Sustainable farming

Sustainable farming is the only way for farming, fact. 

It all might feel a bit preachy and a bit "what a bad lot we all are" for not eating sustainably, but even the thought of change is a start.

The opposite of sustainable is Un-Sustainable which we definitely can’t afford, so everyone has to take the metaphorical Bull by the horns and see what can be done. 

The system can’t be changed overnight but at the heart of this matter are without doubt all the current issues - "pig swill", "meat free Mondays", and ironically from me Mr Meat, "eat less meat"..... All this has been voiced many times over and it does indeed start with education, but the conversation must continue within the day to day reality of food consumption and consequently food production.

I heard an agronomist (soil Scientist) say recently that arable soils are lacking in organic matter, and that the soil needs to be cared for and revered, not whipped like an ill treated dog. Good sustainable farming is in all our interests.

Radio Sharpie - The supply chain

Radio Sharpie - Moo Man

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Rubbish

Read an article recently in the Guardian. It hinted that the fall in UK self-sufficiency doesn’t matter. If this was indeed the intention of the article, it is in my opinion, a rubbish statement to make.

Food production matters. What we aren’t growing, we aren’t adding to the global pot. The reporter’s argument was that since it's a global market and we do import food, the declining domestic numbers/percentages don't matter. But declining production absolutely does matter. The more high quality food we produce, the more high quality food we can contribute to the global pot for others (i.e. other countries and human beings). Rant over.

Seriously, though, we have to understand that a selfish view of food production and consumption is not acceptable. There is a bigger picture which we need to deal with together. By together, I mean globally as well as domestically. For example, the European Union was set up as a single market with a policy for this self same issue. It's called the Common Agricultural Policy (the clue is in the name).  I agree it isn’t working exactly how it should. 

Finally, please don't demean farmers and the important work they do by implying food is just like steel or glass, as it is way too important and precious to be treated like just another commodity.

Pig Swill

One of my youthful memories is of Mr. Mulgrew in his mazda pickup collecting the kitchen waste (or pig swill as it was known) from the local hostelries. Normal kitchen waste would be taken home to feed his omnivorous pigs, and this would make the pigs a little over fat but choc full of flavour (not dissimilar to the much vaunted rare breeds pork of today's Artisan butchers).  The first reason for not feeding the pigs of today entirely on swill is the modern requirement for uniformity of size and fat cover of the animal. It has been ascertained that the way to get more uniform carcasses is to spilt the feed into twenty percent cereal ration and eighty percent swill. There is also a concern for balancing the carbon footprint generated by cereal/ soya consumption, but the consensus is that there is no way to entirely cut out the soya consumption by pigs straight away.  The second reason, is the disastrous Heddon-on-the-wall foot and mouth outbreak.  This made legislators run scared from swill feeding, and an EU wide ban on swill feeding pigs very quickly followed.  It seemed at the onset of the ban that most people hadn't considered the crime of food waste to landfill as an issue .... This issue always has in my view, been one of the most important food and farming issues. Thankfully, it's also a view that many sections of the media now seem to be adopting.

Agriculture today

On the train to and from London I’ve been noticing in quite a few fields, the reeds and the rushes left over from recent months of imitation wetlands all over the country. Here we have a reminder of how finely balanced the farming systems around the world are, and, for those of us involved in agriculture, the continuing awe at how a high tech society like the UK can be so easily slowed to a crawl by weather. 

Yet more evidence of the importance of considering food farmers as the essential, respected parts of society that they are. 

Radio Sharpie - Passionate about Cheese

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Sloe Gin

It is my duty to tell ewe that this drink sneaks up behind ewe and pounces!

Sloes, the fruit of the blackthorn, are a small, purple, plum-like fruit found wild in hedge rows up and down the country.

There's no better use for them than for making into sloe gin. As a fruit they are dry, bitter and not very appetising but, made into sloe gin it’s like drinking fruity nectar - deceptively alcoholic and perfect for adding a taste of summer to the winter evenings.

The harvesting process is particularly easy but timing is crucial as it is best to harvest the fruit after a decent frost (this breaks the skin and helps with the infusion)..... soon after this the fruit will fall off on its own.

Here's a way of ensuring the fruit gets the frost treatment - pick them a week earlier and put them in the freezer. Remove them after checking that the skin has broken then, leave the fruit gin and some light Muscovado sugar to infuse in something like a Kilner jar for a few weeks, decant the precious liquid and put into bottles. 

Store in a dark cupboard for consumption later to chase away the winter cold. 

Ewe can even keep the used sloes as a bitter cherry for addition to cocktails. My mate Graeme the chicken man said it was "incredible."

Antibiotics resistance

There is an ongoing argument about the state of antibiotic resistant bacteria and as ever the overall picture is a complicated one. 

The worst kept secret in agriculture pharmaceuticals is that prophylactic antibiotics are widely used as a growth promoter and disease inhibitor mostly in pig and poultry production.

Consequently those antibiotics are passed on through the meat to us... not news to us insiders but it in my opinion this fact should be on banner disaster news headlines across the world! 

Can ewe imagine a scenario with your doctor saying “I am sorry that chest infection has no cure”? I can.

Even in the face of little hope, one major start would be to remove antibiotics from agriculture - a difficult thing to achieve, but not an impossible one. To start the change of antibiotic resistance, pork and poultry production would have to be more extensive. We would get lots of advantages from this, like better animal welfare and better quality of meat but it would cost more, so we’d eat less.... Eat less Eat better seems a win win to me.

Happy Kids/Happy Father's

In all the debate about food there is one overriding force for change.......KIDS. Kids are the future of food production and consumption and the easiest way to drive better production systems (we all know that there are many things that need to be changed).

I propose a kind of reverse brain washing, opposite to the techniques that some of the omnipresent burger chains have put to use in the past.

There is nothing better than a child badgering their parents (or the uncles or the aunts or any other elders in their lives) to buy better food (they usually win too!).

Have fun doing food things with the kids this week!

Little Farmersharp at the mincer....