When we moved to Exeter full time, there was a stall in Exeter farmers market selling delicious, organic vegetables and fruit from their farm. Some four or five years later, we were horrified to learn that they were giving up completely and selling the farm. A couple of years passed and a group of young farmers set up their stall there to sell the organic vegetables they were growing at Down Farm.
For the last 8 years, Liv and Henry at Down Farm have been growing vegetables and selling at Crediton market, Exeter market, through veg boxes and to a few local shops and restaurants. They were even featured on BBC TV a few years back. But this last weekend, at Crediton market, we were devastated to learn that they too were giving up. Henry handed us a copy of a letter they had written for customers like us explaining their decision. It made really sad and worrying reading. In particular, they say they are "working in a rigged system…
- a system where prices are fixed by supermarkets who are constantly working to drive prices down using them as a lost leader;
- a system where there has been no financial support for farmers on our scale;
- a system where we cannot strike and demand more money but instead get told to diversify because what we do is not enough;
- a system where our staff earn double if not more than we do per hour;
- a system that places little value in growing nourishing food.
When we started our business we expected it to be difficult so we topped it up with part time jobs until we felt stable. We struggled to make enough money to take reasonable salaries so this was topped up by working tax credits until March 2024. We were then moved on to universal credit which does not work well for people who run their own businesses. They give you a year to “make it work” financially and then they strip back the financial payments and offer help with housing and childcare instead. Nothing to sniff at, but not the help we needed. Knowing these payments would cease we knew we needed to work out how to make enough money to not just survive but thrive."
Clearly, government has no real interest in small farmers who produce quality food in environmentally friendly and sustainable ways. They are more supportive of the big six supermarkets, with their “farm washing”.
Wicked Leeks, the website of Riverford Organic Farmers quotes Dr Clive Black, a director at Shore Capital and a previous head of food policy at the National Farmers' Union:
"I don’t just think the sector is unsupported, I believe it’s unloved by policymakers, and worse than that it is totally unrecognised for its importance. I think there are really deep reasons to be worried about food security in the UK. At what point do policymakers wake up and really smell the coffee?" (https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/news/something-rotten-in-the-fruit-veg-sector, retrieved 8th October 2024)
Liv and Henry continue:
"In the spring… we were hit by intense pressures from slugs, losing all of our early and autumn/winter crops. Our souls were down trodden and we knew we were not having the season we needed to show us we could “make it work”. All this coupled with being parents to young children, the ever increasing costs of overheads and the unpredictable weather.
Although there are beautiful aspects of living and working on a farm there are also the seasonal pressures, weekends gone to picking, summer holidays impossible, the “never finished” jobs list of the farm and it is lonely up the end of a track."
We wish Liv and Henry every good fortune in their new life and will always think of all the good meals we have enjoyed based on their vegetables.
All that said, a matter of even greater concern is the fact that they are far from alone. In that article, Wicked Leeks paints a devastating picture of food production in the UK:
In a poll by Riverford Organic Farmers, 62 per-cent of British farmers said they are currently at financial risk, while 61 per-cent said they are likely to give up their farm in the next 18 months. Volatility has been a key theme. Wafer-thin margins plague the fruit and veg sector. Throw in energy price spikes, labour shortages coupled with wage increases, as well as supply chain issues, and you realise there’s a heady cocktail of economic pressures. Add in the toll of extreme weather and the unfair behaviour of the biggest supermarkets, and it’s no wonder that so many fresh produce businesses are on the edge.
Today, almost half of the veg we consume and more than 80 per-cent of fruit comes from overseas. Less than two per cent of all farmland is used to grow fruit and veg. Double the land is needed, states the open letter (Written by the Soil Association to the Prime Minister in June 2024). (https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/news/something-rotten-in-the-fruit-veg-sector, retrieved 8th October 2024)
In another article, Riverford quotes:
Evidence also shows that huge amounts of money are extracted out of the system as costs and profits. Sustain’s Unpicking Food Prices report reveals that farmers often receive less than 1p of the profit from their produce. With 40% of farms earning less than £25,000 annually, small-scale agroecological farming is becoming financially unviable," concludes White ( Will White, Sustainable Farming Campaign Coordinator at Sustain). (https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/news/fake-farms-ugly-truths/, retrieved 8th October 2024)
While the current system has been working till now for the supermarkets and non-ecologically-friendly, huge industrial food production concerns, it means that our food security is compromised. How many times have you been to a supermarket to buy vegetables recently only to find that there is none of what you want on the shelves?
The Food Security Index 2024 states that a mere 17 per cent of fruit and 55 per cent of vegetables consumed in the UK are grown here, and The Guardian estimates the UK’s self-sufficiency could fall by eight per cent this year.
Clearly relying on imported fruit and vegetables is likely to become an increasing problem as both geopolitics and the climate change. And while we can help with climate change and ecological challenges at home by supporting small farmers like Liv and Henry, to rely on imported food and re-wild farmland here can be seen as just another form of green-washing, as it simply moves those problems overseas and further out of sight.
With thanks to Liv and Henry of Down Farm for letting us quote their letter; we have written to Wicked Leeks, but have had no reply yet.