Heart-to-Heart 2008 at the Hay Festival

Hay Festival 1^st June

Jon Snow. Presenter Channel 4. Terry Jones. Author Historian and Python. Martin Aubach Organic food producer.

Martin Griffiths Introduction

I founded and organise the Penrhos Trust and originally it was to help save old buildings, old farm buildings, but the problem is that – it's not difficult to save them – the enormous problem is what you do with them when they are saved. They are of great benefit and they are the farmers' buildings. So, we are now looking at the benefits of small farmers as opposed to industrial or big farmers and that's what this Heart-to-Heart is about. There is the nutritional value of the food that small local farmers produce and the lies that big companies tell when they are marketing their food; the packets can shout out all sorts of benefits of processed foods that really don't exist and what we want to do tonight if we can is to find out how small farmers can be appreciated and what they can do. Martin will give a great example of that. Terry we're going to work up into a fury about the dreadful things that G.M. can do to us and not just the fear value but the way that it's put over. I'm going to leave it at that. John Snow is going to chair the meeting and we want hundreds of questions from you.

Jon Snow Chairman

Chairing a meeting about organic food is as dangerous as being a public figure seen going through red lights on a bicycle because the truth of the matter is that if you live in London as I do unless you live local to an organic shop and there are fortunately some in Kentish town where I live. Mumbleby to be precise, I think five shops. But there is a terrible danger that you in fact buy your organic food at Waitrose which I often do. Now Waitrose tell me whenever I ask them about the organic food that they do buy local. If I go to the one in Newbury they are buying stuff from Berkshire. How far that is true is very hard to track. Of course the biggest buyer of organic food is Iceland and one has no idea where that comes from. We are in danger of all sorts of trouble in this meeting today because there are some very litigious people out there, not least Tesco's who of course are at war with the sponsors of the Hay Festival, the Guardian and actually I speak as one who has also been at war with Tesco's because we dared to say that they use child labour in the making of their children's clothes and they took us to Ofcom and they threatened all sorts of stuff and Ofcom sided with us so – they're now after the Guardian with a vengeance. So, one treads carefully. It would be useful before I even get them to speak to find who you are. Are there any Welsh farmers here? Other than this chap. Yes. Sort of. 4-5. Shall we say, are there any Anglo-Welsh farmer people here? There are, in fact there is a lovely representation which is fantastic because I hope we will get personal insights into the difficulties and the possibilities which you enjoy because the great thing about Martin is that he has looked at where there was something that he could bring to market, ice cream, carob ice cream, other sorts of ice cream and do it in an organic way. He is a farmer, but he will tell us more about it. There will be downsides and upsides and what we want to do is go through both but emerge from here very much on the upside. Before I go to Martin I want to go to Terry because I want to find out what the hell you are doing here.

Terry Jones

I'm not quite sure. I am here as a consumer, I think. I am just here to put the point of view of someone who likes food and who eats food. It seems to me that food is a very political thing and where it comes from is a measure of the kind of society that we are living in. And if you are living in a society in which the food is controlled by huge industries and cartels, it's not going to be satisfactory, the food isn't going to taste as good. That's what I think gets me more even more than the health thing. For example, Martin mentioned about G.M. Actually the health effects of G.M. don't worry me at all. We'll find out what they are. What really worries me about G.M. is that it gives carte blanche to the producers of roundup and the seeds to produce these seeds that you can't re-use and it means that they have control over the farmers for the next year and the year after that. They have to buy new seeds again. They can't do the time honoured thing of re-sowing. They have to buy new stuff. They've got to buy roundup, fertiliser, weedkiller to put on these things. That's what I don't like about G.M. It's putting seed production into the hands of these cartels. And I think just going even further back. I think one of the biggest problems which is when they allowed the ownership of patenting of genes. Once they allowed that was the beginning of the end. We've just got to fight it – I don't know how we do it. I think just awareness of food and hearing some people here will help. Just very briefly, one other thing, I have just been in the United States for most of this month and we were travelling around and what amazes me is that it's so hard to get real food there. Because its all owned by these big companies, and of course there's some wonderful restaurants and some wonderful places but to have meat that actually tastes – it's almost impossible out in the big cities whereas when we were in Lisbon doing an opera in Portugal and in the centre of Lisbon, there were lots and lots of little tiny butchers all working away and producing their meat and the meat tasted – I can't tell you how wonderful that meat was. The chicken, the pork – even in this country we have forgotten what a lot of these things taste like and it was just a revelation in Portugal.

Jon Snow

I first met Martin in the smokey, in the City 25 years ago. He was a very tall cadaverous very very good looking man, he still is. A tremendously good looking man. But he has been agriculturalist. He's now horny hand of the soil. Tell us what transition you went to to bring you to this point. I mean in terms of why you do what you do?

Martin Aubach

Well, John, it's nice of you to remember all that long ago and certainly there have been some changes. Those will include . . . One or two things I ought to just correct in what you said about me. We are not organic I have to say. The carob ice cream. (Sorry there was a misprint on the autocue). The carob ice cream was a very very early attempt at ice cream. When we first started making ice cream, I don't know why we thought that because we were making it from sheep's milk which was already an accident.

Jon Snow

That's when you had sheep.

Martin Aubach

That's right.

Jon Snow

You didn't have any cows?

Martin Aubach

We did have cows but we had the wrong sort of cows. We had meat cows and milk sheep so we ended up with sheeps' milk ice cream. In those days I think we were thinking that our product, sheeps' milk ice cream was going to go into some sort of alternative counter cultural market where they obviously wouldn't eat chocolate so we made carob. Nobody liked it and we don't make it any more. At the time we thought, there was a lot of people who liked the idea of sheeps' milk ice cream would undoubtedly want carob.

Why farming, why sheeps' milk ice cream, that's rather a long story. But the reason we make sheeps' milk ice cream is because we moved from where we were as a commune running holidays for City kids and we had a small holding and I met a lot of neighbouring farmers. In fact one of the things I did when I was there for a bit of work was to help with the things like shearing and the regular jobs they did. I thought they were really interested and one of the things we were doing was bringing City kids down and we were trying to introduce them to farmers and to rural people. There was a huge chasm between us working before that in Bristol in St Paul's which was a mainly West Indian neighbourhood bringing a lot of really bright West Indian kids out whose parents had often been smallholders themselves in the West Indies. Anyway these kids came out and they met a hill farmer from Radnorshire and they really liked farmers. Obviously nobody understood each other at all. But there is incredible warmth and I really liked farmers. I thought if you are going to live in the countryside you really have to understand what these people are doing. Eventually I ended up farming myself with sheep. On a very small farm and having discovered that keeping sheep on a very small farm you just haven't got enough sheep – lambs to sell – we ended up going down this route of processing and adding value and all the rest of it. What interests me about this whole subject is really about small farmers and really what they represent, how important are they and what the future is for them because this area is absolutely studded with historically small farms with beef and sheep and in the 20-25 years that I have been here they've really had a tough time. I'm not a farmer any more. I really admire anyone who still is. I think the big problem we are facing is that in the end we need food, we have to be fed, never mind whether it's organic or not, we actually will need the food, and we could get to a point where we simply don't have that knowledge, that tradition and that experience – to do it. I think the times are changing and I think that in the near future the kind of pressures that have really changed our food system which are obviously industrialisation, mechanisation, producing very cheap food with huge surpluses, those surpluses have come to us as consumers at very low prices and we have been very lucky and we in the West are sort of shocked in the global market with all the money in our pockets. Now the money is in other people's pockets as well, in particular the Chinese, the Indians and so on. And we won't actually be the big guy in the market for much longer. And I think that's going to have a huge impact on what we in Britain think about farming. I think we've ignored it for an awfully long time and I think it's time – I think we're in a position where we are not going to be able to ignore it for much larger.

Jon Snow

That of course collides with the reality that we cannot go on emitting masses of carbon just to move food about.

Martin Aubach

Absolutely, I think that's - one of the pressures will obviously be that the cheap cost of moving food about will no longer be cheap. And that will theoretically give a comparative advantage to food production here. That will be to the benefit of farmers here.

Jon Snow

I wonder at that point whether there is anybody in farming here whose child is taking it up after them and they are secure that they will go on with the farm when they are done. Is there anybody here who's got the next generation in the pipeline ready? Ah, at the back, marvellous. How have you achieved it, you've got a bigger farm maybe than most?

Farmer in the Audience

I don't come from Wales, I farm in Staffordshire. We're a dairy farm. Farming about 350 acres – 230-240 cows. It has been a struggle, it still is a struggle. I have a son who has been in the business 10 years, he went to Harper Adams, did his education there, had a year out on an organic farm, made him to decide to stay along mainstream farming. He's hopeful for the future. There are not too many of them that are.

Jon Snow

What about dairy farming. You're selling centrally rather than locally or are you primarily locally?

Farmer in the Audience

We are selling to a company called Muller, who you've probably heard of, Muller yoghurts. They are a local dairy – they are about 8-10 miles from us.

Jon Snow

It sounds rather sustainable. You've got a son who's doing the business and you've got a local business which is doing the business and the transport costs at that point are not very great although from then onwards it's considerable.

Farmer in the Audience

They are now beginning to promote the idea in the national press and TV that it is all locally produced for them.

That's very interesting. What a nice part of the jigsaw over here. But we have a rather depressing sort of thread . . .

Jon Snow

Stripy shirt. Is your son taking over and where are you from?

Another Farmer in the Audience

Two miles up the road.

Really. Great stuff. I think we've cracked it. What sort of farm is it?

Similar to the previous speaker.

Quite big, I mean for here.

Dairy and selling locally?

Yes. To First Milk, a local co-operative.

That is definitely supplying local dairies and ––––

No, it's a national co-operative.

So it's going in centrally.

Yes.

But still you are surviving.

Yes.

Prospering.

No.

It's really good to have these two very interesting threads there . . . .

What amazes me – I think it's something about our society as a whole – it seems to me astonishing that the people of primary producers whether or its food or even entertainment are being cut back and cut back and paid less and less and less and all the money goes to the periphery, the people that are doing the marketing and the packaging, and selling the things or running the shops and selling them. I can't see how that is sustainable in the end.

It is not sustainable. We know that. What is interesting is . . . this I think we have now set up, the central dilemma in this discussion which is that you can see the pressures building up against mass production, buying from abroad, etc but you can also see the withering which is the point you were making of the capacity to revert to local skills to feed locally. And of course we will have to see seasonal eating as well. Not that you only eat seasonally but that you only eat seasonally available food, because that's really been the biggest briggard of all the fact that you've been able to distort the market to such an extent.

One of the big issues locally now is around the strawberry industry which has got a lot of polytunnels in Hereford with a view to extending the season so they can produce over a longer season.

Do we object to that?

It's a very difficult one. Locally some people object enormously on aesthetic grounds and on the grounds that it is changing the countryside. The argument about whether its right or wrong is a different one.

Do the strawberries taste any different?

Who can remember what strawberries tasted like 10 years ago?

That is always the argument. Taste must get forgotten eventually

This is very interesting, it's bringing work, it's bringing money but it doesn't look very nice. Does anybody have any views about polytunnels. It's very difficult to say I don't want to give that farm planning permission because I simply don't want to have to look at it through the bedroom window.

I think there are so many issues around this kind of ... what is the lesser of the evils. We have to look at it from the point of view, the wind power and the polytunnels –– if the alternative is flying in strawberries from across the globe to keep up with the supermarkets homogenous supply year round then I think we have to say we don't really like polytunnels, we don't like how they make the countryside look but maybe it's a lesser evil than having it shipped in from all over the world.

A lesser evil?

Yes.

But it is bad luck on the scenery?

It is on local scenery, yes, but I think everybody takes a more . . . looks at the bigger picture. At least it's still keeping UK farmers in business.

I have just been Almeria in Spain and that has just been – it looks like polytunnels have just landed from the sky. It's like a Martian planet. A lot of them are UK suppliers who are growing vegetables over there in the soil because it's a lot cheaper, but it has absolutely destroyed what was a beautiful fishing port and a beautiful Spanish town into a commercialised area. Surely it would be better to put that production back into our own country as opposed to putting it somewhere else. But I don't like polytunnels. I wish we could do it a different way.

The argument there is – the season argument which John is raising – ultimately you have got to say well maybe we shouldn't have all those strawberries all the time and that's probably the best argument. I think I never understand is how do you.

Look, fresh fruit. Fresh fruit, everybody has the right to fresh fruit. If you can produce fresh fruit in Britain even it has to be strawberries in late October/early November instead of cut offs in September, that's a plus plus isn't it. Let's face it in terms of – we are not trying to do it because everybody loves strawberries which we surely do want once you go local. You do want still to be able somehow to get fruit. Rhubarb, I don't know what other fruits you can really push. Raspberries? Apples?

The waste of apples in this country is unbelievable. The apple dumping.

My cousin had a huge polytunnel but he was growing marijuana in it. He said it was only for friends . . . .

I work for a business that probably supplied most of the polytunnels in Herefordshire. Which might get some daggers. But I think it's worth remembering that last year with the summer we had, there probably wouldn't have been any strawberries be it in Newbury, London or Herefordshire, available in any of the supermarkets if there hadn't have been polytunnels. It's an uncomfortable fact but we all like eating fruit, we all like eating lettuce, the green veg in the winter which is grown in Spain and if we had just turnips, carrots, swedes, available for UK produce we would have to accept that but if you don't want polytunnels in Almeira where people are now making a good living where once there were fishermen we have now to accept the right to progress. Uncomfortable progress, but still progress.

You could tell us a really interesting question which is, is the polytunnel an evolving aesthetic being – it's pretty brutal at the moment – maybe they will become more manageable, more beautiful, maybe they will go lower, maybe they will not need to look like the way they do.

I personally have spent a lot of time looking into this. Colour is one thing that we have spent a lot of time looking at and those of you that have seen the local press will see that we have tried to make green polythenes. We've also tried to put net over the top and that's something else we're trying to look at. We do spend a lot of time not just for the sake of the business but because we care about the landscape of our own and the people that we share it with. So we do try and make things look less visually intrusive but we are also trying to produce some of it organic, we are trying to produce vegetables and fruit. The UK as opposed to importing it so yes we do care what they look like but they also have to accept that there are limitations.

Earlier in the week sitting on the stage where you are now the Environment Minister for Wales brought up an interesting statistic Martin. That the amount of ice cream we export from this country is exactly balanced by the amount of ice creams we import. Underlying this is the question of consumer choice. Until we are prepared to give up some of our choice, are we onto a hiding to nothing?

I think so. I think probably giving up choices is inevitable. I had a similar statistic about olive oil in Italy. The Italians are the world's largest exporter of olive oil and the world's largest importer of olive oil. How does that work? Olive oil comes from Greece and Spain to Italy. It goes out as Italian olive oil. Olive oil grown in Italy is consumed in Italy. And what they are very clever at is that they have actually created this incredible idea about Italian food with much justification and because they have such great quality of food at home they are able to import much less great food to us who buy it because it's got an Italian flag on it. I think this is what should happen for Wales. The Welsh sort of food strategy – because farming is an important part of Wales in a way it isn't in England. Or rather it has much more voice in Wales than it has in England. The Welsh Assembly are always interested in trying to work out how to support farming, what strategy to introduce to farming. I always think that what they need to do is to get a really good reputation for their domestic produce at home and then flog anything to everyone else with a dragon on it. I think that's a very good idea.

I'm from Ireland. I'm also what is known as a food lawyer. Often people say what do I do as a food lawyer and I actually eat food. Not like the guy that eats the food for the emperor to make sure that it's not poisoned. I do like it and have to look after the regulations. I have my own practice and specialise specifically in artisan and speciality in traditional foods. We have a group in Ireland – a taste Council which are working with our Foods Marketing Board. Exactly like what Martin was talking about. It's kind of push that sceptre forward. In pushing that sceptre forward I would say one thing to you here and don't get worked up about what the scenery looks like. What you're trying to do is build up a food culture. That's what you have in Italy – that's what you have in France, and Spain and in Greece. Unfortunately in the northern hemisphere we don't really have that kind of food culture or it's gone – it went with the industrial age or whatever.

Or with BSE.

Exactly. Different things have been in its way. I would throw something out to you because you've talked about food coming from great distances. We have a referendum at the moment on the Lisbon treaty and our farmers are exorcised about Brazilian beef arriving in the country. Now it's not really an issue with the referendum. But they are right about arguing about this. And I think that this is something that the United Kingdom has to think about because you really want free trade. Your Minister goes to Brussels, Alastair Darling, and says, change the CAP, go for– – –.. rand, go for WTO and it's sold a little bit to people as African farmers will sell their product into the European Union. They are not the people that will win from that. The people that will win are rancher farmers from Brazil. And I'll also throw out something to you. Meat was never meant in God's world to move from Brazil all the way to the United Kingdom or to Ireland. So you have to think about a lot of those arguments that have nothing to do with the environment to try and build up a food culture and some of what I hear here about the small farmers, that's the thing you have to do. That will really push local food and you'll be able to take on the Tescos and the Sainsburys of this world. That's my little piece.

Very good. Thank you so much.

I don't think there's any such thing as free trade. It's a myth. The United States have been putting agricultural subsidies on all its imports, it won't import things. How can it be free trade when air fuel isn't taxed. There's no tax on it. We pay tax on our motor car petrol but air companies don't pay tax on that. It's subsidised. It's not a way of subsidising it. There's no such thing as free trade. It's just a way of politicians putting the money away into whoever they want to support. It's nothing to do with us.

I think what he's saying is actually very interesting. In a sense the problem in Britain is certainly the way the political class views agriculture and to a large extent the way consumers view agriculture I think and this is a lack of a food culture really. We have lived on this idea of cheap food which was introduced really after the War in response to the real shortages that were there. The public big state intervention into agriculture in 1947 with controlling prices and so on was always driven by the idea that if we were going to have to subsidise the bastards we didn't want too many of them. And so they just wanted to get rid of them. They wanted less. And everything you read . . . I have a great book here. If you live near – – – – you'd have the benefit of book shops. This is called Towards the Socialist Agriculture and it was written in 1947 and just to give you a brief taste of it. It was written by a guy called Dr C S Alwyn who was the first Professor of Agriculture and Economics at Oxford and he had the post from something like 1913 to 1946 so he really had it sewn down. The view at that time was just a typical sort of sentence, "Surely the time has come when the facts of our agricultural industry must be faced. When the public must decide whether there is to be a great reconstruction to enable it to take full advantage of all that scientific discovery, mechanical invention and industrial development have to offer it, or whether it be content to stereotype farming as it is today and to pay the price needed to preserve it as an industrial curiosity." And the idea of an industrial curiosity is very much what's coming in again now where we are saying, and this is something that is not popular with farmers, this idea that, yeah, you could be paid for a bit of landscape tidying up here and there, and so on.

Heritage payment?

Heritage payment. At that time it was a choice and the choice was to go for science, go for innovation, go for scale and that was legitimised basically by saying the people of Britain do not have adequate nutrition. It was legitimised by nutritionists who said we have rickets and scurvy and so on. That made it publicly acceptable. Before that in Britain the tradition was always free trade. It was always the cheapest food from the cheapest local supplier.

The largest ethnic minority in Herefordshire outside of strawberry pickers is in fact travellers. Previously the largest producer of strawberries that farm was a hop farm and an apple orchard to make cider and beer. I believe hasn't gone out of fashion either. It provided a great deal of cultural identity in the county. I think Herefordshire is famous for cider and suchlike. And also a great deal of employment not just for travellers in the season but also to mothers who could push prams while twiddling, and such like and it created a culture and it's something I am personally quite fond of. The strawberry growers haven't fulfilled their environmental impact reports. I think its going to be a short term event myself, 5-10 years and the soil will be barren. It's my belief that there's been quite a lot of – – – – paid to be able to do this . . .

Let's go back to our polytunnelist – he'll be out of business very soon if that is so. Is the erosion of the soil . . .

I do think that it's very important here and I'm not going to talk about individual names, but there are some businesses which I think the gentlemen here is alluding to who have perhaps been less than professional and certainly with their PR and possibly with their practices. The business I personally work for has been organic for many years and has succeeded in producing organic strawberries and raspberries as a result of having polytunnels. So we need to . . .

Do you lay land fallow? At regular intervals?

Yes and we plant break crops such as mustard, such as that, in order to let the land rest between the crops. So, I do acknowledge totally and also the importance of the cultural heritage that the County has and we mustn't lose that but equally polytunnels and production of fruit and things can be done organically and polytunnels I think have a part to play in that.

Presumably with polytunnels you don't need so much pesticides and things.

Correct, because the crops are kept dry they are not faced with rot and things like that. So all of the things, there is no black and white I am afraid.

But it is this sort of renitrogising of the soil. Putting more nitrogen back in the soil and all that . . .

This is a bit off the topic to what we're currently talking about but I come from Gladesbury, I was born and grew up in Gladesbury which is a few miles north of here and I am actually currently working in Peru with local farmers there as well. I am doing a report between local farmers in Gladesbury and local farmers in an Andean community in Peru. And the things that they share in terms of the problems that they face are very much to do with big business and to do with political institutions not understanding what farmers do and where they come from. But the things that they also share are a common belief that you need to manage the land in a certain way but a lot of Peruvian farmers are being pushed into using a lot of chemicals, and the buying of chemicals that they haven't used before. Similar to what we did in the 70s and 80s and there is this comparison between where we were then and where Peru is now. A lot of that is driven by an international markets and it's really incredible to see how a small Andean village in Peru faces the same problems that my village in Gladesbury in this border community faces. It's great for farmers to see because they see they are in the same boat.

I think that it is a very neat return to your theme because it globalises exactly what you're saying because the fact that we localise doesn't mean that everybody else can't localise either. Of course that will not suit the business regime that we live with . . .

No. I think it's very hard to re-localise simply because of the power of the regime now because you've got 75-80% of fresh food is now sold through supermarkets, I think that independent shops have got something like 12%. There are markets. There is an interest. There is an appetite for it. Definitely.

What I'm waiting for is for Tesco to break into farmers' markets.

That's already been suggested. When farmers' markets first came here Asda made an offer to them and said put them on our forecourts. Which you know add a lot to it . .

That's one thing but the worst would be if they turned up in drag and were in fact themselves actually selling produce in the market . . .

I grew up in a 50 acre farm and there were three of us kids and that was possible in those days and I know from farming relatives that it's impossible to raise a family on 50 acres these days. But I'm looking around here now and I would also like to make a link with a developing country where I have had some experience of working and I am looking at the fair trade and I'm looking at the fair trade local. We had a meeting in our house in Abergavenny to start off the whole idea of perhaps having fair trade in Abergavenny. But what people in the room were interested in was trade justice because are living in a farming community, we are interested in our own farming families and that's where really the heat came from. It drove us into the fair trade movement. I am just wondering – this is only a thought – what happened to the red tractor? There's a lot of people out there on the side of small farmers. Can't you mobilise yourself around a label. This fair trade label you all the know history of fair trade has gone from one chocolate bar 10 years ago to 5,000 products and its not perfect but what happened to the red tractor? Get behind and mobilise . . .

I don't think the red tractor ever really got credibility that's the problem. Partly . . .

What was the red tractor . . . ?

It basically meant produced in Britain, didn't it? Yeah. It was kind of rubbished in the press quite a lot by people who said it was too low a standard. Firstly I find this whole business about shopping behind standards. I am quite uneasy with it.

It's one thing to talk about shopping behind standards but the issue surely is telling, allowing the shopper to make choices. Labelling is deliberately designed to prevent you making a choice. Most of what's on the label is not anything you want to know. It's got stuff that doesn't mean anything to you. If labelling were clear and fundamentally they have done it with cigarettes so I don't see why they can't do it with food. If you could have labelling that didn't require your specs. So that it's got to be seen by anybody with half normal sight. It's got to say, mileage. The mileage is a very contestable issue. I want to come to this in a minute. Mileage, basic ingredients and where it was made. Whatever I don't mind. Origin. But mileage seems to me to be a very very critical issue on the packaging. If people want to buy local and I think the red tractor was too big as a concept. It was a national thing. I think what we're really talking in farming in Peru and here is local. We want to support the people we live amongst but we have no mechanism for doing it unless we go to a certain shop that we know a certain farm supplies and that takes very intimate local knowledge which not everybody has.

The problem is, the supermarket distribution system is not set up to handle either local or many accounts.

It will have to be. They can change the law. They'll have to fix it. The problem is that at the moment we're not electing these companies and they are dominating our . . .

We've had two OFT Commission enquiries in the last 3-4 years.

There's one going on now.

And they both come out saying it's all fine.

But it isn't. And it's going to change and we will change it.

But the trouble is if the politicians are playing to the big corporations because big corporations pour money into their coffers, party politics, Tony Blair said well 20,000 farmers need to go the wall in next 10 years, I think it was about 10 years ago. He didn't want small farmers to succeed.

But hang on a minute. Come to Modbury in Devon and you'll find there was a local demand to stop plastic bags. And within three months not only have they stopped them but they got Tescos to stop them. Right. That was peer pressure on the supermarket. If everybody in Hay on Wye to their best of their ability could label themselves, have a Hay on Wye labelling system which would be additional to the labelling on the product already I think that's an achievable thing. If everybody in Hay, every merchandiser put whatever labelling they could as to locale and the rest of it, the pressure on the supermarket would develop. It's useless going in at the top end. You're never going to affect the big boys other than by tweaking their balls. You can't go for the brain you go for the balls and you do that by coming up from underneath. As you are farming folks some of you we can talk turkey . . . I don't know if they have balls. There is within this argument a very important point and that is . . . I weekend in West Berkshire and we are blessed because we are in downland and thank God there are still sheep there. But there are only sheep there because they are brought by truck from Cumberland and Northumberland to be fattened. I don't know that the grass in West Berkshire really is structurally that much better than what can be got in Cumberland and Northumberland.

This is the historic structure of sheep farming.

Yes, it is! You know, you can be telling the supermarkets to get their act together but farmers have to get their act together. What are they doing shipping sheep all over Britain? We hear about it at the time of foot and mouth or scrapie or whatever it is and we are told it's going to stop, don't worry. But it doesn't – you wake up one morning and find the bloody sheep's come from Penrith. Explain farmer . . .

The historic structure of sheep farming has been that the hills grew the young stock and they were fattened on the lower country where there was grain growing on the whole and that's what has happened and that's what kind of traditional hill farmers and indeed people in the sheep business would like to see going on. And that gets interfered with by not only things like, now distances to travel to abattoirs, all kinds of things, you get weird things like milk farmers who have grass that they just want to use in the spring. In the winter before they get the cattle out. So those are opportunity costs and there is a lot of people taking those opportunity costs undoubtedly so it's not a kind of structured system as it was, now it's much more random I think.

There is hope presumably because the fuel costs of moving them are escalating so . . .

There is a logic to moving the sheep from the uplands to the lowlands. That is the historic pattern.

They can go local lowlands.

This is the problem. You then get the latest fixation which may be about local or may be about movement and it doesn't necessarily comprehend those factors which may be cultural, there may even be links. A farmer there whose always had these sheep from somewhere else.

What happens when that sheep is slaughtered outside my back window. Is it a Cumberland sheep or is it a Berkshire sheep? What is it going to be sold as?

Exactly, it's going to raise all kinds of . . . should we change those sorts of structures simply because we can't get our heads round the idea that there may be a reason why sheep move from uplands to lowlands. We can understand the idea of food miles and distances, well possibly we should. But we are at the vagaries of those kinds of things. And those things pop up every week. Can I read a funny passage.

By all means . . .

This is about this business about selling foods with stories. This is a very good book written by a guy called Michael Pollen who is American who was over earlier this year and he's talking about big organic wholefood supermarkets in the States where everything has a story. And he says, "with the growth of organics and mounting concerns about the wholesomeness of industrial food, story food is showing up in supermarkets everywhere these days, but its wholefoods" (now wholefoods has just come to the UK, very top end, London, organic supermarket but they are a chain across the States), "but its wholefoods have consistently offered us the most cutting edge grocery lit. On a recent visit I filled my shopping cart with eggs 'from cage 3 vegetarian hens', milk from cows that live 'free from unnecessary fear and distress', wild salmon caught by native Americans in Yakutak, Alaska, population 833, and heirloom tomatoes from Café Farm, 'one of the early pioneers of the organic movement'." I mean this is the kind of information that we are going to be faced with if we go down this route of – kind of – you know we need a story to buy something. I do think there are some problems with it. It's great in a way, and obviously the bland face of this industrial food doesn't tell a story but I think we've got to be careful because the supermarkets are quite capable of producing these stories again as they are doing in America with these wholefood markets. And he went back to these farms and of course they are industrial farms.

I am actually from a farming family in New Zealand as well as working for Café Direct here in the UK. And we're talking a lot about problem issues here, stories around localisation and around a way of eating. I also just want to bring up a maybe slightly more macro around talking global value chains and value chains in production and where value is held and I wonder if we're kind of meshing these two together a little and actually thinking about pulling them apart and that might get to some of the key issues around how food is produced internationally and the world food prices that we are facing at the moment.

Can you just explain global value chains. I kind I think I understand what you're saying but you're talking about where . . . Explain that a little be more

The idea is where from a product from the shelf in the supermarket and when we go and buy a product to who's actually producing it and who actually controls the value within that chain.

One of the things in that that's very clearly demonstrated is that the proportion of value going to producers is consistently shrinking so I think 40% of a dozen eggs went to egg producers in 1970 are now probably 22%. The same has happened with milk. In other words more value has been taken further up the chain and one of the answers to that is obviously is shorter chains. We obviously selling ice cream have a very very short chain and that's great for us. The difficulty with short chains is that we have a huge urban population and you can't actually get everything to them along short chains but I do think that's where the solution lies in many ways.

I live in Shropshire. I'm nothing to do with farming, I just eat food. But I would just like to say that I think we as consumers have a huge responsibility and I believe firmly in the power of the pound in your pocket. I am an ex Friends of the Earth campaigner so when I go shopping every Saturday in the local town I prioritise where I put my money. We do have a budget so I have to make compromises but I prioritise first an organic vegetable box, then the local market where some of the products are produced within Shropshire, and then I have a hierarchy and by the time I end up in Morrisons I only need to buy about six things for a week's shopping. But I really really truly believe that every single person has to start making those choices and eventually I think if it comes from the bottom up that's when Tescos and people like that will start to listen. And I think that happened with organics, where it used to be a few weirdy people like me in sandals who used to buy it but now it's a good business and it was because people who used to demand it and say I want to buy these products in your shop. Don't get too hooked up too much on the supermarkets. They only have control if you choose to go there and shop.

Thank you for that. I think we are in danger of, because we are not in the City although some of us come from the City, of ignoring the reality that the supermarkets have introduced the urban citizen to a range of foods that they may not have been introduced to before, that's one thing. But the second thing is that the option to do what you do is only very gradually beginning to return. Farmers' markets in cities are an extraordinary growth industry and of course what one would really urge on the local is that it be made as accessible as possible on the fringes of the local in the City and in the town, but it's a very well taken point.

I just want to make a quick point that all the farms that I worked in Peru have local markets and they all work in local farmers' works and they are local farmers they just don't have those brand labels. And with the world food prices there are higher prices in local market and there are problems with people being fed. There are people starving in those communities because they only have a local chain. So we have to be very careful that we have a complete holistic approach and we don't decide that we all want to be organic and all want to have local and all . . . because otherwise we may actually find it hard to get cheap and affordable food that we need in poorer communities especially in places like Manchester and London.

I was brought up on a farm 2 miles away from here. I then went away for some 40 odd years. I have come back. I have been an organic farmer about 18 miles away and I have been running a farmers' market in Brecon for the last 8 years. Three things were very noticeable. First there are practically no plough when I came back 16 odd years ago. Now in the last year we have started to plough again. That is a result I believe of the escalating prices of animal feed and so on. But one of the problems in the farmers' market was that to get vegetables to go either into Herefordshire or right down into Cardigan, one of the things that will be a great help and is obviously starting is the polytunnels coming in – they don't have to be quite the same thing that we see near Herefordshire where they are covering several acres, but it will enable the small farmer here to diversify away from his sheep and his cattle which was forced on him by the Common Market subsidies. I think that's the interesting development over the last 60 odd years.

That's a very helpful perspective. The plough is particularly interesting.

Just a comment upon a couple of things. The short chain is fine. But the bottom line for many families is at what price can you buy your food and we're not just talking food, we're talking large supermarkets. As a resident in Hay on Wye I am aware that families do actually travel to Hereford which is 20 miles away to a large supermarket buying not only their food but other commodities as well which are going to be priced to attract them there. Second comment, I've been deeply involved in farming, not quite as a farmer for 40 years. Many of my clients, sheep and cattle farmers here, could never understand why our New Zealand lamb was competing with our own lamb at a price lower than we could produce Welsh lamb. I'd love an explanation to that one. The third comment and lastly is that many of our problems have arisen out of our national and European Regulations. I am thinking in particular (maybe Martin can comment and explain this) on our abattoir system. This is why we can't have beef slaughtered locally and go and get some wonderful local Welsh meat. End of my comments.

I'm just going to ask two of you to wrap up what your thoughts are on the basis of one of the most interesting conversations that I've been present at it in this domain.

I love the idea of labelling the food like that. I think fundamentally if you are in farming, food production just to make money you are going kill the thing that you're trying to do. Of course you're not in it just to make money but that what's big companies are in it. They're just in it to make money so they'll exhaust the land and destroy the land and they don't really care. They'll go onto something else.

After all you were never in entertainment to make money. Good God you would go bust . . .

It's like making beer. Like Watneys went out of business making beer because they were just wanting to make money.

But when the big foot came down you didn't hear the cash till ring did you?

Not when we made shows no.

Afterwards.

Yes. Luckily.

I just wanted to answer Alwyn's point about abattoirs. It's actually right. What's happened is that at a certain point in order to trade internationally within Europe abattoirs had to be graded up. There was a perception by the meat industry that there was over capacity. This that and the other. A lot of local abattoirs went out of business and what people puzzle about here is that doesn't necessarily seemed to have happened in other European countries. I think what's potentially a way to go is to look at different standards for different kind of levels of trade and I have had Environmental Health Officers over the years making speeches to us as producers who are always regarded as the devil basically by them saying the great thing is they treat you all the same. It doesn’t matter if you're Tescos or you we treat you the same. And I want to say no, well don't. Treat us differently because we are actually completely different. That's something that's not recognised in any kind of British policy or system that you could even begin to think that. The French have an idea called artisenal and they have different regulations for it and I think possibly the Italians do too. They all have their own ways of loopholing those kinds of things that they value. And perhaps we could be more creative about doing that here.

And a last general thought.

Just going back to the abattoirs. I think that's why the meat that I can buy doesn't have that much taste in it because the animals are scared, they're herded together, they're driven thousands of miles, hundreds of mile and they're terrified and there's adrenaline in their blood – it shows somehow. I think that's why the meat we had in Portugal was so good. It's local, killing locally.

I have to say that having sat up here the people that have made this have been the participation of you. It's been really fascinating to draw on your experience, your issues, but of course it's been the cream of the cream has been to have the wisdom of Martin and the joy of Terry. I would just like to thank you all and on your behalf the panel, very warmly indeed.

1^st August Please note further editing required

Martin Griffiths

The Penrhos Trust