…it seems like a good time to launch our much-debated sourcing policy. As I said last month, turning 40 feels like a time to take stock of everything we’ve achieved and look ahead to the, hopefully, next 40 years. A sort of retail version of a mid-life crisis if you like.
Our ethos hasn’t changed an awful lot since the early days, but this is really the first time we’ve had a good hard look at what we stand for and put it down in words. It’s not been an easy ride. You might think I write a set of principles, and then the whole company and our suppliers tow the line. Not so. The vagaries of the market over the years, food fashions, costs, supply issues (see above), staff and customer attitudes all shape the living breathing entity that is Ben’s Farm Shop. For example, at Staverton and Totnes, being so close to organic central, it’s been easy to keep our fruit and vegetable offer, pretty much, 100% certified organic. At Yealmpton customers have long prioritised local, or UK grown, over organic and that does pose a few problems. I’m certainly not suggesting that there’s anything wrong with putting local above organic. In fact, many, including myself (sometimes), would agree, but the thing about a sourcing policy that has to be in black and white with no room for the fuzzy, grey, ‘wherever possible’ codicils. I’m not sure we’re 100 percent there yet, but we’re pretty close.
Good Food from Good Farming…
The great thing about organic is that it has a legal definition, so there’s no room for the ubiquitous ‘wherever possible’. I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the expression I get a whiff of mendacity in the air. The history of Ben’s Farm Shop has always been about selling good, sustainably produced, food. Generally, organic ticks the box, but we’ve never suggested it’s the only way. Riverford has always been 100% organic – that’s the main reason why we changed our name. So organic is easy. Local is more difficult because there’s nobody really policing it. It could cover everything from a mono-cropped field of beet (see below), grown under contract by ABC Plc, to spanking fresh produce from Jim’s allotment down the road. What is local? A hundred yards or a hundred miles. What does ‘no spray’ mean? The actual fruit and vegetables, or the field before they were planted? Forming a policy is hard enough but making sure it is adhered to is something else altogether.
The Sugar Conundrum
To give some idea of how tricksy it is; last month I mentioned that, because of a sixty percent increase in the price of organic sugar, we were going to try making some marmalade using non-organic UK produced sugar. Sod’s law then kicked in and the media was full of the news that the UK government had kowtowed to the extraordinary lobbying power of big agribusiness and issued a derogation for neonicotinoids to be used as a treatment for sugar beet seeds.
The environmental effects have been well documented and, in Europe, where they’re far more dependent on beet sugar, ‘neonics’ have been banned for several years. With oilseed rape the seed is treated with the neonicotinoids so it’s preventative, rather a treatment in the event of an outbreak – something that might not even occur. For a quick buck, they’re risking decimating the bee population in order to grow something that we’d all be far better off without – except in marmalade of course.
Coincidence…?
It all gets more questionable when you take into account that British Sugar is owned by Associated British Foods’ which is largely owned by the Canadian Weston family who have made some pretty hefty donations to the Conservative party (£900,000 in 2010 alone). British Sugar’s MD/CEO just happens to be married to Tory MP and minister, Victoria Atkins. As daughter of ex-minister Robert Atkins, I imagine she fits in well to the Spectator and Telegraph wielding blue chip, inner circle, Conservative stereotype. But I could have got it completely wrong. It’s probably just a coincidence.
Anyway, back to the sugar. In my naivety I thought I could mosey into the nearest Aldi and stock up on German beet sugar for next to nothing. How wrong I was. A monopoly’s a monopoly and British Sugar really do seem to have it sewn up. Not only is there no guaranteed, non-neonicotinoid British sugar, but we can’t access European beet sugar or even, at a last resort, reasonably priced Tate & Lyle cane sugar. If you care about the bees, organic is the only alternative.
Our Sourcing Policy
And that’s just the story of sugar. We stock thousands of lines, so you can imagine, even with the best of intentions, we may not always get it right. However, just because something is tricky, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. So, we’ve given the Ben’s Farm Shop sourcing policy our best shot.