Food on the BBC yesterday, how frustrating!

Food on the BBC yesterday, how frustrating! First, Monty Don visiting tiny French farms where the food grown is treasured’. Then, the Food Programme about Lettuce, and how in the UK, the supermarkets source millions of tonnes, fresh or processed in bags, to try and exactly meet consumer demand.

Frustrating because Monty and the French are so right and the crazy lettuce supply chain where farmers get very little for their lettuce and enormous amounts get thrown away is so wrong.

In France people have huge respect for small farmers who make a living from the land and grow artisan products. Restaurants make sure they have the local foods on their menu and french people actively seek local foods at their local markets.

In the UK our supermarket culture means we never meet any farmers, land is so expensive small farmers have sold up and new people can’t buy in. And lettuce is on the shelves all year round. With so much choice people eventually get so lazy they buy, washed, dried stuff in a bag.

Or am I wrong are we getting more like the French? Or they getting more like us with their big supermarkets pulling people away from the local markets and small producers?

Whichever way we must encourage local food production and buy direct to give the thousands of producers a better price and encourage them to grow more. Not the supermarket model where a few huge, and often foreign, farmers, get quite a lot. We need to look forward to and eat food that is in season instead of what the supermarket has forecasted that we should eat.

So please use BigBarn to find and buy from you local producers or even become a producer with our Crop for the Shop scheme. We need to grow more food locally and cook meals depending on what is available.