick Holden and it was suggested that the Soil Association, which already does so much for farmers and gardeners, should find some way of including them. The meeting broke up reluctantly and everyone went home with plenty to talk and think about.

It was a fascinating evening and it was a privilege to have been able to listen to Monty and Patrick’s views on how we are to feed ourselves as a nation in the future. But it was frightening too; we cannot continue wasting food and the planet’s resources with the profligacy that we have become accustomed too. We must take more responsibility for feeding ourselves and not rely so heavily on supermarkets. It was certainly food for thought.

20 comments:

  1. Wish I could have gone PM, it sounds as though you came away with plenty to think about. I find the whole issue of ditting around a table to eat fascinating - it really does offer the chance to talk and get to know each other again in such an informal way, to catch up on worries and celebrate little successes that may seem too trivial to interrupt a programme for. Don't get me wrong, we enjoy a meal watching a film as much as the next person, but I am so glad it is a treat rather than the norm. Great blog xx

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  2. An important subject for debate.
    A lot of our food in the UK relys on low transportation costs, but as oil peaks that cost will go up.
    At the same time that increase in energy will mean glass house production in the UK will also become more expensive.
    So I guess it will need a big change in diet and life style.

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  3. It sounded a brilliant evening..
    And when things like that are brought home to us , i'm often surprised by some of my friends who'll freely admit to not peeling a potatoe in 10yrs they'll buy them already done mashed, chipped or tinned and what are there children learning?? it's scary...
    Very thought provocing Thank you x

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  4. Certainly food for thought. Sounds like a really interesting evening.

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  5. Interesting evening, sadly not enough people are listening to the message and taking it seriously, everything is driven by the 'I am all right jack philosophy of life' these days, and everyone is blinkered. Companies are the worst offenders; whilst eco-credentials are a money spinner, they are on the band wagon, capitalising; profit being their muse, not what's right. I read some time ago that by 2025 we will be having real problems because of oil and gas shortages, and our dependancy on other countries for supply. The infrastructure doesn't currently exist in the UK to make food production more localised, and this government are currently heavily involved on building on what was prime ag land, which because of the insanity of EU CAP regulations is set aside and deemed worthless! Gawd this is turning into War and Peace, but I have some very big concerns about where we are headed.

    Love the posting Mags, thanks for taking the time to share it xx

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  6. I'm a great fan of Monty Don and this meeting would have been just up my street. John Seymour preached much the same gospel (and also in his later years from Pembrokeshire).
    Yes, locally grown food. Eat with the seasons. I read the other day that we throw away - how many - millions of apples and bananas each year. Bought to be discarded after a week in the fruit bowl, like cut flowers. Such waste when 850 million people in the world are starving. Have you heard of the slow food movement? I blogged about it once.

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  7. Yup, yup, yup (head nodding furiously). can't believe the waste and the lack of foresight and the greed that propels our society. Throwaway everything. It's revolting.
    Mind you, if we have to rely on what we grow ourselves, we've got a problem here - it's the raspberry, rhubarb and weed diet!
    Great blog, PM....
    And yes, Fennie, John Seymour's books are fabulous...I'd heartily recommend the Self-Suficiency Handbook to anyone wanting to start down that road.

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  8. Yup, yup, yup (head nodding furiously). can't believe the waste and the lack of foresight and the greed that propels our society. Throwaway everything. It's revolting.
    Mind you, if we have to rely on what we grow ourselves, we've got a problem here - it's the raspberry, rhubarb and weed diet!
    Great blog, PM....
    And yes, Fennie, John Seymour's books are fabulous...I'd heartily recommend the Self-Suficiency Handbook to anyone wanting to start down that road.

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  9. Sounds like an excellent talk, Preseli Mags - I like Monty Don, and I'll bet he was a great speaker. This country's obsession with cheap food is beginning to unravel in all sorts of ways - I think we all need to listen to people like Monty.

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  10. Wow brilliant talk and so right too - but how do you get that message across to a World that just isn't interested . . . although there may come a time when the choice won't be ours to make - our planet will make it for us and it will be our own fault.

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  11. Very interesting - and thank you for sharing your evening. Speaking a lot of sense - especially getting urban dwellers onto farms to experience what farmers (and animals) actually do for them...perhaps they will try and shop locally after having visited a farm and not rely on the cheapest, and most travelled items, in the supermarket...? mootia x

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  12. ALl this talk of JOhn Seymour - just bought his Self-sufficient guide for gardeners, invaluable. Sounds like a very intersting and thought provoking meeting last night - S and I are getting all a bit knit-your-own-brown-rice about the state of things, so it would have been right up our street. And you know how you slightly fancy David Cameron? I slightly fancy Monty Don. Blush!

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  13. Nooooooooo! Can't believe you came here and didn't find me! Soooo unfair. Next time for Pete's sake PM me and I'll send you address, instructions, phone etc... though, unless the Bonkers House pulls its socks up I think we might be safer at Knightshayes......never turn down an excuse to go there (lovely garden centre apart from anything else). jxx

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  14. It sounds like a really good, interesting evening Mags. I'll pass on David Cameron but am another one who is quite leery where Monty is concerned! On a more serious note, I would have loved to have been there and yes to what so many of you are saying BUT just to make myself really deeply unpopular and probably get hate mail (I'm taking a deep breath!) - I do get a bit annoyed when people say 'farmers should get the respect they deserve'. I fully agree that many farmers are getting a very raw deal at the moment and I totally support any movement that gets us closer to how our food is grown and distirbuted. But farmers need to earn that respect, and very often I'm not surprised that they have such an image problem with many sections of the population. After all, many of the ills of todays over-intensified food production were started by farmers, yet suddenly we're supposed to see them all as guradians of the countryside. Many are, but not all. Many urbanites, I think, could and should have more sympathy with their plight - but it works both ways, and I don't remember too many farmers speaking out on behalf of other industries going down the pan. Rant over!! (And great blog).

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  15. I feel very frivolous for blogging about my brush (or near brush!) with celebs. I was really interested in MD's programme 'Growing Out of Trouble' so fascinating to hear more about that work. I do think sitting round a table and sharing a meal together is a valuable part of family life.
    Sitting round and sharing experiences round a coffee table is good too... I shall, hopefully, be finishing FTT soon so would be nice to catch up.

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  16. Just to clarify my earlier comment - I didn't mean YOU annoyed me by saying farmers should be respected -I just meant when it's said in a general sort of way I often feel like there's more to be said on the subject. I'll get my coat ...

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  17. Would love to have seen Monty D being properly convincingly sincere. Knew someone years ago, when MD was a soi-disant jeweller, when my friend was one of his designers (guess who got rich, guess who did all the work guess who was deemed the utter phit by many then ...). Sorry to sound churlish, and maybe leopards can change their spots but it annoys me when messages have to be conveyed by Names and they sort of hijack what's important - it should be important BECAUSE not by the fact of him sauntering along - sorry, PLEASE don't think I'n attacking you, was obviously scarred by my friend's being so utterly dumped on by him way back when. Perhaps I should grow up .... Still seems I'm alone in not buying into the Mr D (love his name) - but maybe the lessons you learn young sully you. Not to say that the message isn't true. xxx

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  19. Would love to have seen Monty D being properly convincingly sincere. Knew someone years ago, when MD was a soi-disant jeweller, when my friend was one of his designers (guess who got rich, guess who did all the work guess who was deemed the utter phit by many then ...). Sorry to sound churlish, and maybe leopards can change their spots but it annoys me when messages have to be conveyed by Names and they sort of hijack what's important - it should be important BECAUSE not by the fact of him sauntering along - sorry, PLEASE don't think I'n attacking you, was obviously scarred by my friend's being so utterly dumped on by him way back when. Perhaps I should grow up .... Still seems I'm alone in not buying into the Mr D (love his name) - but maybe the lessons you learn young sully you. Not to say that the message isn't true. xxx

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  20. Fascinating pm and I am another one nodding my head. I like MD and was hugely impressed by his programme about drug addicts. if you watched it all, every programme, the sense of how hard he worked at something pretty intractable was palpable. I agree utterly about local food and growing your own and about eating together. Great blog.

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