Climate Friendly Food

Tales of a maritime climate

I've been away from home for 9 days, having attended the Organic Producer's Conference at Harper Adams in Shropshire. Having left the Isles of Scilly with a cold NE wind, I was quite surprised to learn that we were virtually the only place in the entire country not to have any snow at all! Driving from Penzance to mid Wales there was steadily more and more snow as I went up country, though fortunately the main roads were largely ice free with very little traffic. Staying with a friend near Brecon we left for conference the next morning with the car thermometer registering -12.5C!!

The conference was a good opportunity to network with old friends and new acquaintences. There were some excellent workshop sessions too, but most importantly, the quality of the biscuits inparticular was first class! I gave a workshop session on CFF at nearly 6.00 in the evening (graveyard slot), but had an excellent attendance of about 35 people. We had a constructive and lively session that I hope will get more farmers and growers using the carbon calculator and eventually certification.

After a few days with friends and family, it was back to work on Wednesday, with a very construcitve meeting of the CFF standards group at Soil Association in Bristol. Whilst numbers were curtailed because of weather, we had a very positive meeting looking at new research on agricultual carbon emissions and sequestration, and setting parameters to improve the carbon calculator in the next version.

On Thursday I attended a Cornish organic low-carbon farmers and growers meeting at Cusgarne Organics near Truro. Here all signs of snow and ice had gone, the sun was out and temperatures up to a balmy 10C. Cusgarne has been organic for 21 years and they do veg boxes, other local veg supply, plus some beef cattle and chickens for meat and eggs. It has the feel of a very genuine family-run farm that is completely committed to best practice.

At first hand we saw the high quality crops, great animal welfare, new orchards, sustainable timber building, biodiesel production plant and the real sense of community that is fostered on the farm and with the local community. I gave a short talk on Climate Friendly Food, which the producers appeared to be very receptive to. It's always very pleasing to talk to farmers and growers who are all from a small geographical area because you get a real understanding of the issues facing them.

Now I'm home on Scilly and back to farm work (after the mountain of post and e-mails), and the maritime airflow from the SW is strengthening as I write, with the outside temperature around 11C. That snow and ice seems very distant to me now...perhaps time to get the first lot os early spuds planted...