To grow, plants need nutrients and one of the most important is nitrogen. Beans don’t have to rely on growers and gardeners spreading chemical fertiliser, they make their own by ‘fixing’ nitrogen from the air with the help of a special type of bacteria living in their rood nodules.

Beans and other legumes such as peas and lentils not only produce their own fertiliser, they also share it with neighbouring plants. Native Americans utilised the beans’ generosity and developed the ‘Three Sisters’ planting technique: planting beans together with maize and squashes (milpa system). The beans provide nitrogen to the maize plants which act as ‘bean poles’, and to the squashes. Their huge leaves shade the soil and conserve soil moisture for everyone. The modern name for ‘in field easy fertiliser production’ is ‘companion planting’: many organic and regenerative farmers will grow grains together with beans or lentils.

… good for the environment

The benefits for the environment are considerable: chemical fertiliser is fossil fuel based, and its production is energy intensive. Farm Carbon Toolkit, a public interest company helping farmers to establish and reduce their carbon footprint estimates that “approximately 50% of the GHG emissions associated with N fertilisers are attributable to the production process”[1] – and that doesn’t even include transport. Using legumes to produce nitrogen fertiliser reduces the need for fossil fuels in farming considerably.

… good for farmers

Farmers benefit too: they can reduce or eliminate their chemical fertiliser bill, they save fuel, because they don’t have to spread it in the field, and they get to harvest beans!

… good for our health

Beans are an excellent source of protein and fibre. And they are cheap. Add some carbs such as pasta, potatoes or rice. Chop in a few vegetables and – if you have it – add a tiny amount of meat, cheap cuts are excellent. Done!  You’ve created a delicious and nutritionally well balanced meal. Nothing new in this, you’ll find recipes for bean-carb-veg combos pretty much everywhere in the world.

Mexicans are famous for their bean dishes, in Cuba black beans and rice – Moros y Cristianos – are a staple, here, baked beans come with ‘a full English breakfast’ or on toast as a fast lunch or dinner option. Americans add molasses or maple syrup and call it Boston baked beans. Italians have countless recipes for vegetable and bean soups. Rajma Dal, a bean curry, is famous across India, and can you imagine Chinese, Japanese and East Asian cuisine without soya sauce, edamame, tempeh or bean curd?

Get cooking!

Beans are easy to cook – use a pressure cooker or, even better, a slow cooker, make a big batch and you are set up for several meals. Bean dishes freeze well, too.

And there are so many recipes to explore, so many beans to try – home grown or exotic heirloom varieties – the choice is yours.

Where to buy dry beans?

Hodemedods

Hodemedods are based in Suffolk, an area where traditionally a lot of beans were grown. The company not only sells British grown beans, peas and lentils, they also work with farmers to help them overcome the challenges they face: Integrating beans into a rotation is easy – if you grow fodder beans. Growing beans for human consumption is far more difficult and not a lot of farmers are still doing it. Special equipment is needed for harvesting and cleaning, and not a lot of varieties are suitable for British soils and climates. Fava beans grow well but were mostly used as feed crop until in 2012 Hodmedod started a Fava Bean Revival. Today, a limited amount of flageolet beans is grown in Norfolk, too. Other varieties are imported from France.

Mexico and Bolivia have the best growing conditions for an amazing variety of beans. To try them check out the new kid on the block:

The Heirloom Bean Company

Since June, the company offers 23 heirloom varieties from Mexico and the US. To quote the Guardian food writer Felicity Cloake: “Imported from the legendary Rancho Gordo, these are possibly the most beautiful dried beans I’ve ever seen. And I can’t tell you how delicious they are, because you’d hardly believe it with something so simple”.

Why import beans from Mexico, shouldn’t we eat local, you may ask. For one, nowhere can more bean varieties be grown than in Mexico and Bolivia, countries which the great plant researcher Nikolai Vavilov identified as the ‘centres of genetic diversity’ of beans.

Different beans need different climatic and soil conditions, elevation, too, plays a role. By growing them, small farmers in the Americas are not only producing wonderful food, they are also preserve the genetic diversity of heirloom beans:. Their tiny fields are a living genetic seed bank which we need for breeding new varieties adapted to our rapidly changing climate.

Farmers will only continue to grow these beans in future if more people eat them and they can make a living. The Heirloom Bean Company wants to give these farmers and small farmer cooperatives market access, and they are committed to Fair Trade principles: they pay a fair price that allows producers to make a living. Apart from importing beans from Mexico via Rancho Gordo, the Heirloom Bean Company is now in contact with small farmer groups in Bolivia. It’s early days, but the heirloom beans on offer already should keep you busy cooking for a while yet.

[1] https://farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/toolkit-page/fertiliser-production/

Marianne Landzettel is a journalist writing and blogging about food, farming and agricultural policies in the UK, the US, continental Europe and South Asia. She worked for the BBC World Service and German Public Radio for close to 30 years. Follow her on X at @M_Landzettel and m.landzettel on Instagram. Images by kind permission and (c) M. Kunz

The Slow Food blog welcomes contributions on the topics of Food, Farming and Agriculture. The contents may not entirely match the views of Slow Food, but reflect the journeys of the authors. To write for us, get in touch.

The post In Praise of Beans appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

MRL, ADI, NOAEL…

Unfortunately, this alphabet soup is rather important. For our food to be safe, a Maximum Residue Level, MRL is defined for chemicals such as glyphosate. The level is meant to ensure that we do not exceed the ADI, the Acceptable Daily Intake of any pesticide. It is well below the NOAEL, the No Observed Adverse Effect level.

Herbicide producers such as Bayer-Monsanto argue that with these thresholds in place, and with glyphosate applied according to label instructions, products such as its Roundup weed killer are safe. And yet… in 2015 the International Agency for the Research of Cancer, IARC, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”, and in the US, tens of thousands of cancer sufferers allege that Roundup caused their illness and they are suing Bayer-Monsanto. “As of May 2025, Monsanto has reached settlement agreements in nearly 100,000 Roundup lawsuits, paying approximately $11 billion”, says the Lawsuit Information Centre[2]. Over 67,000 cases are still pending.

Bayer-Monsanto have done their utmost to discredit the IARC finding, arguing that in the US, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has licensed glyphosate with no need for a warning label. However, for their assessment, the EPA relied on feed studies on rats which were exposed to a daily dose of glyphosate for between 28 to 30 days. Not only did Monsanto conduct most of those studies, a rat lives on average for about two years, which means that the three months studies covered only a fraction of their average life span.

International study delivers real world data: glyphosate causes cancer

What if, like humans, rats were exposed to glyphosate throughout their lives? Scientists from the US and Europe cooperated in a multi-year study and the results were recently published in the peer reviewed journal Environmental Health[3].  In July, PAN UK (Pesticide Action Network) organised a webinar[4] with Dr Michael Antoniou, Professor in Molecular Genetics in the Department of Medical & Molecular Genetics at King’s College, London, who explained the study and its findings.

Into the weeds and our gut microbiome

Glyphosate affects the metabolism of plants[5] and microbes, among them the beneficial bacteria in our gut, such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. These are the bacteria we try to feed by drinking probiotics, because we now know how important a functioning gut microbiome is, for our health and our mood: the bacteria in the gut microbiome interact directly with our brain.

The effect of glyphosate on plants and microbes is the same: they die.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in weed killers such as Roundup, but all commercially available weed killers contain other ingredients that make glyphosate more effective and the product easier to use. The rats in the study were therefore split into three treatment groups: one received ‘pure’ glyphosate, the other two were subjected to commercially available formulas.

Each treatment group was split into sub-groups which reached one of the following doses: 0.5 mg/kg body weight/day, the ADI for the EU and UK, 5mg, considered acceptable in the US and most other countries, or 50mg (NOAEL) which still supposedly produces no observable adverse effect.

Middle aged rats, ill or dying

The rats in the treatment groups received a daily dose through their mums before they were born and then for two years, i.e. throughout their lives or until they died.

“We observed early onset and early mortality for a number of rare malignant cancers, including leukemia, liver, ovary and nervous system tumors. Notably, approximately half of the deaths from leukemia seen in the glyphosate and GBHs (glyphosate based herbicides) treatment groups occurred at less than one year of age, comparable to less than 35-40 years of age in humans”, writes one of the lead scientists, Dr. Daniele Mandrioli, Director of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center in Italy.

Not in my sandwich!

Environmental groups like PAN have demanded a glyphosate ban for years. “Minimally, as a precaution, glyphosate ADI must be drastically reduced”, concluded Michael Antoniou at the end of the webinar.

Given the enormous financial and lobbying power of agrochemical companies like Bayer Monsanto a ban is unlikely to happen soon.

There is no way of knowing how much glyphosate residue any of the fruit, vegetables or bread we eat contain. It’s impossible to test every batch for chemical residues, the best we have are estimates based on spot checks. PAN annually publishes the ‘Dirty Dozen’, a list of the most contaminated foods. It’s a helpful guideline and can be found on the website: https://www.pan-uk.org/dirty-dozen/

With bread, checking production standards can help. Wildfarmed is a supply chain brand for flour from grains grown in regenerative agricultural systems. Bread under the Wildfarmed label is on sale at outlets such as Waitrose, M&S and soon at Tesco, too. In a recent article, Farmers Weekly[6] listed the standards for production which include: “Insecticides, herbicides and fungicides are not permitted to be applied to the growing crop”. According to the company this includes a ban on pre-harvest glyphosate use.

Gail’s Bakery guarantees that from September all flour they use will be organic or from grains that have not been treated with glyphosate before harvest.

There are likely other food producers who work to the same standard, but if you haven’t got the time to contact the company to make sure, there is still one safe option: Buy organic, whenever you can!

[1] https://ahdb.org.uk/knowledge-library/pre-harvest-glyphosate-best-practice-in-cereals

[2] https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/roundup-lawsuit.html

[3] : https://glyphosatestudy.org/uncategorized/international-study-reveals-glyphosate-weed-killers-cause-multiple-types-of-cancer

[4]  https://youtu.be/RbOmX4n2xw0

[5] Glyphosate inhibits the EPSP synthase, an enzyme in the shikimate pathway which means that vital proteins can’t be built. Humans don’t have a shikimate pathway, but our gut microbes do! For more details see the youtube link.

[6] https://www.fwi.co.uk/arable/crop-selection/market-opportunities/wildfarmed-expands-into-oats-and-barley-markets

Marianne Landzettel is a journalist writing and blogging about food, farming and agricultural policies in the UK, the US, continental Europe and South Asia. She worked for the BBC World Service and German Public Radio for close to 30 years. Follow her on X at @M_Landzettel and m.landzettel on Instagram

The Slow Food blog welcomes contributions on the topics of Food, Farming and Agriculture. The contents may not entirely match the views of Slow Food, but reflect the journeys of the authors. To write for us, get in touch.

The post Could your sandwich increase your cancer risk? – International study confirms link between glyphosate and cancer appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

Animals – Beacon Farms animals are grass fed, native breeds, and often Ark of Taste animals.

Delivery – The meat box came via tracked courier, and was perfectly cold upon receipt.

——————————————————————————————————————

We – like you – at times read reviews which have nothing but incredible things to say about the product, and wonder what was the catch, or whether they were paid to write something positive, or asked to remove something negative.

The absolute truth is the meat that we received from Beacon Farms was some of the best we have tasted this year, and arguably period – the overall quality, butchery and flavour is second to none. The office team at Slow Food have already looked at making follow up purchases of their own.

We tasted

Rib eye steaks – Grass Fed, well marbled with beautiful savoury fat which we couldn’t stop eating. Deeply flavourful and tender. We cooked it medium to render the fat just a little.

Bavette steaks – We cut them crossways for a salad, they were remarkably tender for Bavette, and with deep intensity of flavour. For several, this was their favourite steak

Sausage rolls – Fat as a fist, meaty – and super substantial, dare we say one between two is enough? – the flavour of the pork shines through, with richness to the pastry, which flakes nicely.

Venison steak – We need to eat more venison! Tender, not so deeply gamey – we pan fried it pink, a touch of redcurrant jelly and stuffed it into a roll with watercress.

Bacon – Dry cure. Zero shrinkage. Zero white “liquid”. Just savoury pork which crisps to mahogany colour. The fat is savoury and as flavoursome as the meat. Not oversalted

Sausages (Traditional) – Beautiful balance of pork and herb. Texture was meaty but moist. One of our team declared the best sausage they had tasted!

Rack of lamb –  Grass fed, sweet, delicious fat (which isn’t too intense in flavour) – the standout cut from what we tasted. The very best of British Farming and Butchery

https://beaconfarms.co.uk/

The post Review Beacon Farms appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

DEFRA secretary Steve Reed visited on day two, and it seems that many journalists left the tent after he had announced that the SFI (Sustainable Farming Initiative) which pays farmers for implementing ‘nature friendly practices’, would reopen next year. Helena Horton, the Guardian’s environment reporter, however must have stayed on.

“Plan to boost nature could end production at some upland farms” reads the headline of her article in Friday’s Guardian.

The title of the online version spells things out even clearer:

“English farms could be taken out of food production to boost nature, says minister”.

According to Horton, both, farm subsidy programmes and the soon to be published land use plan “would be aimed at increasing food production in the most productive areas and decreasing or completely removing it in the least productive. In reality, this means many upland farmers may be incentivised to stop farming. He <Reed> said his land use framework ‘envisions taking some of the least productive land out of food production, but supporting the more productive land to increase production’. Reed said this was so “you maintain outputs, or even increase outputs while increasing the space for nature”.

To say this at a regenerative agriculture festival takes some chutzpah.

Nature or food?

The assumption at DEFRA seems to be that there is a divide between nature on one side and agriculture on the other. The job of farmers is to produce food. And there is help at hand to increase production: agrichemical companies supply pesticides for ‘crop protection’ and chemical fertilizer; the government passed the Precision Breeding Act, which allows the use of gene editing techniques on plants and animals. And subsidies for the odd hedge or flower margin along the field can even make industrial ag look ‘nature friendly’.

Steve Reed sounds as if he was channelling his inner Andrea Leadsom, first DEFRA secretary after the Brexit referendum in 2016. “It would make so much more sense if those with the big fields do the sheep, and those with the hill farms do the butterflies”, she had said on July 14th, 2016.

Isn’t meat food?

Under Reed’s plans, many hill and upland farmers will have no option but to sell up and get out of farming. They farm land that is unsuitable for grow grains, but pastures and permanent grassland are ideal for raising livestock. Ruminants such as sheep and cattle are able to do what we can’t: they can live off grass, which the microbes in their stomachs convert into the food that sustains them. The meat from grass-fed animals is nutrient dense, providing high levels of ‘good’ fatty acids such as omega-3 fatty acids, as well as minerals, vitamins and antioxidants.

Visit an upland farm and talk to a livestock farmer who manages the land under a Higher Tier Stewardship scheme. Such grasslands are functioning ecosystems in their own right: rich in plant biodiversity and habitat for numerous bird species, insects and small mammals.

Then drive into the hills and spot the slopes that are no longer grazed by animals because the farmers had to give up. Grasslands have co-evolved with ruminants over millennia and once sheep and cattle are no longer there to graze, bracken, reeds and sedges take over. That, too, is of course ‘nature’, but is it the landscape we want? Our landscapes have been shaped and managed through farming for centuries and ‘rewilding’ doesn’t bring back wilderness. Instead farmed/grazed land becomes brush and prone to soil erosion.

Farming with nature

And that’s just the environment… not to mention the abject misery, despair, sense of loss and failure this approach brings to hill and upland farmers, who will be forced to give up land they have often cared for over many generations.

If only Steve Reed had taken the time to tour Groundswell and meet Gabe Brown. On his farm outside of Bismarck, Brown grows food and lots of it: grains, meat, vegetables, fruit, honey… On Radio 4’s Farming Today programme he explained what regenerative agriculture is: “In my mind, the definition of regenerative agriculture is farming in synchrony with nature to repair, rebuild, revitalise and restore ecosystem function, beginning with all life in the soil and moving to all life above the soil”.

Marianne Landzettel is a journalist writing and blogging about food, farming and agricultural policies in the UK, the US, continental Europe and South Asia. She worked for the BBC World Service and German Public Radio for close to 30 years. Follow her on X at @M_Landzettel and m.landzettel on Instagram

The post England divided – nature on one side, agriculture on the other? Or: when DEFRA secretary Steve Reed visits Groundswell appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

The UK government has high hopes for a trade deal with the US. Because of Trump’s chaotic tariff policy, the need for a trade agreement is greater than ever before but negotiations often take years. One of the major stumbling blocks usually is agriculture. Things might happen faster if agricultural goods were excluded, but that seems unlikely, given the situation of US farmers, who stand to lose billions through Trump’s tariff policy and the looming trade war with China in particular.

On the menu: chlorinated chicken and hormone beef

GM maize and corn imports won’t be much of a problem. British consumers have not shown much concern for what goes into animal feed. In the EU, labels ascertaining that chicken or dairy products were produced without GMO feed are popular. No such label exists here, according to the FSA (Food Standards Agency), only retail products that contain or consist of GMOs have to be labelled as such. However, British consumers have no appetite for chlorinated chickens and hormone beef. But if a trade deal with the US gets struck, we are likely to find both on our plates soon rather than later. Trump (and successive US ag secretaries) have denounced the unwillingness of Britain and the EU to allow the import of products such as hormone beef as ‘illegal trade barriers’ – which they are not.

An exhibit at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac : Ely House, London. Photo copyright: @M.Kunz

Animal welfare and buying British

On the BBC’s Radio 4 Farming Today programme, Professor David Main from the Royal Agricultural University recently explained the difference in animal welfare standards between the US and the UK. In the UK, some standards are laid down by law, others are defined through assurance schemes such as Red Tractor, and supermarkets may promote their own schemes depending on customer demand. Assurance schemes are usually independently verified on an annual schedule.

The US have no federal animal welfare legislation, says Main, though there are individual States such as California that may have very progressive standards enshrined in law. Egg laying hens in California for example have to be kept cage free, and pork sold in the state must come from pigs that had at least 2.3m² living space throughout their lives. Both regulations are in place for now, but both are contested in court by agricultural organisations, who claim farmers are burdened with unnecessary costs.

Low production standards raise the probability of health risks, and in the US that risk is dealt with at the end of the process, says Main – for example with a chlorine wash.

Not every US chicken will have had a chlorine bath, nor will all beef be full of hormones, but there is no way of knowing what’s what.

Farmers paying the price

Neither US practice will be allowed in the UK. Farmers here will continue to adhere to high animal welfare standards and pay the price: it costs money to provide adequate space for pigs and chickens, wean piglets later in order to minimise the need for antibiotics, and not supercharge muscle growth in beef cattle by feeding them hormones. If a trade deal between the US and the UK is reached, UK farmers are likely to be at a disadvantage. During a cost of living crisis many customers have little choice but to opt for the cheapest products even if it’s made with chlorine chicken or hormone beef.

How to burn your toast and eat it

While a trade deal may never happen, another threat to our food is likely to materialise as early as this autumn when the regulations for growing gene edited plants for commercial food production will take the final parliamentary hurdle. A quick recap: in 2023 parliament passed the Precision Breeding Act which allows the use of gene editing techniques on plants and animals. Wheat altered so that it does not produce the potentially carcinogenic compound acrylamide is already being grown in field trials. Once the proposed regulations have been passed, food manufacturers can start working on bread that you can still safely eat even if you burnt it under the grill.

GMO backdoor opening

If the regulations pass in the current form which they almost certainly will, food producers can ‘self-certify’, over 90% of gene edited products will get to market without oversight. There will be no transparency and no liability because gene edited foods will not have to be labelled as such. Consumers who want to avoid them will have to consult various government data bases and may still be none the wiser.

The only beneficiaries will be biotech companies in the ‘golden triangle’ between Cambridge, Oxford and London. The government grants them huge financial support in the hope that they will produce new pharmaceuticals, medical therapies and ‘precision bred’ crops and thus create jobs and revenue.

While biotech companies are welcome to apply for generous R&D grants, farmers face subsidy cuts, the closure of the SFI scheme until at least 2026, and a newly introduced inheritance tax.

Buying healthy, British grown and produced, non-GM food might soon get a lot harder.

Marianne Landzettel is a journalist writing and blogging about food, farming and agricultural policies in the UK, the US, continental Europe and South Asia. She worked for the BBC World Service and German Public Radio for close to 30 years. Follow her on X at @M_Landzettel and m.landzettel on Instagram

The post Why our diets soon may get much worse appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

The chances are, even if you are a dedicated supporter of slow food, regenerative, or organic farming and other methods of food production that respect the land and nurture the soil, you have already eaten products grown in a PFAL without knowing.  This is because some ranges out-of-season soft fruit and salads for sale all year round in British supermarkets are grown in PFALs, but with minimal labelling; as consumers, we are not fully informed about the production methods of these foods or any potential allergens they may contain.   Initially, soft fruits were among the main crops grown, such as strawberries and raspberries as they have a higher consumer market value and are more profitable, but some PFALs will claim to be able to grow anything (which is not yet the case on a commercial scale).  Production currently focuses on most herbs, microgreens, soft fruits and bagged salads, usually sold under own-label brands by the retailer.  According to research quoted by Konfo et al (2024), vertical farms can offer “…access premium markets, resulting in higher income potential”.

One of the biggest claims of PFALs is that it is a more sustainable method of farming – it uses less land, less water (the necessary nutrient solutions can be recycled, including purified fish water) and can grow crops more efficiently and reliably than traditional methods.  However, considering the heavy use of natural resources needed to build and operate a PFAL, this could be a contestable point as they rely on LED lighting to grow the crops; indeed, reports show that many of the early PFALs failed due the intensive energy requirements.  While the more recent purpose built PFALs can claim to run on solar energy, problems remain with the manufacture and distribution of solar panels, which use valuable natural mineral resources and their subsequent disposal, creating potential environment issues for the future. As researchers Stanghellini and Katzin (2024) found, “…There is no way for producing electricity without environmental impact”, including solar panels.

Other advantages of PFALs according to academic researchers, include increased  productivity, crop quality and food security.  However, look more closely and these claims may not stack up quite as neatly as the vertical crops in a PFAL.  As the BBC reported in 2023, numerous problems with production and quality control have resulted in the closure of PFALs, citing cases in the USA and Europe.   On the subject of product quality, well this can vary – the LED lights (usually in varying spectrums of pink, blue or green) used to grow these foods can manipulate the size, colour and rapidity by which the crops are grown – hardly a ‘slow food’ environment.  PFALs claim they do not use pesticides, herbicides or insecticides, but pests and diseases still have to be controlled somehow – in many cases, with LED lighting, itself a subject of further research and discussion when used in food production and potential effects on the human immune system.  In fairness, the industry is still developing – perhaps PFALs, if fully regulated by Governments and nutritional specialists like other foods, could serve a valuable purpose in future as a back-up food supply, but reflecting on Ellen Heaselgrave’s blog, the question we should all be asking ourselves is which is better for humans, the eco-system, our planet and the environment – food grown in accordance with nature or in an artificial factory or laboratory?

– – –

If you would like to know more, feel free to conduct your own research using openly available/open access published papers.  Suggested sources to start with include:

BBC, 2023 (overview):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66173872

Konfo et al (2024) (overview, including premium pricing):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266615432400022X

Stanghellini and Katzin, 2024 (environment and energy): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652624018079

Wired Magazine, 2022 (overview/market energy report):

https://www.wired.com/story/vertical-farms-energy-crisis/

The post The Rise of PFALs – Plant Factories with Artificial Lighting appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

Why now?

The creation of a pan-Sussex layer of government in 2026 creates a raft of potential opportunities and threats for food producers, small businesses and food related initiatives in a way that we have never seen before in either East or West Sussex. This is compounded by the wholescale reorganisation of local government to create three unitary authorities underneath the overarching pan-Sussex entity. Access to decision makers about planning and all other critical decision making will change, not necessarily for the better. Slow Food Sussex has an opportunity to become a single point of influence active on behalf of its members and the principles of Slow Food.

Immediate next steps

There will be a Zoom meeting chaired by Shane Holland at 7.30pm on 13th May. Click here to register

Agenda

19.30    Introduction and welcome

19.40    The future political landscape for Slow Food Sussex

19.50    Discussion and comment

20.00    The aspirations of Slow Food UK for Slow Food Sussex

20.10    A practical plan of action

20.20    Discussion and comment

20.40    Summary and agreed next steps

20.50    Close and thanks

This event is open to members and non members alike.

The post Slow Food Sussex Relaunch appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

Five years on….

… all of us, UK farmers and consumers, are in a very different place.

The cost of living crisis has shoppers seek out the cheapest food. Over Christmas we saw supermarkets compete over the lowest vegetable prices, parsnips, potatoes, carrots, and sprouts went for way less than the cost of production. British lamb and beef is too expensive? Frozen meat from Australia will do just fine.

For UK farmers, margins have been shrinking while costs steadily increased: the war against the Ukraine was a major factor in higher energy and fertiliser prices. Since 2020, farmers continued to deal with TB in dairy herds, with avian flu and lately outbreaks of Bluetongue.

The climate crisis continues to make farming increasingly difficult. The 18 months period from October 2023 to March 2024 was the wettest on record, September 2024 saw the most rainfall since 1918, and the last winter, again, was wet. For long periods fields were waterlogged, winter crops never made it out of the ground. Because of adverse weather, the lambing and calving seasons particularly in the north of England were among the worst ever. With delayed grass growth animals had to stay in barns for longer, which meant higher feed costs.

Fruit and vegetable growers struggled with labour shortages due to Brexit, and increasing costs due to an increased minimum wage. And that was before…

… the 2024 autumn budget

Not only did the chancellor introduce a 20% inheritance tax on farms, she also announced that direct payments would be phased out earlier than previously scheduled.

A quick recap: until Britain left the EU, farmers received considerable subsidies via the EU. For upland and hill farms such ‘direct payments’ could amount from 60% to over 90% of farm income. The British government decided to continue the payments to farmers in England after Brexit for one year – before phasing it out. (The devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland devise their own programmes). In England, subsidies would subsequently be paid through the Environmental Land Management Scheme, ELMS, providing ‘public money for goods’. The Sustainable Farming Initiative, SFI, is part of ELMS and was launched in 2022. A 150 page handbook spelt out the requirements and payment structures for a whole host of different options. For a variety of reasons farmers were reluctant to sign up: pay-outs were low, the scheme was changed multiple times. Some farmers couldn’t join because they had committed to pre-Brexit programmes such as the Higher Tier Countryside Stewardship scheme, and tenant farmers were either not eligible at all, or needed the permission of the landlord.

Who will produce our food?

Enrolments picked up after the autumn budget – when on March 11^th, totally out of the blue and without warning, DEFRA closed SFI for new entrants. SFI is to undergo a reset, details will be announced in summer, but the scheme won’t reopen until next year.

Farmers are in shock and disbelief. CLA, the Country Land and Business Association, called the SFI closure the “cruellest betrayal” by the government. NFU president Tom Bradshaw spoke of “another shattering blow to English farms”. With direct payments ending and no options to join SFI, thousands of farms face financial ruin. Hill and upland farms have few options but to raise cattle and sheep. Diversifying a farm business needs money, which they don’t have. And in any case: how many holiday lets, glamping sites or conference facilities does an area need? Many arable farmers will have no option but to farm ‘fence post to fence post’ and maximise yields – with no consideration for the environment.

The sudden closure of SFI comes after the introduction of the 20% inheritance tax. According to a study by finance and mortgage advisory firm Ashbridge Partners, the planned inheritance tax is likely to cause four in ten farms in England to go out of business by 2030 because they will no longer be financially viable.

The UK’s food security is already at risk. “To safeguard our future, we must prioritise resilience at every level – from local communities to national frameworks,” says Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at City St George’s, University of London, and author of a recent study on food security in Britain. “From floods in key farming regions to disruptions in global trade, we are facing a confluence of threats that could undermine our ability to feed ourselves,” said Lord Toby Harris, the chair of the National Preparedness Commission. “Food security is a cornerstone of national resilience”. But will there be enough farms left to grow our food?

Heartbreak and misery

Large corporate farms may continue to operate by doing what the government suggests: invest in technology – from robots to more sophisticated machines to gene edited seeds.

Small, diverse family farms, the ones advertisers love to show on posters and packings, have none of these options. Like Clover and Boxer in Orwell’s Animal Farm they try to cope by working even harder. But self-exploitation is an unsustainable farming practice. Already many farm families are not able to afford the food they grow. The constant worry over bills to be paid at the end of the months and, at the back of everyone’s mind, the threat of losing the farm, being the last of many generations of farmers on their land – it’s a situation that causes a degree of emotional stress, despair and misery that amounts to a rural mental health crisis.

If we want food production in the UK to continue, farmers either need to be paid fairly and reliably (cost of production plus a margin) for what they produce – or food production must be subsidised.

By buying directly, consumers can support individual farm businesses. But this is a crisis that needs nation wide solutions. Maybe a British version of the Farm Aid concerts started during the 1980s US farm crisis by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young might be a first step to at least raise broader awareness.

Photo copyright: @M.Kunz

Marianne Landzettel is a journalist writing and blogging about food, farming and agricultural policies in the UK, the US, continental Europe and South Asia. She worked for the BBC World Service and German Public Radio for close to 30 years. Follow her on X at @M_Landzettel and m.landzettel on Instagram

The post COVID lessons not learnt: Why there is heartbreak and misery in rural England appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

It’s 7am in Chiayi, a city with about 260,000 inhabitants, some 250km south of the capital Taipei. The farmers market stretches along the narrow lanes of a whole city block and it is audible even before the first stand come into view: hundreds of mopeds and scooters produce a soundscape like a swarm of angry hornets. On their way to work the drivers stop at different market stalls to buy vegetables, fruit, meat, fish and seafood. The first farmers had arrived at 4am to set up, none have to travel further than about 30km. Some squat in front of a white sheet with a small selection of vegetables arranged in neat piles. As soon as everything is sold they will return home to do farm work. Other stalls offer a huge selection of fruit and vegetables. Until the city government stopped the practice for reasons of hygiene, farmers slaughtered pigs and even cows right next to their market stands, a fate that now awaits only the odd turtle. As in the People’s Republic of China, in Taiwan too, ‘wet markets’ have a long tradition. Drawing that comparison though leads into linguistic and political quicksand.

The nation that can’t speak its name

Farmers in Taiwan not only produce food, in a way they also grow national cohesion – which is extremely important for the nation’s security.

The key to understanding the multi-faceted role of agriculture in Taiwan is the country’s history. At the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 Mao Zedong proclaimed the ‘People’s Republic of China’. The Nationalists under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, which they named ‘Republic of China’. In 1971 the UN withdrew its recognition of Taiwan as a nation state, and the People’s Republic of China took the ‘China’ seat in the UN Security Council. The People’s Republic considers Taiwan as a ‘wayward province’ that needs to return to the fold of the motherland. Worldwide only 12 states remain that recognise Taiwan as an independent nation. Since 1996 until the present, Taiwan has had free and fair elections. Successive democratic governments have tried their best not to provoke the rulers in Beijing, while furthering Taiwan’s democracy, economy and national identity. A recent sports event illustrates how elegantly the Taiwanese walk that tightrope. When the Taiwanese team won the World Baseball Softball championship, the team captain did a lap of honour in the stadium while pointing on the front of his shirt where other teams show their national flag. Within hours the gesture became a symbol for thepredominant sentiment among the 23 million Taiwanese: it’s their way to “fly their flag”.

Where eating is a political act

On a map Taiwan resembles a sweet potato with Taipei at the rounded top end. Along the eastern coast, mountain ranges rise to well over 10,000ft. On the west side of the island a third of the island is flat and densely populated. Cities seem to merge with towns and villages along that coastal strip, but from the window of one of the highspeed trains one can also see hundreds of tiny fields on which rice and vegetables are grown, orchards, greenhouses and, along the coast, aquaculture ponds. The average size of a farm is 1.1ha (2.7 acres). Only 3% are certified organic, but the government incentivises transition and encourages farmers to at least reduce the amount of agrochemicals applied. Why? For the production of chemical fertilisers Taiwan depends on imports from China, and a political crisis could have a negative impact on the nation’s food production – the less fertiliser Taiwanese farmers need, the better.

The Taiwanese government also wants its citizens to know where their food comes from. In a newly developed part of Zhubei, 80km southwest of Taipei, a traditional Chinese farmhouse sits in the centre of a small park. City planners decided to keep it to remind the residents of the surrounding apartment buildings that they live on what used to be agricultural land. The nearest wet market is in the city centre, but the city government has assisted a co-operative to set up and run a shop that sells fresh fruit and vegetables from local farmers. In the adjacent square organic producers set up their stalls for the Saturday market.

Respecting indigenous groups

Yong Shun Kao and Mei Hui Mei sell cabbages, spring onions, mushrooms and kakis. Both belong to an indigenous Taiwanese tribe and live in their ancestral village in the mountains, the farm is at an elevation of 5,100ft and can only be reached via a narrow road with numerous hairpin bends. Once a week they come to the market and deliver produce to an organic co-operative. A poster explains which varieties are seasonal and what’s available year-round. The family grows 14 different varieties of fruit and vegetable. In recent years they really have felt the consequences of the climate crisis, they say. There is too much rain, rain storms damage the fruits on the trees, and typhoons seem be more frequent. One such storm caused a landslide which blocked the access road, for six months the village was cut off, and essential supplies had to be flown in by helicopter.

Industry support, much appreciated

In the flat, fertile coastal region many farmers are members of a co-operative, some share the use of machinery, other organise the deliveries and marketing of produce. Shelley Su has a degree in design and is a third generation farmer, her great-grandparents were fishermen. She also heads an organic farmers’ co-operative with 22 members in Tainan province. Organic farming practices are really important to her. “I want to live in a clean environment”, she says. Su works closely with the city government of Tainan, which not only makes cheap loans available to organic famers but also facilitates contacts to customers: the co-operative delivers produce to restaurants, schools, and even the canteen of TSMC, the world’s leading producer of microchips. TSMC makes 90% of all complex semiconductors, and for Taiwan it’s become a kind of political life insurance: from smart phones to AI, nothing works without TSMC chips. Not just western companies, but the US and EU governments, too, have a vital interest in Taiwan remaining peaceful and democratic – necessary conditions for the continued supply of those semiconductors that the world cannot do without.

Like many companies, TSMC, too, maintains direct contacts to a number of farms – in a political crisis or the worst-case scenario of a Chines attack everyone’s survival depends on the ability of Taiwan’s farmers to produce enough food. Groups of TSMC employees are regular guests on the farms belonging to the organic farmers co-operative. They help with the harvest of vegetables and meet the farmers who deliver produce to their canteen.

As everywhere, the highest margins in food supply chains are realized through on farm value adding. For stressed customers Shelly Su produces ‘ready to eat’ vegetable products which can simply be added to rice or soups. She’s also designed all the packaging herself. “Made in Taiwan”, she says with a broad smile.

Photo copyright: @M.Kunz

Marianne Landzettel is a journalist writing and blogging about food, farming and agricultural policies in the UK, the US, continental Europe and South Asia. She worked for the BBC World Service and German Public Radio for close to 30 years. Follow her on X at @M_Landzettel and m.landzettel on Instagram

The post Taiwan: Where the government is behind farmers all the way appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

The book’s advocacy for regenerative farming convergences with Slow Food principles, showing how grazing animals contribute to biodiversity and are essential to soil health though fostering ecosystems that support a wide range of life. This is contrasted to the intensive feedlot systems prevalent in industrial agriculture, which degrade the environment and deplete natural resources. 

The book highlights the importance of treating animals with respect, ensuring a less stressful and more dignified end to their lives. The case for local abattoirs is clearly related to the practice of humane slaughter and aligns perfectly with Slow Food’s core values. This differs sharply with the industrial practices often associated with intensive meat production. The book’s photography brings us as visually close to aspects of the animals’ life and death as many of us will ever get and helps us witness and consider the life and death of the animal that that we see as food.

“The Sustainable Meat Challenge” is an indispensable volume for the bookshelves of farmers, policy makers, chefs, food buyers, home cooks, food students; anyone interested in learning about practical solutions for producers and buyers alike, while also challenging the dominant paradigm of industrial agriculture.

David Matchett

The book is out now, and available from all good bookstores, as well as online retailers.

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