FOOD AND DRINK

Reap what you sow?

As the UK prepares to increase its self-sufficiency, Melissa Blease seeks advice from some of those who’ll face Brexit from the foodie frontline

For decades, the shopping in our baskets and larders has represented the food-world equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Six Nations and the Academy Awards all sitting down together for supper – and our menus reflect the international theme. We blithely scoff strawberries in December, for example, largely imported from Spain, Egypt, Morocco and Israel. Nearly all the decent pasta that we eat is imported from Italy (if you’ve ever tried growing durum wheat in the UK, you’ll understand why). We dive into Icelandic cod on a regular basis, Norwegian salmon makes a splash on menus across the land, and tonnes of tuna makes its way across the oceans from Mauritius and the Seychelles. Even British salad leaves take a bruising in the colder months; the British Leafy Salads Association says that 90%of the salad leaves we eat in winter come from a single region of Spain. But with Brexit now underway, we can no longer take our food supply for granted.

According to Chris Elliott – founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University, Belfast – the UK imports about 40% of all the food we eat, with around a third of it coming from EU member states. “The UK imported more than £370million worth of potatoes from the Netherlands and Belgium in the first six months of 2018 and, in the first nine months of last year, 94% of beef imports into the UK came from EU member states, three-quarters of it from Ireland alone,” he says. Meanwhile, according to a report commissioned by dairy giant Arla and published by the London School of Economics towards the end of last year, “the UK imports nearly all the yoghurt it eats, largely from mainland Europe,” while the Republic of Ireland produces nearly 10 billion litres of milk a year, the majority of which goes into the British market.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the future of food prices will remain “highly uncertain” until solid trade negotiations are made, and the British Retail Consortium has stated that the absence of a trade deal between the UK and the European Union could see the price of imported food rise by 22% over the coming year.

In need of food for thought, we solicited some morsels of expert advice from a few of the West Country’s industry figures.

...Now is an excellent time to align our diets to incorporate more British seasonal food...

Given all the uncertainty, now is an excellent time to align our diets to incorporate more and more British seasonal food, looking forward to new produce becoming available as the seasons evolve rather than worrying about what we can’t get. Riverford already does this, so we’re a handy shortcut! Customers can select UK produce, and we even have a 100% UK veg box which makes it even easier. When we do import (which is always land/sea freight, never air freight), we do so from grower-partners with whom we have long-term and very solid relationships so we’re well protected against disruption to supply, and confident that we’ll be able to work around any potential obstacles to keep our organic boxes filled.

Ped Asgarian, MD of Chew Magna’s Community Farm If managed properly, Brexit could be a big positive for UK farming. If mismanaged, it could possibly destroy what little soul is left of our longstanding agricultural heritage. Post-Brexit, the landscape of UK farming will undergo significant changes. Different variables will have a big impact on what we farm, how we farm, and the survival of farms, from smallscale to large. Many of these factors will be interwoven in ways that are not perhaps obvious to those without experience and knowledge of the history of how trade with Europe and how the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have influenced the crops we grow and how we grow them. We face a mixture of threats and opportunities, and we won’t know the full picture until the ink has dried on trade deals and we’ve decided how the CAP and countryside stewardship schemes will be replaced. Environmental land management schemes, for example – designed around the concept of public money for public goods – have been proposed as replacements for the current countryside stewardship schemes; they would encourage a significant move toward looking after soil, creating wildlife corridors and a raft of other positive changes that would benefit those aiming to grow agro-ecologically. However, such changes will only happen gradually due to farmers being locked in to current schemes for up to the next eight to 10 years, so this will slow down any positive environmental impact we could expect to see.

If (hopefully) we choose to impose higher environmental and health standards on our farming practices, we will inevitably see prices rise. Making trade deals that allow cheaper food to enter this country and/or

Vicki Mowat, Riverford Home Delivery In the UK, we currently only supply 61%of our own food, while 70% of imported food comes from EU countries; the decisions made around tariffs, quality standards and other issues will potentially have a big impact on us all. At Riverford, we employ lots of brilliant workers from the EU, and the availability of future labour is a huge area of concern for the entire fruit and vegetable industry. We were very disappointed to see the government’s recent points-based immigration system announcement that seems to have completely ignored how vital migrant workers are to the agricultural sector. We’re providing full support to all of our European workers in order for them to be able to return next year to pick for us, and we’re also better able to attract British nationals as we pay above-average wages. We’re confident in being able to weather any storms and keep the Riverford veg boxes fully supplied, but we’re worried about the impact on growers who are smaller than us and less able to navigate this tricky issue.

Building menus around seasonal availability supports local farmers and is better for the planet too

food produced to lower standards could therefore undermine any proposed changes and put farms across the country at risk of struggling to make ends meet. It’s important trade is matched to our standards; this will allow us to create a fertile environment in which our farming industry can grow. I take a view that small-scale, agro-ecological farming needs to be at the heart of our farming system, not only for the protection and betterment of the environment, but for the improvement of rural and local economies. Research has shown that infrastructure, employment prospects and education are often increased in rural communities with a prevalence of small-scale farming. Such communities’ food supplies are also less likely to be affected by adverse weather conditions or disease due to their shorter supply chains, thus boosting their resilience.

...Small-scale, agro-ecological farming needs to be at the heart, not only for the protection and betterment of the environment, but the improvement of economies...

Valentine Warner, food writer, chef and broadcaster The overall problem is that we all eat too much: if we all ate a fraction of what we eat, which is all that we need, things would be very different. But we live in an age where people think they have the right to have what they want, and that’s where all kinds of problems started, well before Brexit. The reason I like companies such as Riverford is because, to some degree, they’re deciding how much you eat over a week, and the people who have decided that they want that kind of rationale around their food have self-imposed a form of rationing. If everybody behaved like that instead of just randomly buying lots of food, we’d be in a better place. A lot of the mess we’re in can be sorted out locally, but there are all sorts of things to think about, not only over the coming year but the next 20, 40 years – we have to start not only looking at what we’ve got, but how much we can have.

Neil Mortimer, MD of Lovejoys Wholesale Specialists in local and UK produce, we’re working with our chefs to compose menus that place more emphasis on seasonal produce, keeping costs down and promoting all of the fabulous local produce available to us. But the UK food business is extremely important to countries in the EU, and vice versa: Holland and Belgium supply the majority of frozen and chilled chips; France and Spain send huge supplies of tomatoes and other salad crops our way, especially in the winter when UK supplies are out of season. If a trade deal agreement is settled quickly, food supplies will go on as normal; if not, the worst scenario is cost increases and lengthy customs delays. It’s hoped that the worst-case scenarios will only be temporary. Our aim is to work hard to keep supplies as normal as possible throughout the negotiation period, and we’re hopeful that our experience and long-standing relationships with suppliers will sustain us.

Rob Clayton, chef/proprietor of Clayton’s Kitchen Whatever’s going on in the world, Brexit is everywhere. For the restaurant and hospitality industry, the uncertainties might not be having a huge impact right now... but we can’t help being worried. It’s difficult to pin down exactly what would happen in a deal/no-deal – who knows which we’ll end up with? Even experts and TV pundits struggle to come up with convincing answers as to what might happen; depending on who you listen to, it’s either a nightmare or the best thing to happen to Britain. One thing that pretty much everyone can agree on is that whatever Brexit deal we get, some food prices are likely to rise. This makes sense – after all, in the previous year, 30% of food imports came from the EU. But which foods will actually cost more? According to the British Retail Consortium, the price of beef could rise between 5% and 29%, poultry prices could rise by as much as 25%, and fruit and vegetables will be affected too; the UK Trade Policy Observatory suggests that tomato prices could rise by up to 18%. Whichever restaurant, catering or hospitality news source you trust (we would suggest Blue Arrow), the picture doesn’t look particularly rosy.

But perhaps there’s another side to the story. What if we stopped importing so much food and focused our attention on buying local, seasonal produce instead? Could buying local help to grow the restaurant industry? Could the food we cook be fresher, healthier and support local producers? Of course, we don’t know the answer to all of those questions now. But what we can say is that there’s an increasing trend for chefs and catering professionals choosing to put more local produce on their menus. A couple of decades ago, menus were predominantly based around local produce. Today, access to even the most unlikely foodstuffs is easy: pineapples in December, avocados in February. Perhaps my industry needs to think about whether we need these ingredients on our menus at this time of year. Building menus around seasonal availability supports local farmers and it’s better for the planet too. And with restrictions comes creativity; shipping avocados in the middle of winter begins to sound ridiculous when you think about it for more than a few seconds. As Norman Dinsdale, a senior lecturer at Sheffield Business School, with over 40 years’ experience in the international hospitality industry, posits: “I’m not suggesting that we return to the dreary potato, cabbage and turnip diet of the post-war years and early 1960s but we should, as a nation, be prepared and able to produce a lot more of our own food, paying our farmers a decent return for their produce.”

Wherever you stand on the Brexit divide – whether you voted to leave, you’re a hard-line Remainer, or you don’t really care – the consensus seems pretty clear for our industry: imported food, particularly from within the EU, will almost inevitably cost more, regardless of the deal outcome.... but food grown in the UK may not. And I’m sure most of us can agree on one point: fresh, seasonal, local produce is the way forward.

...One thing highlighted by the Covid-19 crisis is that increased globalisation carries its own risks, impairing our abilities as a nation to isolate when necessary...

Peter Milton, proprietor, Larkhall Butchers I think that there’s likely to be an initial period of confusion post-Brexit trade deals, with a fall in imported food putting stress on our local supply chain. This concern will play heavily with prices, but shouldn’t actually limit the availability of food. At Larkhall Butchers we’re in a relatively stable position; our strong ties to local farmers mean that we actually have nearly 12 months of stock in the fields at any given time –as farmers have to work so far ahead, planning is essential, but this clearly benefits all of us. A more pressing concern, for me, is that many of the workers involved in processing our food are often European, and new restrictions may limit their availability to do this work, particularly around Christmas – this may increase costs at the process and production stages of any food sold.

I would hope that, after a brief period of uncertainty, the demand for local produce across all industries would force us to increase the supply chain to match, with more local jobs being created and, hopefully, a resurgence in both interest and investment into domestic farms. One thing highlighted by the current Covid-19 crisis is that increased globalisation carries its own risks, with a dependency on foreign imports impairing our abilities as a nation to isolate ourselves when necessary. It also reduces our ability to be self-sufficient. But hey, we certainly live in interesting times! And I’ll be fascinated to see how it all pans out, whether our primary and secondary industries will actually increase, or whether we’ll just shift imports to new trade deals. Either way, the show must go on! ■