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.

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.

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.

The post A Slow Food Perspective on “The Sustainable Meat Challenge” by Marianne Landzettel appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

That’s the theory at least. In practice most wraps are stiff, can’t be fitted around the container neatly, they develop cracks and after some use the wax peels off.

The Indian XL rock bees to the rescue

Apis dorsata, is an Asian relative of our European honey bee, but the size of a hornet and much more aggressive. For good reasons, ‘rock bees’ live their life exposed to the elements. The huge combs they build are easy to spot, they are up to 1.5m wide and hang from branches in tall trees or cliffs. Because the comb not only has to support the weight of thousands of these large bees, but also withstand high winds and monsoon rains, the tensile strength of the wax is significantly higher than that of wax from European honey bees. And that’s what makes the Diversity Honey wax wraps so unique: they are pliable and keep that elasticity, and because they are slightly sticky they stay in place, they can be easily cleaned with warm water and re-used for up to a year.

Hoopoe on a Hill

The wraps are produced by the women’s co-operative ‘Hoopoe on a Hill’ in the Western Ghats, a coastal mountain range in India, and one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.

The women work in a simple, two story building with a splendid view across terraced vegetable fields and fruit orchards all the way to the town of Kodaikanal on the other side of the valley.

Sheila is one of the eight Hoopoe women and oblivious of the scenic view. She does not lift her eyes from the work space underneath the window as she is carefully ironing the pieces of organic cotton cloth her colleagues have cut to the required size. Rani and Nimi’s job is to apply the wax. “We have done endless trials until we found the right mix”, says Nishita Vasant, one of the two Hoopoe on a Hill founders.

The wax has to be filtered several times, then it is mixed with the resin and slowly heated. It takes about half an hour and constant and repeated stirring until the mix has the consistency and colour of treacle. Rani places one of the freshly ironed cotton pieces on a baking tray, dips a broad brush into the wax mixture and applies it evenly in a thin layer. The cloth is dried for a few minutes in an oven, then Rani carefully lifts it off the tray with two metal clips, gently moves it back and forth to cool it somewhat and then attaches it to a washing line. There the freshly waxed cloths stay for a fortnight until they are properly ‘cured’.

“When will we get new orders?”

Nishita Vasant and Priya Mani founded Hoopoe on a Hill in 2016. From their work with different non-governmental organisations they knew that the only way to help indigenous groups and women in particular is to provide them with an independent means of income.

To find a job in Kodaikanal shouldn’t be a problem, at an elevation of 2,000m the town has a pleasant climate and is popular with tourists. But to work in one of the many hotels, restaurants or shops one has to either live in the town itself, or have the means to get there. None of the women who work for Hoopoe on a Hill have a motorbike, let alone a car. The bus runs only once a day. The women have few options but to take an ill paid, seasonal agricultural job – or get lucky and work for Hoopoe.

Already, the money the women have earned has made a difference to their lives and that of their families: Rani has paid back a loan her husband took out in her name but without her knowledge. Sheila’s father is a fruit seller, the business is not going well, but now she is able to support her parents financially. Nimi could finally buy a TV. Shivaka bought a cow and earns additional money by selling the milk. And Shobna has opened a savings account: in today’s India a good education costs money and she is planning ahead: her son is eight, her daughter two. Once they are grown up, Shobna wants them to be able to choose any profession and go to university if that’s what they want.

But to keep all these projects going, the women need orders that allow them to continue producing and selling wax wraps.

There is art in the art of making wax wraps

The conversation flows easily and it is obvious that the women not only work well together, they also have a lot of fun. They trust each other, even personal problems are discussed quite openly, and with Nishita’s and Priya’s careful and sensitive comments solutions are found. Through their work at Hoopoe the women gain more than a regular income, they have become self-confident and more independent.

And they are proud to produce such good and beautiful wax wraps. Diversity Honeys has commissioned Yunus Kimani, professor at an Indian art college, to design some of the wraps. All of the women love the Jungle Book design, and the thought that in a far-away country kids go to school or kindergarten every day, carrying their lunch in one of the Hoopoe wax wraps, makes them happy.

The A. dorsata wax wraps are available here: https://tinyurl.com/ypzbx5kk

More information on the wax collectors can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/m8bfz7rf

The post Firm hold, long lasting, antibacterial and made by a women’s group in India– Wax wraps 2.0 from XL bees appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

In addition to the public vote, each national director chooses their Person of the Year, someone who embodies Slow Food values.

UK Winner indicates overall winner for the UK in addition to the nation award.

Retailer of the Year                                                             Broad Bean, Ludlow
Producer of the Year UK WINNER                                    Shropshire Salumi, Shrewsbury
Cook of the Year                                                                  Steve Guy, The Hungry Guy
Newcomer (under two years)  Award UK WINNER        Darwin Coffee, Shrewsbury      
Environment & Biodiversity Award    UK WINNER        The Food Library, Northampton        
Food Product of the Year   UK WINNER                          Sourdough, Peter Cooks Bread, Herefordshire
Drink Product of the Year   UK WINNER                         Fletchers Cider, Worcestershire

Person of the Year  UK WINNER: Pat Thomas (Pictured above)

Pat has been a long-time campaigner for good food, particularly in the organic sector, and most recently campaigning on gene editing. She co-created alongside Slow Food UK the campaign “Not in my supermarket” which asked retailers to commit to not stocking gene edited products, a campaign which is now being replicated in Europe in their fight against gene editing. Her work not only encompasses England, but extends across the UK, where is she is frequently asked to give evidence in parliaments and to statutory bodies.

Nominated by Shane Holland, Director Slow Food England

The post Slow Food England Award Winners 2024 appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

In addition to the public vote, each national director chooses their Person of the Year, someone who embodies Slow Food values.

UK Winner indicates overall winner for the UK in addition to the nation award.

Retailer of the Year   UK WINNER           Slemish Market Garden
Producer of the Year                                 Counter Culture Real Bread
Cook of the Year                                         David Holden, Middletown
Newcomer (under two years)  Award      Coan Coffee Kircubbin                
Environment & Biodiversity Award          Robbie Neill of Stonebridge Cottage Farm        
Food Product of the Year                          Sourdough focaccia. Counter culture
Drink Product of the Year                         Basalt Distillery Gin

Person of the Year: Emily McCorkell (pictured above)

Emily McCorkell of Lo and Slo. An American living in Derry cooking bbq, and bringing the concept of Slow slow cooking to a wider audience. She uses sustainable and regenerative products, cooks at a cooking school, and is ahead of the game in sustainability

Nominated by Paula McIntyre Director Slow Food Northern Ireland

The post Slow Food Northern Ireland Award Winners 2024 appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.

In addition to the public vote, each national director chooses their Person of the Year, someone who embodies Slow Food values.

UK Winner indicates overall winner for the UK in addition to the nation award.

Retailer of the Year                                     Locavore, Glasgow
Producer of the Year                                   Uradale Farm, Shetland
Cook of the Year  UK WINNER                 Neil Forbes, Cafe St Honore, Edinburgh 
Newcomer (under two years)  Award      Gelatessa,  Glasgow               
Environment & Biodiversity Award         Dear Green, Glasgow           
Food Product of the Year                           Freedom Bakery Wholemeal Loaf, Glasgow
Drink Product of the Year                          Dookit Afresh, Glasgow 

People of the Year: Tommy and Mary Isbister (Pictured above. Image (c) W Barrie)

Nominated by Walter Mowat, Director Slow Food Scotland

The post Slow Food Scotland Award Winners 2024 appeared first on Slow Food in the UK.