Market Life: The producers

Market Life The producers

281003 772397 9

ISSN 2397-2815

A collection of articles from The Borough Market magazine boroughmarket.org.uk

ORLANDO GILI

Snapshot A rain-soaked cabbage growing at the Lincolnshire farm of Ted’s Veg in 2017

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Borough Market 8 Southwark Street London SE1 1TL Join the conversation: Twitter @boroughmarket Instagram @boroughmarket facebook.com/boroughmarket To ensure that a weekly fix of articles, recipes and Borough Market event information lands in your email inbox, sign up to our newsletter: boroughmarket.org.uk/newsletter

Matter of opinion Sustainable sustenance Knowledge is power Get connected

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Strong words Sheila Dillon Gill Meller Harold McGee Dan Barber Mary Quicke Deirdre Woods

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Softly softly 16 A visit to Park Farm, home of Bath Soft Cheese, to meet a man whose mission is to not only make beautiful cheese but to demystify the art by inviting the public in to watch Deep & meaningful 22 We head out into the English Channel to watch Darren Brown engaging in the age-old art of scallop diving—a method of collection that helps sustain the delicate ecosystem of the seabed Don’t follow the herd 26 Northfield Farm takes a singular approach to farming, blending centuries-old traditions with an openness to innovation. We visit a family farm that’s been a vital part of the Borough Market community for 20 years Q&A 32 Patrick Holden The founder of the Sustainable Food Trust and organic dairy farmer on why our food system needs to change if irreversible climate change, a biodiversity catastrophe and the breakdown of civil society are to be avoided

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The producers Everything at Borough Market begins with the producers, with the farmers, the fishermen, the hunters, the bakers, the fermenters, the cheesemakers. Unlike the more industrialised parts of the food retail landscape, where the people who grow, rear, catch or make our food are invisible to the public and their needs fall very far down the list of priorities, here they’re an obvious presence, either manning their own stalls or supplying our traders through the shortest and most transparent of supply chains.

In this collection of articles collected from Market Life magazine, we explore how the Market’s British producers go about their business, as well as hearing from a large cast of experts with strong opinions about the current state of food production.

MATTER OF OPINION Punchy opinions from some of the leading figures in the campaign for more sustainable forms of food production and retail

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Market Life 34 September 2017

SUSTAINABLE SUSTENANCE Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City, University of London, argues that the sustainability of our diets needs to be woven into our food culture We use 30-40 per cent of grain to feed animals. They’ve become our competitors.

We need to eat plants, not meat

Twentieth-century food policy was dominated by efforts to increase food production, stop waste and offer people better diets. It’s not been a total success: nearly a billion people are still hungry, food waste is still staggering. The good news, though, is that billions more people are fed now than a century ago.

In the 21st century, some of those old challenges remain, but there’s also a new raft of concerns such as climate, soil, biodiversity and water. Consumers need help to shift to what academics call ‘sustainable diets’. What does this mean? It means we need to start judging food by factors such as how much water was used to grow it and how much carbon was emitted.

As people weigh up what food to buy, they apply many different criteria. Some are overt, such as price, appearance, size; others are below the radar, such as convenience and familiarity.

Decisions made in a moment are actually the result of years of learning, choice, taste and culture. Now, the sustainability of our diets needs to be woven into our food culture. Our notion of a ‘good diet’ needs to change.

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The science is clear: food is one of the biggest sources of climate change gas emissions— meat particularly. Less meat but better quality is the rule we would all benefit from living by.

Food is the biggest driver of the loss of biodiversity, on which life depends. Food is the biggest risk factor affecting premature death.

Diet is one of the key indicators dividing rich and poor. In other words, to use price as our main criterion is short-sighted. Food can be cheap, but expensive in other ways.

What needs to happen? Firstly, governments need to help us.

Some have tried to revise their national nutrition guidelines to take the environment into account. Sweden did it first in 2009, but was made to withdraw it after the US and Polish meat industries complained that Swedes had been advised to eat more seasonally, locally and less meat. Australia went next. The same thing happened. Then in 2015, the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee suggested change, but its advice has not been implemented.

We need big changes right through the food system, not just

in terms of what and how farmers farm, but in how many energyguzzling processes are expended on food before we get to buy it.

We need shorter food chains between primary growers and us.

In the UK, we need more horticulture. How we feed animals has become part of the problem: we use 30-40 per cent of grain to feed animals.

They’ve become our competitors, when they need to be allowed to reoccupy their ecological niche.

We need to eat plants, not meat.

If governments are in hock to powerful forces, let’s ask our city councils and businesses to help.

Cities around the world have already signed a pact to act on their food systems. Providing sustainable diet advice is part of that programme. Companies can do their bit, but they don’t provide independent advice.

This is a huge agenda, but reality is biting already. In my new book Sustainable Diets, written with Pamela Mason, we propose a six-heading approach: quality, health, environment, socio-cultural values, economics and governance. The time to pick’n’mix from this is over.

All of these features are vitally important.

Clarity and transparency are most readily found outside of the supermarket system, in places where the connection between producer and consumer is as close and personal as possible Market Life 39 July 2018

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER Abi Aspen Glencross, co-founder of The Sustainable Food Story, on the need for greater transparency in the food system

I used to think we just needed more transparency about the meat we eat—where it comes from, how the animals are raised and slaughtered. What I’ve come to understand, though, is that we need it for everything.

For example, I carried out some research into what goes into certain toaster pastries.

There were mined elements and dyes that we use for colouring jeans. In our food! Commercially produced strong white bread flour is often fortified with chalk.

It’s easy to stay comfortable— ignorance is bliss—but the more we know, the more we can start making better decisions in our everyday lives.

It’s not just transparency that we need, but clarity. If you are told about something but are unaware of the context or meaning, it’s no good. Chicken is often advertised as having been corn-fed, as though it’s an obvious reason to buy it—but is it good for chickens to be fed on corn? Labels shout about the 6

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products being ‘organic’, but what does that actually mean?

Most people probably couldn’t tell you. We need something that helps us better understand the provenance of what we’re buying. We need clearer, more standardised food labels.

Clarity and transparency are most readily found outside of the supermarket system, in places where the connection between producer and consumer is as close and personal as possible.

There is a lot of resistance going on: initiatives for growing vegetables in central London, in community spaces and in hospitals; the local veg box schemes that are springing up all over; markets like Borough.

I really value any platform that offers direct access to farmers and producers, with an emphasis on sustainability and ethicality.

I know that London can be a bit of a bubble, but these things are starting to happen all over the country. Little by little, people are beginning to realise that

knowing where their food comes from matters, that things don’t grow all year-round and that strawberries taste rubbish in February.

But, realistically, if we’re not going to turn away from supermarkets completely, how do we make them more transparent? Organisations like ours can apply the pressure— there’s a constant nag for them to improve—but it also needs to come from people’s buying choices. The more customers choose free range and grass-fed meats, the more supermarkets are going to stock them.

The more they ask questions about what’s in their food and where it came from, the more supermarkets are going to have to answer them. We all share the responsibility for making a stronger, better food system. We need to believe that we can all make a difference— because we can. Every person has that power.

Market Life 40 September 2018

GET CONNECTED Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union, on the need to reconnect farmers with consumers—and why markets are an excellent platform to do so

As a nation, we’ve probably never had access to a safer supply of high quality food. And yet never before have we been so disconnected from it. That needs to change.

Firstly, I feel we take food for granted: every year, we throw away 16 billion pounds’ worth of food, and that cannot possibly go on. As a beef farmer, I am also frustrated at the lack of understanding of the agricultural sector’s important role in maintaining the environment.

In large parts of the UK, the land has been supporting farming for centuries and isn’t much good for anything else. My cattle— those natural lawnmowers— are a crucial part of the local landscape. There’s also a general lack of awareness of the versatility and nutritional value of beef. I’m involved in some really positive campaigns to get those messages across, but it’s something we all need to work on.

Animal welfare is becoming increasingly important to consumers—and quite rightly so—but often people aren’t willing to pay for it. Again, I think that is a result of 7

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If we truly understand and value what we eat, we’re less likely to waste it and more inclined to pay the true price of its production

about, or opening our farm doors to the public, and saying, “This is what we do, this is how we do it, and this is why we do it.” Markets such as Borough are an excellent example of a platform that allows farmers to do just that, and they can play a really important role in helping us to educate consumers.

When a farmer sells directly to their customers, they have a fantastic opportunity to share their story. More still, it allows producers to have true end-toend control of supply, which creates genuine transparency.

The reality is that the UK has some of the highest standards of animal welfare, food safety I feel very strongly that education and environmental protection is the key to bridging these gaps of any country in the world, in knowledge and improving and we want people to know people’s appreciation of food. If about that. Recreating those we truly understand and value lost connections with our food, what we eat, we’re less likely to building links between farmers waste it and more inclined to pay and consumers, improving the true price of its production. people’s understanding of the Food production should, I importance of the agricultural believe, be formalised as part of sector and the cost of food in the national curriculum. every sense: all of that will in turn help us to ensure we maintain But there are ways that those high standards—and individual farmers can inform customers, too: by getting out and improve on them.

disconnection. We need to help people understand exactly what it is they’re buying and, in turn, why higher welfare meat costs the amount it does. The same is true of other high quality British produce. There are, it’s important to recognise, a lot of people out there who are really struggling to make ends meet—but actually, by buying high quality raw ingredients, even if those ingredients come at a slightly higher cost, you can eat both well and cheaply, relative to buying processed and prepackaged goods. And, ultimately, it’s going to be better for you.

As Michael Pollan pointed out in one of his books, we say that poor people need cheap food, but we have a system that doesn’t pay people enough, which is why we require it

STRONG WORDS Influential figures within the food world answer our questions on some of the most pressing issues relating to food production Interviews: Ellie Costigan, Mark Riddaway Portraits: Orlando Gili, Daniel Krieger, Andrew Montgomery, Anna Warnow

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Sheila Dillon Presenter of The Food Programme

Gill Meller Cookery writer and group head chef at River Cottage

Market Life 38 May 2018

Market Life 34 September 2017

How much has the British food landscape changed in all your years of writing and broadcasting?

Some things have improved. We do now have a quality food system; this idea of a ‘foodie culture’. For this year’s Food and Farming Awards, we got thousands of nominations. One of three shortlisted shops is a bakery in Barrow-in-Furness, a town with one of the highest rates of drug-related death in the UK—but it has this fantastic, affordable bakery. I was judging the food producer category with Andy Oliver, and just looking at bakeries, there were about 150 to 200 entries—and not every good bakery in Britain was nominated. We were going: “Yes, sourdough; yes, school visits; yes, local—and what else do you have to offer?” Ten years ago, how many great bakers were there in Britain? And all of them were concentrated in London, Edinburgh, Devon. Now, having a good bakery is becoming more ordinary.

On the other hand, you’ve got the giant food corporations conglomerating to be even bigger. As Michael Pollan pointed out in one of his books, we say that poor people need cheap food, but we have a system that doesn’t pay people enough, which is why we require it. Supermarkets and other food companies employ people on minimum wage, and then those people require universal credit to supplement their income because they’re paid so little. We pay for that out of our tax budget.

What I take heart from is that these issues are more widely understood now. When I came to The Food Programme, this sort of thing was the province of very few specialists.

Organic food was seen as muck and magic. It takes a long time to turn things around, but it is being talked about.

The forces against change, though, are huge and powerful and have big PR budgets.

Would it be fair to say we still have a long way to go in encouraging the public to think about where their food comes from?

One hundred per cent. It’s the minority that are truly interested in where their food comes from and how it’s been produced. For the majority, for one reason or another, they don’t have it at the forefront of their mind when they’re shopping, cooking or eating. It has to do with education, economics, geography, how you’ve grown up. What you ate as a child, how you were cooked for—or not. Things can’t change without education; without people knowing the benefit of eating well and sourcing ingredients well—not just for yourself, but the community you live in, the environment in general.

The ramifications of a good, healthy, sustainable diet are absolutely massive—greater than anyone can even imagine, in terms of global agriculture and the way we feed our swelling populations.

What do you think is the biggest issue we’ll be facing over the coming decade?

It’s difficult to say. Things are all tied up. What we’re facing at the minute is health problems that are immensely costly, both in terms of people’s lives and economically— it’s the consequence of eating a highly processed diet, and that’s spreading globally. We made a programme in Mexico a few years ago, covering the World Trade Organisation meeting, and we went to see the director of public health. The North America Free Trade Agreement had been signed a few years earlier and one of the many things that changed as a result of that was, it became a free market for the beverage producers—Coca Cola, Pepsi, all the rest. They’d done this massive marketing campaign in rural Mexico and consumption of sweetened beverages had gone up dramatically. What the chart behind his desk showed was that deaths from diabetes and stroke had rocketed, in line with the increased consumption of these things. Many people in the food industries say the intensive system of mass production has brought cheap food to everyone; it’s brought disease and death as well.

In Britain people often say, “Well, it’s alright for you, you’re middle class”—certainly I have become middle class, but I didn’t start out that way. I came from people who had pretty low incomes, but they knew how to cook and they knew how to shop. They ate well and took pleasure in food. What frustrates me is, we look at France and say, this food is wonderful—these long stews made with cheap cuts. Well, what’s that but poor food? Why in one culture is it greatly lauded as marvellous, romantic and lovely, but if we say cooking that kind of thing would be good to learn here, it’s somehow degrading?

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Do food markets and local retailers have a role in addressing that?

Absolutely. It starts at the kitchen table—and that starts by changing your shopping habits. Instead of going to the supermarket, go to your local high street and visit the butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer. It starts by going to Borough Market and meeting producers and growers who are making all this amazing stuff, and being inspired enough by their stories to buy some of their wonderful produce, take it home, cook it and tell that story to the people you’re feeding, who might in turn do the same thing. It’s ripples in a pond. If we’re going to change the way society thinks about food and cooking and where ingredients come from, it’s got to start on a micro level.

If you’re shopping at Borough Market, the ingredients are always going to be that much fresher—and that much tastier. As an example, hand-dived scallops: that way of harvesting shellfish is really a way of managing the sea bed. It means you’re selecting scallops that are the perfect size, leaving the ones that aren’t, and there’s no damage to the aquatic system. As a result, those individual scallops are treated with much more care—they’re kept better, they get to market quicker, which means they’re fresher, they’re sweeter. The whole thing is about respect.

It’s about a diver or fisherman making a choice that is ultimately better all round. And it’s those people we need to support—the people who are working the land or out on the sea, and are doing right by it.

The ramifications of a good, healthy, sustainable diet are absolutely massive— greater than anyone can even imagine, in terms of global agriculture and the way we feed our swelling populations

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The word ‘consumer’ encourages you to be passive—to be on the receiving end of a huge chain, as opposed to choosing on the basis of knowledge, after proper consideration.

But if you eat with knowledge, you’re absolutely in the driving seat

Mary Quicke Fourteenth generation cheesemaker

Dan Barber Chef and co-owner of the Blue Hill restaurants in New York

Market Life 37 March 2018

Market Life 31 March 2017

How intricately linked are the environment and the flavour of a cheese?

Cheese is like wine; it’s a real expression of the terroir.

Milk or cheese produced even just 10 miles away will taste different to ours. In our cheese store—our cheese cathedral!—what we’re doing is growing a mould garden.

Those moulds make a real difference to the flavour of the cheese. We did a swap with James Montgomery in Somerset—put two of our cheeses in his storage, two of his in ours—just to see what effect it had. The difference was profound. Cheesemakers from other farms come here, we show them what we do, and we absolutely know that they won’t end up with the same results.

Cheese tells the story of the place it’s come from. We love coming to Borough to see people learning about our cheese. What’s fantastic about Borough Market is, every one of those foods has a great story. You can cross the wavy bridge from the heart of the financial centre, where it’s all about business and money, and there in the Market people are thinking about soil, about mould. It’s extraordinary. The word ‘consumer’ encourages you to be passive—to be on the receiving end of a huge chain, as opposed to choosing on the basis of knowledge, after proper consideration. But if you eat with knowledge, you’re absolutely in the driving seat. You can, as Slow Food says, be a co-producer. Your buying decisions make a difference—you’re funding that place. In so doing, you’re impacting the people there and planet you live on. I think that’s enormously empowering.

What has struck you most about food waste in the UK? The food culture around protein-centric plates of food—eating lots of meat—is a large part of the problem.

Look at wheat: between 50 and 80 per cent of wheat in England, depending on the year, is fed to animals in what is a befuddling system of subsidies and protocols that date back to World War I. It makes no sense for you to be producing vast quantities of wheat and feeding it to animals. One could argue that that doesn’t count as food waste—if you’re feeding it to animals, you’re not throwing it away—but if you look at the inefficiencies of feeding wheat to animals, compared with the efficiencies of feeding it to people directly in the form of beautiful bread, you end up seeing what an incredible waste it really is. Another thing is that England always was—and still is, you could argue—a dairy culture, but one that doesn’t eat veal. Of the very little veal you do eat, most of it is imported, which is an irony, and not a very nice one. Your dairy farms have births every spring, summer and fall, and half of those are male. What happens to those male calves? It’s not a pretty picture.

You were at the forefront of a move away from intensive farming methods. What prompted that?

I’ve been on a journey. When I first came into farming, we had these thoroughbred animals that produced lots of milk. But it wasn’t right for our cheese. We thought, what’s missing? Grazing. But our pedigree cows didn’t really like grazing outside, so we crossed them with fresian, Swedish red, montbeliard and a teeny bit of jersey.

The farming method we use now is called extended grazing, which means the cows do all the work: they make their own beds, get their own feed, spread their own manure. It means when we work with the cows, we’re working with the animals, not with a machine. I don’t want to knock other systems, but for us, when we were producing higher yields and the cows weren’t doing as much grazing, the cheese didn’t taste how I wanted it.

But it does mean the cows produce a lot less milk. There’s an argument that you should be producing as much milk from each cow as possible, from a carbon footprint perspective, because cows produce methane. But on the other hand, our cows are living longer, so a lower percentage of their time is spent rearing and a higher percentage producing milk for the dairy. A grass-fed cow also produces less methane.

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In all of your work, you seem to spend a lot of time with producers, building a collaborative relationship. Is that important to you?

It’s a vital part of my approach to cooking—I think it makes me a better chef. The more I know about how something is grown and who’s growing it, the more fascinating it is to me and the easier I find it to create recipes that make the most of those ingredients. We work closely with a lot of breeders to create flavours and yields in the field that are really quite interesting. It’s been a big part of our work over the past few years.

Cultivating relationships with those farmers isn’t just about cherrypicking the best produce for my menu; it’s also about seeking out what otherwise would be thrown away. Some of the ingredients we find most exciting— things like cucumber vines or cauliflower leaves—we have discovered as a result of those conversations.

Harold McGee Food science writer

Deirdre Woods Community actionist and cook

Market Life 48 January 2020

Market Life 45 July 2019

Industrialisation and globalisation have triggered enormous changes to the way we produce and consume food. What has been the impact of that?

I think what’s happened in food has happened with human culture in general: we’ve been going full steam ahead and not noticing what we’re leaving in our wake.

Now, we’re finally waking up to the consequences. For example, we can’t dismiss concerns about the influence of animal agriculture on the climate by saying people are just trying to scare us. This is a real issue and one that needs to be addressed.

The founder of Impossible Foods, which makes plantbased meat substitutes, has said that his mission was to put animal agriculture out of business totally. But I love meat and I respect the farmers in Scotland and France and many other places where animal agriculture has been an integral part of human culture, forever, so when I hear him say that, it bothers me. It seems to be so cold and unwilling to confront historical reality. On the other hand, I think what he’s doing is great because it gives us one more option to deal with a huge problem. We’re going to need dozens of approaches to begin to address these issues. It’s important that smart people, whether they work in Silicon Valley or anywhere else, are thinking about it and doing what they can. People should start out by recognising that they don’t have The Answer—capital T, capital A—and that the more people who are seriously engaged with the issue, the better.

What changes would you like to see to our country’s food system?

One, a national food policy. Hopefully that will involve consulting ordinary people, through citizens’ assemblies.

Second, someone responsible for food—there is no one solely responsible for food in this country. We need a minister for food. Third, the right to food needs to be enshrined in legislation—the right to good food and nutrition, and culturally appropriate food. We’ve signed up to all these things at UN level, but we’re increasingly in violation of them. So many people in this country are going hungry.

Part of the issue is, our food system is dominated by mega-corporations. It’s about money and profit, not people. For example, we now have big companies who patent seeds and control them so that you cannot replicate them. You have to buy their seeds, buy their chemicals. Seed sovereignty is the crux of any food system: if the farmers can’t control the seeds, which they had done for millennia, they can’t control the food system. All this power is concentrated among a small group of people who are profiting and who are not changing anything. They’re greenwashing. They say, “Oh, we’re all for corporate social responsibility,” but at the end of the day they are still making mega profit, while there are farmers supplying them who work for less than a pound a day. And still, people can’t even afford the cheap processed food these corporations are producing—some can’t afford anything at all, by the time they’ve paid rent and everything else. Food is now a commodity, something to be bought and sold. Whereas if we value food for what it is—something that gives us life, as something that’s part of this universe and this earth, something we are connected to—then we will think differently.

Do you think the way that we now produce food has had an impact on food quality as well as the environment?

I think it’s difficult to generalise, because the effects are different on different things in different places. Rachel Laudan is a historian who happens to write about food.

She wrote a book called Cuisine and Empire and she’s the closest thing we have to a voice of reason on these issues. Her book is about the history of cooking, from the earliest days to now, and the point she makes is that before industrialisation, food production meant a terrifically hard life for anyone involved. I think she makes a very compelling case that the industrialisation of food has been a boon for people who have lived in the last century or two, for that very reason—that it frees them from spending hours a day over a grindstone making flour. It’s very easy to say that the quality of food has declined, that the variety that we can enjoy has declined and that there are all these negatives, but there’s a huge counterargument about the quality of life, which has improved.

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Do you think it’s possible to address these overlapping issues with a national food policy?

Food is very difficult and complicated because it’s a planning issue, it’s a transport issue, a health issue, an environmental issue, you name it. And it is the most important aspect of our lives. Without food, we can’t do anything. That’s why we need an integrated food policy: we can’t have environment talking here and public health talking there, and they’re at odds with each other. People need to be talking to each other and that’s why we need a separate ministry for food and somebody responsible for overseeing all of that. One of the things I don’t like is this dissection and hierarchy of poverty: there’s period poverty, there’s child poverty, food poverty, all these various poverties. No. It’s just poverty. The only way to get around that is to ensure people are paid proper living wages, end zero-hour contracts, and put a proper welfare system in place so that those who cannot be part of the work world and who need that support have it. Elderly people and disabled people and children and the most vulnerable in society are being targeted by austerity policies—come on!

All this power is concentrated among a small group of people who are profiting and who are not changing anything. They’re greenwashing. They say, “Oh, we’re all for corporate social responsibility,” but at the end of the day they are still making mega profit, while there are farmers supplying them who work for less than a pound a day

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Market Life 43 April 2019

SOFTLY SOFTLY Market Life visits Park Farm, home of Bath Soft Cheese, to meet a man whose mission is to not only make beautiful cheese but to demystify the art by inviting the public in to watch Words: Clare Finney Images: Orlando Gili

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Softly, softly

Hugh Padfield

I

It is a depressing feature of our pre-sliced, pre-packaged age that seeing the process and the people behind food is for most of us a luxury rather than an everyday experience. While for my grandparents watching food being made was entirely unremarkable, today I count myself to lucky to have seen lumbering cows wait patiently to be milked; to have felt the warm fug of a milking parlour; to have watched the freshest of milk tense and tighten into a lumpy soup of curds and whey.

My role is to share what I’ve experienced with readers who don’t have the time or the access that I do. It’s what I’m in Somerset for: to see the cows and the cheesemakers behind Bath Soft Cheese, and to write about them. But as soon as I arrive at Park Farm in Kelston, I discover that my role here has been slightly—but delightfully—overthrown.

“He’s been milking them about 10 minutes,” a small, ringleted girl tells me authoritatively as I enter a long room overlooking the milking parlour. Sat on the first row of seats with her face glued to the window, the child doesn’t even turn around as she declares the farm worker to have milked “about 20 cows so far”—a fact her equally transfixed mother confirms. They’ve been sat here since the start of milking, spellbound by the sight of milk pumping through pipes, the farmhand carefully washing each udder before attaching the suction cups, the cows chewing contentedly. “Children love it.

Adults love it!” remarks Hugh Padfield, the fourth-generation owner of Park Farm, as we tiptoe back out of his new public viewing gallery. The cafe in the adjacent building looks over the make room, “so the public can see the whole thing—the grass, the cows, the people, the cheese—there is nothing hidden.”

If you’re in Bath, or are headed that way soon, then my work here is done. You just need to pay the Padfields a visit. If you’re not, then sit comfortably and I shall continue.

The story of Park Farm as Hugh knows it began with his great-grandparents, who moved to Kelston in 1914 and established a traditional mixed farm here in the foothills of the Cotswolds. “My great-grandmother made cheese, next to what is now my parents’ 18 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

house.” Hugh points to a beautiful stone house, up a track, tucked away from the main farm buildings. In 1990, his father, Graham, decided to resurrect the family’s cheesemaking tradition, which along with most of British farmhouse cheese production, had been seen off after the second world war.

“During the war, and for a long time afterwards, you would sell your milk to the Milk Marketing Board, and buy it back if you wanted to make cheeses. Most was made into ‘government cheddar’,” Hugh explains. Inspired to start making cheese, Graham Padfield did some research, and found a letter written by Horatio Nelson’s father to the legendary sailor recommending a cream cheese from Bath. Emboldened by further reports that suggested soft cheese was prevalent across the southwest of England prior to the 20th century, he tracked down a recipe in an old grocer’s book and set to making it. “The only part of the original recipe we don’t follow is that salt be sprinkled on the young cheeses ‘with the aid of a feather’,” Hugh smiles. “I’m not sure how well that would go down with the Environmental Health officers.”

Fast-forward almost 20 years and the Padfields have developed a whole family of cheeses, garnering numerous awards in

the process. They’ve moved production to a purpose-built cheese dairy and milking parlour, having outgrown the old outhouse in which Hugh’s great-grandmother once worked, and they now have 160 head of cattle to their name. The Padfields are proud to embrace technologies that can improve their practice. A few minutes after meeting him, Hugh leads me into the farm’s small office to find Graham energetically engaged in an online tractor auction. “The numbers go up so fast!” he murmurs. This is farming for the 21st century—and yet, outside the office, away from the viewing galleries, computers and sizzling cheese toastie machine, it really could be 1914 again.

The pastures are unchanged. The farmhouses are unchanged. “The fields are still named things like Station Ground and Cherry Cottage,” Hugh says proudly. A few years ago, he found a photograph of his father as a baby, held by his grandfather with his great-grandfather standing by: “It was in the yard outside our house—and the first thing I saw was that the plank of wood leaning against the wall in that photo is still there.” He laughs.

“At least, there is still a plank of wood leaning against that wall. Over all these years people have clearly thought it the perfect place to

leave a spare plank.” It’s a touching detail, and oddly reassuring. Though the last 50 years has seen a shift from manual to automated milking, from wicker baskets to plastic cheese moulds, from informed guesswork to collars that measure the temperature, movement and milk yield of an animal, some things have remained constant. The cheese at Park Farm is still made by hand; the cows are still pasture-fed for at least six months of the year; and if you have a plank of wood going spare, there is a handy place for you to leave it, just against that wall.

For all the social media and viewing galleries, tradition clearly matters to Hugh. It’s one of the reasons he farms organically.

“I think one of the fun things about being organic is learning how to work with nature.

We fix nitrogen in the soil by encouraging the growth of clover, we manage that growth so there isn’t so much clover as to upset the cows’ stomachs; we take non-chemical approaches to tackling weeds.” They use muck to fertilise the field rather than artificial fertiliser, and the cows receive medicine only when it’s really needed—they aren’t routinely dosed, as they might be in an intensive system. Welfare standards are high—600 acres to graze, and fresh bedding to come home to after a day 19 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

I think one of the fun things about being organic is learning how to work with nature. We fix nitrogen in the soil by encouraging the growth of clover, we take non-chemical approaches to tackling weeds

spent enjoying the pasture.

In short, conditions at Park Farm are ripe for the creation of farmhouse cheeses—and that’s before you get to the geographical advantages of southwest England. I experience these first-hand when I arrive: vertical rain followed by warm, glistening sunshine illuminating grass of a brilliant, rich shade of green. “The climate and landscape here are much the same as in northern France, where camembert and brie originate,” says Hugh. “There’s a wet climate, low, lush grasslands and strong traditions of dairy and cider.” Camembert and the soft cheeses made

in these parts seem to have originated at about the same time, “around the 1790s”, Hugh explains, and a degree of copying between the two regions seems probable. “The type of cheese and the type of cider they make in northern France—the soft, fizzy type—are similar to that made here. In many respects Brittany, Île-de-France and Normandy have more in common with southwest England than they do Paris or Provence.”

Like many farmers in Somerset, Graham Padfield brews his own cider, using organic apples harvested at Park Farm every autumn.

It’s this cider that washes the Merry Wyfe cheeses every day for four weeks, lending them their distinctive, pinky-orange rind. Entering the maturing rooms is like walking into a sunset, with scores of round cheeses in various states of blushing maturation. “I love the colour palette—and the smell,” breathes Hugh.

“That’s the smell of the bacteria turning the cheese orange. The cider provides the nutrients that it grows on.” The taste is not nearly as strong as the pungent cider smell suggests.

It is creamy and tangy, more sweet than vegetal. It’s no Wyfe of Bath—my personal favourite, which is brined then aged in a maturing room the size of a small church

Softly, softly

—but there’s no denying its superiority as a washed-rind cheese.

Park Farm’s cheesemaking rooms are much like the rest of the farm: homespun but high tech, relaxed but orderly. In one, three cheesemakers are sealing some Bath Blues with a warm palette knife—a technique that looks not unlike icing a cake. “The blue mould peaks after seven weeks, but the cheese itself will peak after 12 weeks, so you need to give the cheese a five-week head-start,” Hugh explains. “They’re sealing it to keep the air out.”

After five weeks, the cheesemakers will stab each cheese with a pin 200 times, to allow the bacteria to ‘breathe’ and unfurl its blueveined fingers along the cracks. That must be therapeutic, I suggest to the cheesemakers.

“It is for the first five minutes. The next four hours—not so much,” one of the group grins.

Popular belief would have it that unpasteurised milk always makes for better cheese. The Padfields beg to differ—and you don’t need to take their word for it. In 2015 their Bath Blue cheese won Supreme Cheese at the World Cheese Awards, the highest possible accolade for any cheese. Neither this nor any of the other cheeses produced at Park Farm is made with raw milk—the milk 20 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

here has to be pasteurised, as this is such a badger-intensive area. “The risks of TB are too high,” says Hugh, and they aren’t taking any chances. That they still manage to create highly characterful cheeses stems in part from their technique of batch-pasteurising at a lower temperature than usual, which “slightly caramelises the milk sugars,” says Hugh. “It’s gentler on the milk than flash pasteurisation, which heats the milk to a much higher temperature for a shorter time. Our way, you get more homemade, creamy flavours.”

The result is delicious—rich, buttery, almost clotted cream-like. The starters they use are also designed to mitigate the loss of the milk’s naturally-occurring bacteria. “One of the things I am keen to point out is how carefully we select the cultures we inoculate our cheese with, some of which replicate the bacteria you’d find in raw milk. This gives it so much flavour.”

The Padfields use calf-based rennet to coagulate the milk in all but two of their cheeses, in recognition of the ancient origins of cheesemaking (“It is up there with berries and meat as one of our earliest food sources”), and the fact that the beef industry and the dairy industry are unavoidably linked.

“Farmers know that the dairy industry could not exist without the beef industry. Cows have

The only part of the original recipe we don’t follow is that salt be sprinkled on the young cheeses ‘with the aid of a feather’.

I’m not sure how well that would go down with the Environmental Health officers

calves, half of those are boys, those boys go to become beef.” The use of rennet is, he says, a natural part of that cycle, and it tastes better.

“All rennets have a slight tendency towards bitterness, but vegetarian rennet is particularly bitter,” Hugh continues.

“I know farmers who use vegetarian rennet when they supply supermarkets, but use traditional rennet when entering their cheese into awards.” That said, the subtle sweetness of Wyfe of Bath and Merry Wyfe is enough to mask the bitterness of vegetarian rennet, enabling Bath Soft Cheese to cater to vegetarians to some degree.

Once set, the curds are stirred or cut to release the whey and achieve the desired consistency and texture. To retain moisture, soft cheese needs larger curds; to lose moisture, hard cheese demands smaller ones.

The size of these, and the point at which the mixture is poured into moulds is down to the cheesemaker, who will make a judgement call according to the look and feel of the curds and the type of cheese they’re making. “The skill of the cheesemaker is vital,” says Hugh. There is no probe or gauge to match it. It is experience and observation that enables him to say when the mixtures have sufficiently coagulated.

Watching them in action (they’re making Bath Soft Cheese when I’m there, and the curds and whey slop gently against the side of the buckets as they stir) is more mesmeric than mechanical, despite the incredible level of precision the process needs. In the maturing rooms, cheeses are stacked, turned, brushed or washed by hand, and sit on wooden shelves which propagate and sustain the friendly yeast cultures that live on the rinds.

The silence is palpable. You can almost hear the bacteria: fermenting, growing, spreading; uniting milk, time and provenance. “There are billions of bacteria here in each cheese. They are living things,” says Hugh, proudly. In the maturation rooms he breaks an immature Bath Soft Cheese in half, and shares some with me. “As a young cheese it is salty, a bit creamy, but chalkier,” he muses as he chews. Later on, we have a cheeseboard in the cafe, and taste the same cheese again, several weeks older. “Now there are notes of slow-cooked mushrooms, bright lemons and garlic. It’s so different,” he exclaims. Ripe, rich and squidgy, it cries out for sourdough, which the cafe provides with characteristic generosity.

On the table next to us, another family have sat down to watch the cheesemakers. “There’s something about understanding from an early age just where your food comes from. Humans don’t like surprises,” says Hugh.

Part of the vehemence of movements like extreme veganism comes from a feeling of being “duped”, he continues—“the sense of the food industry keeping things from us. That’s why we’ve been so keen on people visiting.”

Tomorrow, Hugh will take a group of primary school children around the farm— something he’s been doing increasingly since he found his son’s school’s ‘field to fork’ trip entailed going to their local supermarket. He’s still not worked out how to answer the “where do calves come from” question—“I think I’ll leave that one for the teachers or parents!” he grins—but he doesn’t shy away from the kids’ other queries. “We want people to challenge us. We want people to ask questions. We want people to come and see.”

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22 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

Market Life heads out into the English Channel to watch Darren Brown engaging in the age-old art of scallop diving—a method of collection that helps sustain the delicate ecosystem of the seabed Words: Clare Finney Images: Orlando Gili

DEEP & MEANINGFUL Market Life 36 February 2018

23 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

Deep & meaningful

S

“Sometimes it is like looking under your bed for a pair of socks, the visibility’s that poor. If the tide is strong it’s so gloomy you can end up bumping into things.” Other times, expert scallop diver Darren Brown can spend a full hour and 40 minutes picking what some have likened to solid gold coins off the floor. “It’s a gamble,” he shrugs, checking his watch and putting his foot down, in a van chockful of gadgets and gizmos. Time and tide wait for no man— not even an ex-marine who, when he isn’t diving, is either line fishing or stalking deer and rabbits on Dartmoor; and with a slight kerfuffle over a hole in Darren’s dry-suit this morning (conclusion: it’s fine—“and if it isn’t I’ll know about it soon enough”) the race is on.

We pull up at the docks: the brooding grey arm of the Isle of Portland on one side, the steely grey of Weymouth bay ahead. It’s a formidable looking place, not helped by gloomy skies and the knowledge that, just out of sight on the island, lies one of Britain’s most notorious prisons. Darren’s boat is moored in the old naval base at the foot of 24 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

Darren Brown

the island, “so really I’ve come full circle. This is the base where I served as a marine. It is a bit weird, coming back here,” he acknowledges.

“I walked out in 1997. But it’s a safe place for the boat, and they’ve good facilities.” After 20 years of supplying fish and game to his stall at Borough Market, hunting and fishing have become “a way of life” for him.

“It’s what I do,” he explains, loading a trailer with baskets, his suit and his fins (“Not flippers. Flipper is a dolphin, darling,” he corrects) and setting off to the mooring.

Every morning is early, to catch the tide and some scallops or sea bass, and every night a late one, after an evening spent stalking the moors. Darren’s not complaining. “I have turned my passions and interests into a business,” he says—and it’s a successful one, too, in spite of some serious setbacks.

Darren was hit hard, financially as well as personally, when the police investigation required Borough Market to close in the wake of the terrorist attacks last year.

“I lost thousands of pounds’ worth of stock,” he says, “and I had to keep paying my staff.

It’s not fair that they should suffer but I was losing money all the while, so I almost went under.” It’s thanks to the incredible support of his customers, and of the Market’s trader

If this was on land, where people could see the havoc they cause, they’d stop dredging immediately.

It’s like the moon down there after they’ve been at it. Everything is upside down, there’s no life at all and everything is just grey

Jeff Parish

support fund, that his finances are starting to normalise once more. Of course, scallop fishing isn’t easy—at least, not the way Darren does it. Hand-diving only accounts for two per cent of scallops sold in Britain. Most of the scallops you’ll see in the shops will have been dredged, using what are effectively large metal rakes to scrape scallops—and inevitably, a load of other wildlife—off the seafloor.

“If this was on land, where people could see the havoc they cause, they’d stop it immediately.

It’s like the moon down there after they’ve been at it. Everything is upside down, there’s no life at all and everything is just...” he pauses heavily.

“Grey.” It could take years to grow back, “if it ever comes back,” he continues. But attitudes are slowly changing. Here in Dorset, Darren’s vociferous campaigns against dredging have helped in getting it banned from several areas along the Jurassic Coast.

We board the Maddy Moo: still wet and shining from the deep clean she’s received this morning from Jeff Parish, Darren’s able seaman. “You should have seen her last night,” he grins when we comment on her shipshape appearance “after a seven-hour sea bass fishing trip”. They’d met with limited success on the trip: “Those bloody netters, 25 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

they scoop them all up,” Jeff complains. Like the dredgers scouring the seabed, the trawler boats are the antithesis of the sustainable, man-versus-fish tactic of rod and line fishing. “You can be the best fisherman in the world, but you can’t catch fish if there aren’t any there to be caught.”

Today, though, Darren is hopeful: three, maybe four pots of scallops he assures us faithfully, as we chug gently out of the harbour, hugging the Portland coastline.

On the small black screen in the cabin the outline of the sea bed appears in green squiggles, including a huge naval boat sunk deliberately during the first world war to block the harbour entrance and defend it against German submarines. We slip over it easily, and are released into the grey-green plains of the English Channel, where we can make our way to promised pastures to the east of the island. The cliffs are cragged and menacing but, as we come to a stop for Darren to slip into the water, the sea slapping the sides of our little boat is slack and peaceful. We’re at the sweet spot: the gap between tides.

Slip is an understatement. With air cylinders, 32 pounds of weights around his waist and several baskets for collecting scallops, Darren’s entrance into the lolling sea is anything but slow. Even his suit is heavy: a thick, black skin of rubber that promises to seal out all water—provided, that is, that there are no gaping great holes. “The only things that should get wet are my head and my hands.”

On his back, Darren is carrying my entire weight in tank, oxygen and mixed gases. “I’ll be working on 40 per cent oxygen today, which is twice as much oxygen as is in the air. That reduces my exposure to nitrogen which, if it becomes saturated in your blood and doesn’t have a chance to escape as you come up, gives you the bends. It is amazing isn’t it,” he says, fingering his mouthpiece, “that I am reliant on this little bit of rubber to keep me alive.”

In the pocket of his suit, Darren carries a flare. “I’ve been lost at sea for seven hours before. I’m not letting that happen again,” he says grimly. Tied to his belt are the net bags he will fill with scallops then send to the surface, by attaching them to what is effectively an inflatable balloon. He’ll have an hour, he reckons, before the flood of the tide kicks— but he’s standing by his prediction of three bags full. “I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager. I could go round after someone less experienced has already been round, and pick up twice as many as they have done. You get what you call the eye, for scallops.” Even while picking up one unwitting shellfish off the sea floor, Darren has one eye scanning the seabed for his next find.

A flicker of movement; the flash of an orange frill; even just a slight indentation in the sand can denote a piece of buried treasure. “Sometimes when he disturbs them they swim, swim, swim away,” Jeff laughs, flapping his hands. “He has to grab them.

They can actually swim quite quickly.” While Darren is in the deep, Jeff will be manning the boat, keeping his eyes peeled for the inflatable balloons that denote a fresh bag of scallops, and winching them up onto deck with the aid of a small crane.

“I’m going to jump over here captain,” Darren shouts, heaving the cylinders onto his back and diving into the water with surprising ease, if not all that much elegance. He sinks like a man with 10 extra stone attached to

him, and Jeff heads to the driver’s seat, ready to guide the boat toward his first find. “When the bag comes up I have to judge which way it’s going to float, and be downwind of it. There is no tide at the moment, so it all hangs on the breeze.” One thing you notice when you spend time with seafarers is how much information they can glean from their environment: the look of the sky, the sound of the sea—even the feel of the winds.

Jeff’s been fishing for as long as he can remember, though he has only recently started making a living from it, having been a double glazing salesman most of his life. “I love the buzz of it,” he explains. “It’s just you versus the fish—it’s more even, somehow.”

Having spent “a fortune” on his hobby over the years, he’s thrilled to now be getting paid.

As we chat, a red balloon appears about 50 metres away from us, and Jeff starts nudging the boat towards it, reading the wind all the while. Lining the crane up with the bobbing balloon is no mean feat. It appears static, but it’s moving rapidly across the surface and Jeff has to make an informed guess on its speed and distance. He leans over, hooks it to the crane and pulls it on board.

It’s overflowing: scallops, some weedy, some barnacled, all beautiful, spill out across the deck of the ship and Jeff starts sifting and sorting. All the scallops must be graded by size before they can be landed: the statutory minimum size for a king scallop is 100mm, and for a queen it is 40mm. Any smaller than that and they’re to be chucked back into the water, in order that they can continue to grow.

This is the other problem with dredging.

Where Jeff and—when he resurfaces— Darren can measure each shell there and then, the dredgers have no such option.

While the mesh collector bag attached to the dredge is designed to prevent the collection of undersized scallops, it is inevitable that some undersized scallops get caught up inside. These tiddlers are, eventually, returned to the waters—but there is some doubt over whether they can survive the experience of being dredged. Besides, says Jeff, it doesn’t seem fair to collect scallops with dredges, any more than it does to catch fish using huge meshed walls.

By this point two more balloons have popped up onto the surface—and not before time. “See that? There is a bit of flood kicking in already. He won’t be long now,” Jeff observes, scanning the surface. Though “incredibly determined”, even Darren can’t beat the tide. Eventually he resurfaces: his face triumphant against the steely grey of the water, and we make our way over to him.

“There were absolutely stacks down there!

Those guys we saw earlier must have been going round with their eyes closed!” he puffs as Jeff leans down, seizes him by the back of his suit, and hauls him over the side.

Together, the fishermen gather up the last bag of scallops, and start sorting—largely by sight, but using a ruler to check those they’re unsure of. As the Maddy Moo makes her way back to shore, Jeff continues sorting, sending the undersized scallops flying gaily over the side. “Until next year!” I shout silently, as the little shells soar through the air and plop daintily into the sea, in the boat’s wake.

In the meantime, we’ve a market to get to— and, as is tradition after a hard day’s work on the water, a swift half.

Market Life 37 April 2018

DON’T FOLLOW THE HERD Northfield Farm takes a singular approach to farming, blending centuries-old traditions with an openness to innovation. Market Life pays a visit to a family farm that’s been a vital part of the Borough Market community for 20 years Words: Clare Finney Images: Christopher L Proctor

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27 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

Dom McCourt, left, with his brother Leo Opposite: Jan McCourt flicks through The Book of the Farm

by Henry Stephens

Don’t follow the herd

B

“Being a farmer isn’t something you switch on when your alarm goes off, and turn off again come the evening,” says Leo McCourt. “You’re always a farmer.”

His dad, Jan, nods in agreement.

Jan has been breathing, eating and barely sleeping farming since he swapped banking for beef two decades ago, and while he has since handed over many of the operational responsibilities to Leo and Dom, his second son, he remains very much involved. We’re at Northfield Farm now: ensconced in what seems the very essence of a farmhouse kitchen. Rustic wooden table? Check. Aga? Check. ‘Proper’ milk? Check. The only point of incongruity is the farm dog: half deaf, half blind and “very smelly,” says Jan fondly.

“I rescued her 14 years ago.” His working dogs—two tall, gleaming New Zealand huntaways—are outside with the cats (also rescued) and the llamas, between them warding off rats, foxes and badgers.

Jan is a big fan of natural pest control.

In fact, he’s a big fan of nature generally—it 28 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

comes with the territory, as a farmer—but that doesn’t come at the expense of progress.

When we arrive, Jan points out two windmills, one of them two centuries old and the other, built to power the local abattoir, modern and new. It seems not insignificant that they sit either side of Northfield Farm.

Jan smiles when I point this out. “We are in many ways on the cusp of history,” he says. On the one hand, the farm is a very traditional operation, home to some of the oldest rare breeds in the country. The White Park, Jan’s “particular passion”, has been raised in Britain for 2,000 years, and is closely related to our native wild cattle. Yet, in order to preserve the integrity of this breed and others, Jan has embraced the advances in technology bestowed by recent decades. He screens annually for common diseases, a practice that reduces vets bills and removes the need for antibiotics “almost entirely”. He also closely monitors the various characteristics of the herds, particularly the cattle. “We are always monitoring: ease of calving, fat cover, muscle size, fertility— even testicle circumference!— and we trace these back to individual genetics.

It is a very scientific process,” Jan explains.

This isn’t high tech farming as we know it: intensive, mechanised industries designed to

produce a lot of meat in very little time. This is “using science to be traditional”. Testing annually for disease means meat that’s free from antibiotics. Keeping abreast of genetic inheritance and applying that knowledge to breeding, meanwhile, helps Jan maintain the defining characteristics of rare breeds like the Beef Shorthorn and White Park. Being a small-scale producer isn’t easy. “You sit on a pile of debt for years, and it doesn’t take much to set you off track,” Jan continues. Knowing which bulls to breed and which cows will calve without complications makes the farm more efficient, without compromising the values at its heart.

All businesses need to be efficient, but efficiency does not have to come at a cost to society and the environment.

Northfield strives for efficiency, but is also a model of good business practice, spanning environmental vigilance and social responsibility. Upon arrival, the first thing we notice is the pile of silage bales, stacked high beside the tractor shed and wrapped in candyfloss-pink plastic. “They raise money for breast cancer,” Jan smiles. “I know they look a bit incongruous, but I like them. They’re recyclable, and they don’t heat the silage up as

much as the black ones, either.” Standing out vividly against the slate Rutland skies, they are a striking reminder that CSR isn’t just a feature of big City firms.

They host open farm days, welcoming children and adults alike into their butchery, onto their tractors and around their fields of sheep and cattle. They offer catering to local charity events, stock local produce in their farm shop and, most strikingly, having started working with neighbouring farmers in an informal cooperative, lending machines and even the odd pair of hands. “Farming is highly capital intensive,” says Leo. “You can’t do anything for less than 20 grand and come silage time you need 10 or 15 machines just to do the work. We can do it much faster if there’s three or four of us together, with machines.” There’s no official arrangement, Leo continues.

“It just came about over a curry one evening.

We were chatting about what machines we had and what machines we would like to get, and suddenly the penny dropped that if we joined forces, we’d be far more efficient than on our own.”

Such fellowship is typical of Northfield Farm: a dyed-in-the-wool family business that agrees with Prince Charles’s maxim that “agriculture is made up of two words, and 29 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

It just came about over a curry one evening. We were chatting with our neighbours about what machines we had and what machines we would like to get, and suddenly the penny dropped that if we joined forces, we’d be far more efficient than on our own

the ‘culture’ part of it is very important”. The age-old tradition of farming families, working together and helping each other out on the land, holds as much cultural and historical significance as those rare cattle breeds do.

“Leo is part of a community up here, just as Dom is part of a community at Borough,” says Jan. Dom, the family ‘townie’ has been leading the butchery at Borough Market for some years now. “There is an interdependence of small farms up here, like there is interdependence of traders down at the Market,” says Jan. All of this seems intrinsically connected: the rugged Rutland landscape, the farming community, the rich food heritage of Melton Mowbray, and the breeds which for centuries have been feeding Britons and acclimatising to British terrain. Jan reaches up to the kitchen shelf and pulls down a large volume: musty, beautifully bound, full of hand-drawn diagrams. “This is the farmers’ bible: Stephens’ Book of the Farm, written in the 1800s,” he says excitedly. “This is where I first read about rare breeds.” Back then, they “weren’t ‘rare’ breeds at all, but the breeds of the time,” he continues, leafing through the pages. Yet when Jan came to establish Northfield Farm in the late 1990s, “most farmers thought I was nuts, with my White

Don’t follow the herd

Parks and my little farm shop. They were all about animals they could intensively breed.”

A quarter of a century on, it seems Jan was a bellwether. “The number of people that are now feeling this desire to have contact with the land has increased significantly.” What’s more, with farmers’ markets, farm shops, holiday lets and butchery classes all on the table, the viability of small scale farming has also increased.

“Big farms concentrate on yields. We take much longer to finish the animals, so we have much higher costs,” says Jan. Beef cattle at Northfield Farm take nine months to be born, then just over three years to reach maturity, Jan continues. That’s over two years more than your average supermarket-bound specimen. “Then we hang the meat for 28 days to age it”—so that’s four years, and thousands of pounds’ worth of feed, space and labour, before making a penny. Diversification, for the McCourts, as for many of their small scale farming contemporaries, has offered some invaluable income streams.

Leo McCourt

So, is it worth it, the expense, time and space these great, ancient animals need, when there are such easy, cheap alternatives available? Beyond their almost biblical beauty (which, walking around the farm, is truly striking: sickle horns, jet black ears, and large dark eyes set in tufty coats of creamy ivory) and their historic importance, it is difficult to see why a farmer would go to such lengths.

Then you taste the meat and it all falls into place. “They have this incredibly fine marbling, which when cooked is just stunning,” says Jan. Add the maturity, and the “grassy earthiness” that comes with a cow reared almost entirely on pasture, what you end up with is genuinely exceptional beef.

It’s not just White Park, of course. Beef Shorthorn, Aberdeen Angus, Angus-White Park cross and flocks of sheep all graze on Northfield’s rich pasture. At the time of writing they are still wintering in airy barns, filled with Northfield hay and dining on Northfield silage—but the moment the grass starts growing again they’ll be let out to roam.

“We reconfigured our barns recently,” says Jan, recalling how a trip up to Scotland opened his eyes to how hardy native breeds of cattle are. “They thrived so much better in more basic conditions. We came back and changed

PRIME CUTS JAN McCOURT’S FOOD HIGHLIGHTS

30 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

Coffee or tea Tea. Favourite cut of meat Shin of beef in winter, hogget or mutton chops in summer.

Favourite London restaurant Quo Vadis in Soho. Jeremy Lee was an old Borough Market faithful when he was a chef at the Design Museum; he really helped us.

The combination of him cooking and the brothers Hart as restaurateurs is pretty much unbeatable. It’s a fantastic place.

Essential components of a roast dinner Ideally a standing rib of White Park beef, cooked rare or very rare, together with slowly

roasted parsnips and carrots, roast potatoes and Yorkshire pud. Nothing dramatic about it, really, but it’s very good.

Signature dish Slowly cooked beef brisket: a recipe from Potty by Clarissa Dickson Wright, but with a little twist from me.

Desert island dinner Hand-dived scallops with black pudding and mash; gravadlax; rib of White Park beef with all the trimmings; creme brulee or creme caramel. After that I think I’d sink!

Favourite Borough Market food Mozzarella from The Parma Ham and Mozzarella Stand.

it—in life as well as in death.” It’s a philosophy that has informed his entire approach to livestock farming, from the genetic tests right through to his views on pasture feeding.

If possible, tried and tested traditional practices should be adhered to, he says, but this should never be at the expense of the animal’s welfare, or the quality of the produce it creates.

“The term ‘pasture-fed’ is a contentious one,” explains Jan. “What the evangelism of the 100 per cent pasture-fed lobby don’t allow for is this duty you have toward the animal.” That includes how you finish it, and the quality of the end product, Jan continues. “We do finish our beef on pasture and silage, but sometimes they need a little bit more.” He likens it to people occasionally needing to supplement their diets if they’re deficient in a particular nutrient, or have been ill: “It’s the equivalent of a few bowls of muesli. There’s nothing unnatural in it. We don’t add it if we don’t need to, but if we’re finishing a skinny animal, we’re producing meat that is no good to anyone.”

Like ‘efficiency’, the word ‘supplement’ can be a dirty one, conjuring up notions of refined sugars, antibiotics and other additives to cattle feed. “Much of the beef you buy in a supermarket will have been finished very quickly, on grain-based diets,” Jan points out, “but if we’re supplementing the food for our animals, it’s the tops of sugar beets combined with barley from the nearby mill.”

It couldn’t be more natural, he continues.

As far as terroir goes, it’s all local produce; and as for speeding things up, the thought could not be further from the McCourts’ minds. “We’d finish our meat at six years if the economics of the market allowed us to. Six years would be perfect. It would be amazingly marbled and flavoursome—but we’d have to charge double what we do currently, which just isn’t feasible.” As ever, the gossamer balance between what is desirable, and what is possible, is never too far from Jan’s mind.

Favourite Market Borough drink Tea from Greenfield Farm Organic Life or milk from Hook and Son. Best Borough Market friends There are far too many to mention, having traded at Borough Market since 1997.

I think the community aspect of the Market is really, really important. You get a sense of energy, continuity and sturdiness from just wandering round the Market when the traders are setting up or shutting down. As a group of traders, we go to each other for support, advice or just borrowing spare screwdrivers! What we do collectively there is really special. We’ve supported each other through some really tough times.

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the layout so they wouldn’t overheat and would have more air. This crew yard is a very traditional way of wintering cattle.” Much as he welcomes the input of science, he continues, there is a lot to be said for “knowledge that has been acquired and passed down over a long time”. The trick is to combine the best of both scientific enquiry, and the wisdom years of experience brings.

The llamas are a case in point.

Traditionally used in South America to ward off wolves, in the UK they’re increasingly being deployed to deter disease-carrying foxes and badgers. “I don’t want to tempt fate,” Dom ventures cautiously, “but since we have had these boys, we’ve not had a single case of TB.” Sentry-like, they prowl through the fields of the farm chasing “anything small and moving.” Before that, if the cattle were even suspected of having tuberculosis—even if their test proved inconclusive—they would have to be shot and disposed of.

That would be a sorry end for any animal, but for one of such pedigree as these, to die in vain is heart-breaking. “These are family lines dating back hundreds of years. Some have been cows bearing calves,” Jan says sorrowfully. His philosophy is that “if you are going to kill an animal, you have a duty do the best you can by

We head back toward the kitchen, via the curing room in which shoulders of pork sourced from their neighbouring pig farmers are being slowly cured into collar bacon. “We are one of the few places that produce collar bacon—an old fashioned highly marbled cut off the shoulder,” Jan says proudly. Next door, the less sought-after cuts are being cooked up to make products that can be sold at the stall. “We have to use up the less valuable bits of the carcass. Only when you have shifted the last bit of lamb, pig or cattle are we starting to earn anything.” The aromas billow enticingly; rich meatiness, fragrant herbs, luscious grassiness—and our tummies start rumbling.

In the kitchen, we wait to be served the edible proof of Jan’s farming philosophy.

Sizzled to perfection, scattered with pomegranate seeds, and served with fresh orzo and sundried tomato salad, our lunch of roast lamb couldn’t have been more illustrative. There was tradition, in the form of the very old, very functional Aga; sparkling modernity in the form of on-trend pomegranate seeds; and collaborative spirit in the bronze-died orzo, sourced from an Italian family cooperative. There was the lamb: mature enough to boast the rich, verdant flavours of fresh grass, yet tender— a sign of high welfare and a talented butcher.

To Northfield Farm, and to its principled blend of history and science, there could be no tastier testimony.

Market Life 42 February 2019

FARMERS ARE

TRAPPED BY

THE ECONOMICS. WE EAT THEIR FOOD, SO IF WE WANT THEM TO CHANGE,

WE HAVE TO

CHANGE. Patrick Holden, an organic dairy farmer and founder of the Sustainable Food Trust, on why our food system needs to change if irreversible climate change, a biodiversity catastrophe and the breakdown of civil society are to be avoided Interview: Ellie Costigan Images: Orlando Gili

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33 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

Patrick Holden

P

Patrick Holden is the founder of the Sustainable Food Trust, a charitable organisation that strives for a better food and farming system, for people and planet. A self-proclaimed hippy, when Patrick set up his west Wales community farm in 1973, he wrote the rules on organic dairy farming. Alongside his internationally influential advocacy work, Patrick continues to produce exceptional cheeses (one of which, the cheddar-like and utterly delicious Hafod, can be found at Neal’s Yard Dairy) from the milk of his Ayrshire herd.

You’re known for promoting a more ‘sustainable’ food system. What do you mean by that?

It’s the food system we all need if we’re going to avoid irreversible climate change, biodiversity catastrophe, a breakdown of civil society, and all the other things we’re scared about these days. The pre-requisite for a stable and civil society is a secure and relatively local supply of food. We want to produce food in a way that protects and preserves our human capital. Also, the food we produce needs to be of high nutritional quality, otherwise we’ll continue to have the problems we’re experiencing in the National Health Service—it would currently be more accurately called the National Diseases Treatment Service, because it’s picking up the bill for deficient agriculture. To do that, we need a return to farming systems that build soil fertility through crop rotation. You need the cycle, because that’s the way to build soil. That’s the way all the soils of the world have been built, through this kind of practice—either managed by nature or managed by us.

What changed?

During the second world war, we made explosives using a process of fixing atmospheric nitrogen, called the Haber-Bosch process. Once the war was over, we didn’t need explosives anymore—but we could use the same process to make nitrogen fertiliser, which became widely available. Farmers realised if they put it on the fields, they could avoid the need for crop rotation—not realising that the traditional method was not just providing nitrogen, but also providing carbon, which is vital for soil quality and fertility. Our wonderful UK soils are carbon rich— or were carbon rich, before the agricultural revolution.

Unfortunately, we’ve been mining the accumulated fertility of generations. Now we need to put it back.

Many people are advocating a move toward more plant-based diets. Is that the right way to go?

A lot of young people in particular are turning to vegetarianism or veganism and there’s a big campaign now to eat less meat, but better, and move to a plantbased diet. A lot of young people are responding to that, thinking that it’s the most responsible way to eat in a world of climate change. In fact, what we need to do, in my opinion, is differentiate between livestock that are part of the problem—feedlot beef, intensively reared chickens and pigs, intensive dairy—and support the livestock and products that come from systems that are part of the solution. Without a healthy, buoyant market for grass-fed beef and lamb, dairy, pastured chickens and pigs, the farmers that need to rebuild their soil can’t do that. Right now, the market for beef is on the floor and farmers are going out of business. It should be remembered that 71 per cent of the United Kingdom’s farmed area is grass—so my message to the vegetarians and vegans is, try to align your future diets to what we could actually produce from this nation if we farmed in a sustainable way. If you recognise that, then you need to differentiate between livestock that you shouldn’t eat, and livestock that you should—that is, if you’re not ethically opposed—and feel good about it. Methane emissions do come from ruminant animals, beef or lamb, but the soil carbon gain has the potential to more than offset that.

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The narrative surrounding the nutritional merits of meat has fluctuated over the past few decades.

What’s driven that?

It’s fascinating. The trend away from fatty meat towards lean meat and away from butter and dairy fat towards margarine goes back to the 1980s, when the government published a report which basically said that animal fats and sugar are bad for you. A journalist called Geoffrey Cannon got hold of this report and wrote a big headline story in The Sunday Times. The food industry was upset about this, especially the sugar industry, which embarrassed the government, so they commissioned another report from the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy. It was published a year later, and it focussed purely on the fact that animal fats are bad for you. It turned out that many of the people on the board had interests in the sugar industry. It was a brilliant plot to deflect away from the damage that sugar is doing to public health and put it all on meat. The rest is history. The whole of the modern British diet was shaped by a report that was dominated by vested interests. Now there’s evidence emerging that even saturated fats from animals aren’t necessarily bad for us. The whole thing has turned.

Have those myths about health influenced the general shift toward plant-based diets?

There are conspiracy theorists that think the turn towards veganism and vegetarianism is backed by vested interests—I’m not that much of a cynic. I think it’s simpler than that. I think young people are, quite rightly, angry about the industrialisation of food and farming. They hate intensive factory farms. The younger generation are mobilised by their power as citizens to bring about change by their actions. But in reacting as they have, they’re throwing out the grass-fed ruminant baby with the bathwater of industrial feedlot beef and intensive chickens. I think there is a learning curve here.

Between the turn of the 20th century and today, we’ve switched our dietary fats from 80 per cent animal and 20 per cent plants, to the other way around. If you look at where those dietary fats come from, it’s palm oil, soya oil —which is genetically modified and causing a huge amount of soil erosion in South America—and crops like almonds, which everybody thinks are very good, but if you go to California, you’ll find that it’s a disaster, in terms of desertification. We need to think very carefully about where all our food comes from, not just meat.

What do you think is the main obstacle to transitioning to a more sustainable food system?

That’s the question: how does change happen? I think it happens through a combination of external circumstances. A problem emerges, it gets to a critical point where people begin to realise something’s wrong, and that creates a degree of fear—what will happen if we don’t change? People in a leadership position think, yes, we do need to change, and then policy makers start to work out how we can. But they won’t do that unless there’s pressure from the public. I think right now the pre-conditions exist: there is growing awareness that agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, and unless we change our food systems, we won’t have a planet fit to live on—and that’s really the truth. I think we’re near a tipping point. I’ve been involved with advocacy for more sustainable food systems since the 1970s; it’s only now I feel that change is happening. A lot of young people, millennials, feel there’s a shift at hand. I think that’s really positive. But I think the shift needs to be grounded in a better understanding of what the issues are.

Do markets have a role in reconnecting consumers with farmers?

At the recent Oxford Real Farming Conference, we had a session on plastics. A guy called Phil Haughton, who runs Better Food in Bristol, put his hand up and said: “I can’t help feeling that getting plastics out of our food packaging is treating the symptom, not the cause. The cause is the move away from farmers’ markets and a direct relationship with our fresh food, toward wrapping it all in

drank the Kool-Aid, came back and decided I wanted to get back to the land and live self-sufficiently. A group of us moved to Wales, that was in 1973, and set up a community farm—it’s still there. That was how I got involved in farming. We established the dairy herd—bought some Ayrshire cows from Scotland—started milking them and have carried on ever since.

As soon as we started farming, we knew we wanted to do so in a sustainable way, and that meant organic farming. We just did it out of instinct, really. Then we wrote some standards, because there weren’t any. I wrote the world’s first draft of the organic dairy standards. A group of us got involved with the Soil Association Livestock Standards Commission. It became clear that an organic market was starting to develop and there were lots of farmers interested, so I became more and more involved and eventually started working for the Soil Association.

I worked my way up the Social Association and headed it up for 15 years. That took me through to 2010, when I left to set up the Sustainable Food Trust.

What prompted the move?

The Soil Association is an incredible organisation and its founder, Lady Eve Balfour, was an amazing woman, a visionary. But, in some ways, it is misunderstood, in my opinion. A lot of people now have a negative view about organic food—that it’s elitist and you have to be rich to afford it—but that’s not really the Soil Association’s fault. The real reason behind that is, the polluters are not paying. If you want to buy proper food, sustainable food, you have to pay more, because the apparently cheap food isn’t really cheap at all, it’s produced using methods that degrade the environment and cause pollution. It’s destroying the balance sheet of nature. I thought, well actually, if we’re going to save the planet, we need to be more inclusive—change the economic policy framework in which all farmers have to operate, so that all farmers can move towards more sustainable methods. That was a major influence on my decision to set up the Sustainable Food Trust. It’s not operating at odds with the Soil Association, it’s just got a more inclusive agenda.

Cheap food isn’t really cheap at all; it’s produced using methods that degrade the environment and cause pollution.

It’s destroying the balance sheet of nature. We need to change the economic policy framework so that all farmers can move towards more sustainable methods

plastic and shipping it great distances.” I think he’s right to a large extent. The renaissance of the farmers’ market movement is a fabulous expression of that, and long may it continue to grow and prosper, because it’s needed. Not least, it gives farmers an opportunity to cut out a couple of links in the profit chain and sell at affordable prices, to people who they actually meet, which is a brilliant thing. Even certification is not needed if you know your farmer. The Americans had a scheme during the Obama administration, called Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food—a wonderful motto for markets. As the great food journalist Eric Schlosser said, the thing about the way most food is produced these days is, if you knew the story behind it, you wouldn’t want to eat it. That’s the truth.

Which is scary. It’s such a powerful thing to think about.

We need to know more about the story behind our food and when we do, we need to still want to eat it.

You’re first and foremost a farmer: how did you come to be engaged with the more political side of food?

I grew up in and around London. I used to go on holidays to do with farming, so I had these glimpses of nature. Then my dad moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for a visiting professorship. When I was about 20, I went out there, 35 The producers / boroughmarket.org.uk

A big question that’s often raised is whether sustainable farming practices can be economically viable for both farmer and consumer. Do you see a time where these things will go hand in hand?

These things can work in harmony. Many thousands of farmers all over the world would prefer to do what they probably know in their hearts is the right thing. If we can shift the economic conditions, whereby farming in a more sustainable way and producing healthy food pays nearly as well, or even as well, as what they’re doing at the moment, they’ll shift. Who wouldn’t want to farm in harmony with nature? To preserve biodiversity, look after animals as best we possibly can, and promote public health? The only reason why farmers are not doing those things is they’re trapped by the economics and the policy environment into a race to the bottom on price. We are the people who eat their food, so if we want them to change, we have to change. We have to realign our diets. We need to be discerning about which livestock products we eat, and once we’ve understood that, we need to eat them.

We won’t keep the farmers who are wanting to return to mixed farming in business unless we eat their food.

We spend about 10 per cent of our disposable income on food—it used to be around 30 per cent back in the seventies.

I know we have legitimate, big expenses, but actually we could afford to spend more on food. Besides, we’re paying in hidden ways for the so-called cheap food: we’re paying with our health, our water bills, we’re paying in climate change, and we’re passing on that damage to future generations.

We must do this. We have to know more, and we have to use that knowledge to shop in the right way—Borough Market, farmers’ markets, finding ways of supporting producers directly, that is absolutely the way forward. We are causing irreparable damage to the planet: we need to use our food buying power to support producers who are not causing it.

It’s an incredibly empowering thing to do as a citizen; to use your money to support a more sustainable food future.

Market Life is a Borough Market publication All material copyright to Borough Market (Southwark) boroughmarket.org.uk Published by LSC Publishing 13.2.1 The Leather Market Weston Street London SE1 3ER lscpublishing.com Editor: Mark Riddaway mark@lscpublishing.com Deputy editor: Viel Richardson viel@lscpublishing.com Deputy editor: Clare Finney clare@lscpublishing.com Managing editor: Ellie Costigan ellie@lscpublishing.com Design: Em-Project Limited mike@em-project.com Editorial consultant: Claire Ford

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