Gavin Fletcher, the coordinator of Good Food Leicestershire, has been itching to attend the ORFC (Oxford Real Farming Conference) for years, and earlier this month his wish came true.
Gavin (on the left of the picture) was at the 14th ORFC for the Sustainable Food Places* session ‘Farmer Connections: a food partnership approach.’
“I was outlining the work developing in Leicestershire on sustainable farming systems and procurement and was joined by Abi Mordin of Dumfries and Galloway Food Partnership and Jenny Rouquette of Shropshire Food Partnership.
“The discussions kept coming back to the need for local engagement. One challenge asked how we build local scale in the rural economy while striving for the highest environmental standards – this is something we’ve covered in our sessions with farmers and partners and, again, the answer lies in working it out at a local level, in a room, together.
“The rest of the conference was dynamic and exciting – and some common themes emerged:
1. To work towards shared ethics we need recognised standards. Regenerative farming is bandied about, but defies consistent definition. SMB College Group's Brooksby campus, near Melton, is bringing some sense to this with their new regenerative agriculture course.
2. Government needs to be clear about policy and funding if we are to shift to sustainable farming systems, with generous support and thought needed to bridge that transition.
3. There are more and more communities, organisations and groups linking farming, community and wider supply chain interests. As these mature and deliver we will need to look at how we replicate them.
4. Local authorities and policy makers need to be better at joining the dots. There are new options to link the upcoming England Land Use Framework (LUF) with Local Nature Recovery Strategies. Some are looking at how local LUFs could drive long term strategy.
5. Finance is key – there is money out there for nature and carbon, but we need national policy, and local partnership scale, to allow access.
“It was a pleasure to bring our story to Oxford, and to shout about our brilliant partners as part of a wider celebration of farming and landscape. And a privilege to do so alongside so many brilliant speakers and advocates for more sustainable, inclusive and diverse farmers.”
*Sustainable Food Places is a partnership programme with Sustain, Soil Association and Food Matters. Leicestershire has the SFP’s bronze award.
Leicestershire’s pioneering Allerton Project will be showing landowners and land managers how trees and biodiversity can boost their bank balance next month.
The farming research centre will be joined by the Forestry Commission and the Woodland Trust for its ‘how to’ session on Wednesday, 15 February, from 10am.
Guests will learn about agroforestry, woodland creation, management and protection, creating hedgerows, Allerton’s AgriCapture and green funding, including the Forestry Commission’s England Woodland Creation Offer.
Good Food Leicestershire’s steering group met at County Hall at the start of January.
Chaired by Chris Stoate of the Allerton Project and assisted by Alice Jones, a food technologist from the Melton Food Enterprise Centre, the two-hour meeting touched on sourcing Leicestershire milk for Leicestershire schools and work to examine available funding and county food supply chains.
Government pledges to ban the advertising of high fat, sugar and salty foods before 9pm on TV and online have been shelved until at least October 2025.
The measure was promised almost three years ago.
“By delaying these measures, government is encouraging the food and drink industry to continue spending millions of pounds in advertising junk food, rather than supporting families to access healthy and nutritious options,” says Barbara Crowther, coordinator of the Children's Food Campaign.
“This is a disastrous and totally unjustifiable level of delay, and it is wrong to claim that industry has not had enough time to prepare, as the consultations took place in 2019, and the decision to introduce the 9pm watershed and online advertising restrictions announced in 2020.”
The county’s Food for Life programme started 2023 with a little bit of a celebration.
New Lubbesthorpe Primary, Hinckley Parks Primary and Battling Brook Primary opened their doors to guests during a day of recognition for embracing the FfL ethos through community growing and commitment to quality school food from Leicestershire Traded Services. New Lubbesthorpe received the FfL’s bronze award while Hinckley Parks and Battling Brook received silver standard.
Lunch was provided at Hinckley Parks, where guests also met a county honey producer who has been encouraging schools to install and maintain their own hives.
Leicestershire’s Ffl manager Raksha Mistry explained: “Our guests were impressed by the pupils who they met during the day, they shared how the pupils’ passion, confidence and knowledge on recipe innovations and climate was palpable. These pupils are gaining lifelong skills and experiences.
“The children themselves were fascinated by county honey producer Dave The Bee Farmer who’s helping schools who grow their own food introduce bees onsite.”
Good Food Leicestershire is proud to fund Food for Life in our schools, teaching kids about food, growing and nutrition from farm to plate.
One of the satisfactions of Good Food Leicestershire is being able to put our partners in touch with other partners.
Following September’s Leicestershire Sustainable Food Summit at Loddington, we connected Melton food technologist Alice Jones with Alex Gray, lecturer in countryside management at the Brooksby campus of SMB College Group on the outskirts of Melton.
Since learning from Alice of the need for local elderflower growers and suppliers, the college has stepped up its elder planting in a major way.
More on that in the next issue…
Quick heads up on local government
Rebecca Cox is the principal policy advisor at the Local Government Association and was on a Zoom with Good Food Leicestershire in January. She gave us some chewy info on local authorities in England:
Councils provide 800 public services and have 1,200 legal duties. England’s 24 county councils’ major responsibilities include adult social care, transport and infrastructure and waste disposal.
Including county, district and parish councils, English local government involves 20,000 councillors, two million employees and £50 billion annual expenditure.
Since 2008, budgets from central government have been in sharp decline. Councils are now facing £2.4 billion in cost pressures on top of funding gaps. The funding gap of £3.4 billion rises to £4.5 billion for 2024/25.
For every £1 of council funding in 2012/13; adult social care (39p) and children’s social care (17p) was half of local authority budgets. In 2022/23 adult social care is now 43p and children’s social care is 24p, more than two thirds of their budget.
It's soil, folks
If you’re into food and farming, you’ll know soil health is now big news.
If you’ve ever wondered why, The NFU’s Foundation of Food report puts the toll on soils, including degradation, erosion and compaction, in the frame.
Low-income families have missed out on £79 million worth of fruit, veg and milk from the government’s Healthy Start scheme.
Sustain has found half of eligible families were unable to access food support in the past year and urges the government to make inflation-adjusted payments and publish uptake data.
The latest issues stem from the introduction of digital cards, with difficulties applying for and using the cards, plus costly waits using the Healthy Start helpline.
Through food inflation, families are seeing their payment value shrink, leaving many unable to afford essentials, such as infant formula, with the market’s cheapest (Aldi) now costing 10p above what a family with an infant receives in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Don't be a waster
Bethany Pownall knows all about food waste as the county’s environment and waste management technician. Bethany was kind enough to do a Q and A to coincide with this month’s Net Zero Leicestershire launch.
UK households waste £700 of perfectly good food every year. What’s most likely to get binned?
Potatoes, bread and milk. All three kitchen ‘essentials’ are relatively cheap, so if they go to waste, it isn’t thought too much about, but few consider the water, energy, labour, fertilisers etc used to grow, store, transport and process this food.
800,000 whole apples get lobbed every day too…what food waste stats make you cringe?
The money figures, such as the £700 a year you mentioned. Wasted food is wasted money. A new study by Tesco showed 77% of people throw away unopened or unused food. It’s why planning and shopping is so important.
Are we getting the message about how wasting food affects the planet?
Yes, but not fast enough. Food waste accounts for 8-10% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. There’s some fluctuation, depending on the weather and other factors, but, essentially, there’s a clear relationship.
When it comes to food, a lot of our habits come from our parents...
Involving your kids in meal planning will help. Equally, talking to them about the impact on the planet is important, so they understand where their bananas come from, for example, and what it means if they get binned. Obviously, tread gently. Portion size is also important as a huge plate of food will likely end in waste.
With budgets getting tighter, how do we get smarter with food waste?
The best suggestion is to plan, so you don’t buy more than you need. Plan for the week ahead. Write out a list of the ingredients you don’t have in your fridge/freezer/cupboards – and cross check what you have. Get creative with leftovers or freeze them for later.
Baby food sweeter than Coca-Cola is sold in the UK every day – and it’s legal. Research also found some baby food pouches had two thirds of an adult's recommended daily sugar limit.
In December, the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities showed that voluntary industry measures to reduce sugar in kids’ food by 20% had failed. Instead, they ‘achieved’ 3.5%.
This scheme, launched back in 2016, ignored baby and toddler food. Draft commercial guidelines for their food went to consultation in 2020 but has stalled. Sugar and salt remain unrestricted while obesity rates grow. Tooth decay is the number one cause of children’s hospital admissions and has been for four years.
Dr Camilla Kingdon, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said:
"In my own practice, I see parents of very small and vulnerable babies buy baby food pouches and pots with the assumption that they are giving their children the best start they can. The marketing strategies used on these parents are highly effective, with buzzwords such as ‘all organic,’ ‘natural sugars’ and ‘nutritionally approved.’ At best this disingenuous, at worst dangerous.
"We cannot rely on the food industry to provide infants with good nutrition without adequate regulation in place."
Ben Reynolds, deputy chief executive of Sustain, added: “There is simply no justification for industry producing baby food that is more sugary than Coke. We know that what we eat in our early years shape our food preferences for life. A balanced diet from the start can set children on a path to healthy eating for life and help them avoid dietary related ill health, such as overweight, obesity and diabetes.”
