The Great Food Debate at Haslington Festival of Food and Farming

Saturday 5th October and Sunday 6th October

A quarter of a million women in the UK are members of the WI. The organisation celebrates its centenary in 2015 and during the last 98 years many of the resolutions which give the NFWI a mandate to lobby Parliament have been concerned with Food and Farming.

This year the WI is encouraging WI member’s to engage the public in The Great Food Debate. Members of Haslington WI combined the debate with a whole weekend of Food and Farming in the village of Haslington on 5th & 6th October. WI members worked with members of the church and the village bakery to bring the whole community together.

Local people had the chance to buy locally produced food from local farmers, to meet them and their at the first Haslington Farmer’s Market.

The stall holders did a brisk trade. The buyers enjoyed the fresh food on offer and seeing animals and farm machinery up close rather than as a distant speck in the fields. There were dairy and beef calves, sheep and goats to see as well as a small vintage tractor and huge modern tractor with all the equipment needed to farm today,

The wildlife trust and Agricultural chaplaincy gave advice on planning gardens to encourage wildlife and gave information about where to go to for help if you live an isolated existence and need support in a rural environment.

Kev ‘The Legs’ Walker from CAT local radio played background music and interviewed visitors and stall–holders supporting the day with his radio programme.

Everyone who attended the event was asked what factors would have the most effect on our ability to feed ourselves in the future. The results were:

1. Rising world population. 732. Land being used for biofuels instead of food crops. 263. Effects of climate change. 324. Pesticides and fertilisers causing pollution. 275. Availability of clean water to drink and to produce food . 376. Increased deforestation. 207. Increasing demand due to rise in standard of living in developing countries. 368. Other. 8

This is their views:

Haslington Festival of Food and FarmingGreat British Food Debt - What factors pose most risk

to Food Security

1. Rising world population.

2. Land being used for biofuels instead of food crops.

3. Effects of climate change.

4. Pesticides and fertilisers causing pol-lution.

5. Availability of clean water to drink and to produce food .

6. Increased deforestation.

7. Increasing demand due to rise in standard of living in developing coun-tries.

8. Other.

St Matthews Church was the venue for a Cheese and Wine evening and panel of speakers on Saturday evening.

Andrew Rutter, Breeding Programme Manager from Genus ABS chaired the panel of speakers for the Great Food Debate. The panel consisted of: Mr Jim Begg, recently retired Chief Executive of Dairy UK, Sybil Graham, Resolutions officer for the CFWI and on the Public Affairs sub-committee for NFWI, Keith Ineson, former poultry farmer and now Agricultural Chaplain for Cheshire, Ian Scarisbrick, Dairy Farmer and Breeder of Galastar Bluesky and Edward Timpson MP for Crewe and Nantwich.

The breadth and wealth of knowledge of food production and the problems we face in feeding ourselves in the future which the various speakers brought to the meeting held the audience’s attention and brought numerous questions from the floor.

The importance of education featured large in the debate. Both the education of young people entering the food industry and also of children and their parents on how to feed themselves, how to cook and prepare good fresh food, how to use up scraps and cut down on food waste.

The need for us to advertise our world leading farming practices and show other countries how to achieve the high standards we do was of high importance to the panel. With the necessary support we could export our products to a growing world market, but it was recognised that that scenario also brought about the dilemma of further food miles risking further climate change.

The question of why we can import food more cheaply from abroad led to a discussion on the disadvantages that high standards of welfare and mountains of red tape which are normal to agricultural production in this country put on our food producers resulting in our farmers in this country not being able to compete with cheap imports which do not meet the same standards coming in from abroad.

Where we would get the farmers we need in the future when faced with an increasingly aging population and the expense of entering the industry didn’t seem to be a problem to the panel. Consumers may have to adapt to change but the future would increasingly be larger and larger farms and co-operatives with a farm-manager overseeing thousands of acres, hundreds of animals and dozens of farm workers. Farming would become big-business where profit would no longer be seen as a ‘dirty word’ but a business necessity to finance investment and the necessary growth of production of at least 2.5% a year necessary to feed the 9 billion people there will be in the world by 2020.

The panel were confident for the future. Jim Begg hoped that the dairy industry in this country would start to spend the sort of money on advertising that would see our wonderful milk and dairy products achieve the sales and markets they deserve on the world market and help us to sell more to our own consumers as well as the other countries relying more heavily on providing a ‘Western’ diet for its consumers.

Ian Sacrisbrick wished that the CEO of United Utilities had been put in charge of the milk industry because if he had milk would now be costed at 80ppl. A more realistic level of its worth as a nutritious part of everyone’s diet, instead of a low value food so derided by the supermarkets.

Keith Ineson was keen to see the growth of community projects such as those being carried out by the chaplaincy in Ellesemere Port, and by the WI with its Lets Cook campaign in our communities. Bringing grandmothers and young people together to learn how to cook and feed themselves without having to resort to take-aways and ready-made meals. Educating people to the need to eat well without the high levels of additives, salt and sugar found in processed foods.

Sybil Graham assured everyone that the members of the WI would continue to headline food and farming issues. WI members would continue to work in their communities and give their members the necessary information to lobby for issues which concerned them in rural and urban areas.

Edward Timpson stressed the need for education to ensure everyone had access to the facts. Clear labelling for country of origin would give consumers more choice. Cutting down on red-tape would help farmers to get on with the job they do best. He encouraged everyone to reduce food waste.

The Food and Farming Festival concluded with a traditional Harvest Festival on Sunday morning. Produce was presented for a blessing and the congregation enjoyed the chance to chat over home-made refreshments made by members of Haslington WI.

The Haslington Food and Farming Festival celebrated the harvest in a local community, showing that if villages are prepared to give local food producers a chance to sell their goods locally there is a market for such enterprises.