Nutritional expert Patrick Holford asks ‘how would you feel if you woke up in optimum health’?

This question has stayed with me over the past 2 years as I work on my own health and fitness while advising others on theirs. I have altered it somewhat over time and now ask myself ‘is there a difference between the absence of illness and optimum health’?

So many of us go through life feeling ‘ok’ or ‘fine’, forgetting what it feels like to wake up feeling refreshed, have boundless energy and to remain alert and attentive throughout the day. We drink coffee to perk ourselves up and wine to wind ourselves down. Sugar makes up a huge amount of our diet and we are bombarded with questionable advertising offering us processed ‘health’ junk.

At The Better Food Company we are in a unique position to reach out to our community in a positive, simple way, using some of the amazing resources that are available to us.

The Better Health campaign runs for the next three months. Each month we’ll issue simple and sound advice on improving your mind, body and spirit. These suggestions are designed to be simple and fun, while collectively helping you to feel much better than ok and fine. The contributors are all experts in their field and have contributed freely; other companies have got involved with sponsorship, and offers of discounts to use their facilities.

Please take advantage of the information available and join us on Thursday 9th July to celebrate the launch and make this a fit and healthy summer.

• Over the last 50 years, the world’s irrigated crop area for food production has tripled.
• Half the world’s grain crops are now irrigated.
• The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation projects a 20% increase in irrigated acreage by 2030.
• The aquifers (1) of the world are being depleted. In India, for example, they lessen by 20ft per year. In North Africa they are being depleted five times faster than they can recharge. In China water tables have fallen by 300 ft or more.
• The World Bank reports that water use exceeds sustainable flow by SIX HUNDRED MILLION TONS per year.

• There are more individuals growing food every year using organic principals.
• There is more land converting to organic small scale production supplying box schemes, shops and markets.
• There is a growing movement towards communities’ involvement in growing food in partnership with farmers, and even schools are now increasingly interested in having their own on-site allotments.

Michelle Obama’s ‘Victory’ organic vegetable garden in the White House is such a perfect idea, politically, ethically, er, politically... Not since the Second World War has growing-your-own been such a civic duty. We’re galvanised into action to save our shopping bills, our local and national economies, our PLANET!

The change in the seasons always seems to put me in a reflective mood – the sense of nature renewing itself seems to trigger a thought process where I compare my situation with previous years. I’ve been pondering my life choices and have got satisfaction from realising that I’m where I want to be, by choice.

Happily, I think I’ve made progress in connecting the ‘big picture’ of the environmental challenge we face, and the details of the way I live my life (although I admit I have some way to go to reduce my carbon footprint…).

For example, I have chosen to stop running a car. I use the local train quite extensively and walk a lot. This has a number of benefits for me, not least that I get some exercise but also that I am made to think about whether I have the energy to do something and get home. I have to plan ahead, and my life is lived at a slower pace than it was when I drove. I really like the change it has made, which is a quite unexpected outcome of an economic decision.

I went to see The Age of Stupid last night at the Watershed, and it really has brought home to me the magnitude of the environmental challenge and the urgent need to disconnect oil from the economy. It’s so clear that we need to reduce our dependence on oil. Since I joined The Better Food Company last year, I’ve realised that organic food production is key to the transition away from an oil-based economy, and that we need to make people realise it’s not just a ‘health fad’. It’s about a holistic view of the system.

We need to achieve an 80% carbon reduction in 40 years, just to stabilise the climate. That’s a HUGE challenge. I think we need to adopt the ‘dig for victory’ approach, and develop skills to enable the nation to feed itself in what will undoubtedly be a challenging future. So my next task is to learn how to grow my own food – can’t wait!

I can’t help but feel that many of the problems we face today as a society are linked to our increasing disconnection from the land of which we are an integral part, from which we emerged and to which we will return. When I first heard about permaculture, a few years ago now, when I attended a talk held here at the Better Food Company, I felt as though a new world had opened up to me. Permaculture seemed to offer a solution to many of the problems we face.

Many people have been inadvertently following permaculture princples for years, but the term ‘permaculture’ was coined in 1978 by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison. It came from the fusion of the words ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’ and has come to describe a design system for sustainable living based on twelve principles.  Although primarily concerned with the creation of edible ecosystems, permaculture embodies a holistic approach to sustainability and emphasises the extent to which every element within the living world is connected, with none having superiority over another.  Permaculture challenges the anthropocentric world view.

While the organic food movement has successfully brought to light the importance of reducing the levels of toxins used and by which we pollute and poison our planet as well as ourselves, the industry still relies heavily on the use of fossil fuels. Permaculture goes one step further and challenges us to reduce our energy consumption and our addiction to oil. Permaculture shows us that it’s no longer enough to talk about minimising our carbon footprint and taking as little as we can from the world’s natural resources, but we need to start giving something back.

I would argue that permaculture is capable of alleviating many of the problems caused by the current economic and social crises.  It’s a grass roots movement which re-localises the immense global issues by which we are confronted and by which we can be overwhelmed.  It encourages and empowers individuals to take matters into their own hands and start making the small changes to their everyday lives and immediate environments, rural or urban, that will collectively make a difference.  It is by re-instilling a sense of place that wo/man and nature reconnect, and the long-lost respect for the planet can be found again and nurtured. 

One of the principles of permaculture by which I was most affected encouraged reverence of the edge as a space of opportunity.  Not only can the edge provide a fertile and unexploited growing space, but on a social level, changes are most likely to happen on the fringes of society, where boundaries of ideas can be pushed and horizons expanded.  We need to start re-defining the structure of society if we are to survive the current crises, and I suggest we start, as permaculturists would advocate, within our own minds, bodies, homes and communities, radicalising our thoughts and gestures and testing the limits of our efforts. As Ben Okri wrote, ‘There is no exhaustion where there is much / To be hoped for, much to work towards / And where the dreams and sufferings / Of our ancestors / Have not been realized or redeemed.’ 

Permaculture is dedicated to creating solutions out of problems.  Humanity has created the situation we are now experiencing, and now is the time to recognise our potential and shine. ‘We have made these things; / We can unmake them’.  By starting with ourselves, by looking properly within ourselves, and reconnecting with our immediate environment, together we will be capable of resolving many of the fundamental problems of our time.  There is a way out of the darkness we perceive ourselves to be in.  We just need to make the choice to see and think creatively, re-defining our personal space. Permaculture is about doing just that: starting to make the necessary changes on the most local of levels:  

We rise or fall by the choice we make
It all depends on the road we take
And the choice and the road each depend
On the light that we have, the light we bend,
On the light we use
Or refuse

• The fruit and veg box delivery scheme uses and reuses recycled wooden crates, and virtually no other packaging. Boxes are left out each week by customers for collection and can be used many times over.
• Paper bags are available for fruit and veg in the shop. When outer packaging is used, it is recyclable plastic or cardboard.
• The Better Food Company led the way in being a plastic-bag free zone, charging for bags and encouraging alternatives like boxes and reusable organic cotton bags. Money raised by customers buying plastic bags is donated to C-Change – a charity concerned with carbon emissions (www.thec-changetrust.org).
• A scoop section allows customers to purchase basics such as rice and cereals in a low cost, low packaging way.
• Household detergents are available to customers in self-serve containers – meaning they can refill their own bottles, and save money as well as plastic.
• Our café and deli use compostable pots and cardboard sandwich boxes. Takeaways come with wooden forks in cardboard boxes.

Throughout the shop attention is paid to how goods have been packaged. For example, meat comes simply vacuum packed – no plastic trays; most of the drinks come in glass bottles that can be easily recycled; and many products are made in-house – including hummous, coleslaw, cakes, biscuits and jams – meaning control of packaging is kept in-house.

‘This is not a reaction to consumer pressure’ says founder and MD Phil Haughton. ‘Reducing the impact of consuming on the environment is one of the founding principles of The Better Food Company, set up originally in the mid 1980s’.

Lucy - Marketing Person

I know it’s the middle of January, but as soon as I walk in the garden and see bulb shoots and snowdrops and the early tree buds, I feel excited. The shortest day has gone and the natural world is on the move. Root vegetables will start to change their chemical structure, with starch turning to sugar, which I assume prepares them for growing, soil activity increases as the days get longer and the underlying temperature warms up. 

We took delivery of a 2 tons of seed potatoes this week which will be chitted soon in readness for early planting on the new land. Atanas and I skinned a small polytunnel this week, which we will use for plant raising on the new site, We will miss the greenhouse at the old Walled Garden, which we used for plant raising last year. Next week our new soft fruit plants arrive so we can build up cropping potential for raspberries, strawberries etc. I guess we ought to get some new asparagus established this spring, so we can have crops coming through in three years time.

Friday 23rd January is a fruit day on the Biodynamic calendar and we hope to plant broad beans. I have become increasingly interested in the biodynamic way of farming and am reading more and more about it.

For the BFC teams, January has been a time of planning and reflection and I wanted to tell some of our customers how that is going. It seems to me that we have managed to build one of the best teams ever. They are all full on energy and passion and love. I feel sure that this will reflect in the service and commitment you get as a customer over the next year. Our box scheme will be going through some changes to cope with expected growth this year: online ordering, new literature, box size changes, and new products, such as bags of potatoes and other bulk veg.  In the meantime, enjoy your fresh produce, give us lots of feedback, and if you don't often visit the shop, come and see what we have on offer just now. Offers galore, great new cafe menus, superb new cakes, and more and more of our own sausages. And last but not least the amazing lack of billboards at the end of the building!

Phil Haughton – MD and Grower

December came with a nice blast of cold. Lots of people seem to be getting nasty colds and flu type things so it is especially important to keep up our intake of vitamin C. December is one of the best months for Citrus fruits form Italy and Spain.

As you walk in the door of BFC over the next couple of weeks you will see mountains of oranges, clementines, lemons, and grapefruit with some great offers for you to enjoy for of those great seasonal flavours and to give you and your family a vitamin C boost in its most natural form. The apples are also great and all UK. It is a great pleasure to me that we have got Joe Pardoes apples again this year. For those of you who don't know, I have been buying apples from Joe and before him his dad Ian since 1986.

On Wednesday this week, Atanas and I took down a small polytunnel from the old field and erected it in the new field. This occasion marked the first phyisical structure to go up and made it feel a little more like our new growing home as it were. Today I will send off our seed orders and next month we will get our early seed potatoes to start chitting them. This is where you let the eyes start to grow to give them a head start when you put them in the ground. Before we know ware we are it will be spring and everything will start to grow again.

Untill then I think long evenings in the warm with fires and hot stews is called for. Its also a time to get Christmas planned, order the turkey, work out how many are eating at the table and weather they eat sprouts or not, along with all the festive rituals that mark the middle of our winter.

It’s hard to avoid doom-laden phrases like ‘the credit crunch’ and ‘economic slowdown’ at the moment – they’re banded about the media like a rubber ball in a glass factory. The effect on our financial institutions and spending habits in general is a frightening indication of how close we all are to a state of anarchy. I read some startling statistics recently about the link between mental illness and advertising. Basically, levels of mental illness can be seen to be significantly lower in countries where less is spent on advertising. What I gleaned from this was that with so many global challenges on the horizon, we all need to keep a cool head and not become jostled into a position of over-reaction by an over-zealous media.

It’s all about focus …Our politicians need to know that even with a looming financial downturn, our commitment to a progressive environmental agenda is paramount. With 62% of the carbon accumulated in the atmosphere attributable to the G8 countries, their commitment to halving carbon emissions in 40 years time simply isn’t good enough (see www.350.org for some inspirational and fascinating information about CO2 levels and what to do about them).

Here at the BFC we’re committed to offering you the best value for money, the best selection of local produce you’ll find round these parts, special offers on everyday items, and, especially for October, a 10% discount on all fruit and veg – it’s our way of sharing the harvest with our customers. Simple, honest, no hysterics…

Three fifty. This universal number is what emerged as the message of the Schumacher Lectures last weekend year, delivered by author and environmentalist, Bill McKibben.

There’s a complex scientific point to be made, but it’s significance affects us all. Conclusive research now confirms that 350 parts per million (ppm) is the upper limit of carbon dioxide the earth can support within its atmosphere in order to preserve a planet similar to the one on which civilisation developed. Currently, at about 385 ppm, a reduction in our CO2 emissions is a necessity for our survivial as a species. But perhaps more urgent is the need to recognise and raise greater awareness of the simple fact that life on earth as we know it is unsustainable. McKibben’s plea is simple: spread the message by as many means of possible: plant 350 trees, organise a bike ride for 350, bake 350 bread rolls... Embrace any gesture relating to the number as a symbol, representative of something far greater, while empowering every one of us to take action using the simplicity of the symbolic and universal figure of 350.

It was Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Towns (see www.transitionbristol.net) movement, who highlighted the importance of grassroot involvement in effecting change. Like him, I believe that even the small choices we make every day can (and do) make a difference. So we need changes at both policy and grassroot level – the two are interdependent, they must necessarily feed into one another to give each other momentum. Pressure comes with our voices and actions being taken seriously by those in positions of responsibility, while we need to trust our policy makers to make informed and brave choices about how we structure our world.

I believe in living the example you would want to set for others; and if we want to see our governments make big changes at policy level, then our own individual commitments to the cause we are fighting, and the beliefs that underpin our every action, need to be clear and inspirational. With awareness comes responsibility, and the time to act is now. In the words of a Hopi Elder, ‘we are the ones we have been waiting for’.

In his closing comments, Rob Hopkins also spoke of our tendency as environmentalists to shy away from celebrating our achievements. A few weeks ago, instead of doing one of the many things on my to-do list, I decided to go the lovely open no-mic night at the Miner’s Arms pub in St Werburghs, to hear a friend sing ‘Dark Days’ by Fat Freddy’s Drop:

well it's hard to be happy / in a world that's so cruel / where the weak just get weaker / where the powerful feud… / get up, and feel it / the truth that won't wait / if we choose to do nothing / then we take all the blame…

It becomes more moving every time I hear it, and I came away feeling warm, alive and reminded of the power of music. Yes, we can, and should, make more time for celebration, for music, dance and song, and yes we should celebrate even those seemingly small or insignificant actions that make the world a better place, because they too are the symbolic manifestations of something far deeper and equally as potent as large gestures –our thoughts and beliefs. And without these, there would be no grounds for any movement at all.

www.350.org

Throughout October we have decided to take 10% off all our fruit and vegetables in the shop. This is to celebrate our own produce and to work with other suppliers to help make fresh organic food more affordable. It’s a good month to do it in, in no small part because there is so much great local produce about.

As well as this you will see posters up in the shop restating our mission. We felt it was time to shout about it again and for us all to feel proud of it as a small part in helping make sense of the state of our world.

The mission statement in my old shop on Gloucester Road, way back in 1986, was not that dissimilar. I remember doing a bit of supermarket bashing back then and saying it was no way for the organic market to develop. Most of the farmers and growers who turned towards the supermarkets for their organic market then now believe it was a short term solution with a lot of damage done to them and the whole market. It’s an hard one to call. The market grew fast and lots of companies did well, sold up to bigger companies and major brands like Green and Blacks became very successful.

My question then was this, ‘does supermarketing as we know it provide a sustainable market place?’, and I ask the same question now. Do the benefits extend to the soil, the animals and wildlife, the farmers, and all the communities of people who use them?

For me the answer is simple. We must question the size of any food market if it becomes disconnected to its local community. That may mean something very loose and fluid in terms of community and its not fixed, but if BFC had a store in London where policy and stock decisions were taken here in Bristol, then a part of that London operation would not be sustainable in my opinion. Its heart and soul must be local and however good a brand feels, its not a substitute for heart and soul.  

When people ask me to open more stores and suggest one a hundred miles away, I say, come and look and learn about what we do here and then go and do it your self. I would love to open another shop or two in Bristol or the surrounding area, but even that may not manage to keep the same strength of heart, I just don't know.

What matters is that we all make more local choices, not branded national choices, be it box schemes, supermarkets, or neighborhood cafes. By making these choices we build security in our community and our food, which given the current economic, ecologic and energy climate must be good sound sense.  

Not a rant, but said with feeling
Phil

… I’m afraid I can’t remember where I first saw that slogan; I think it was on a cotton shopping bag last year, but it certainly rings true and is in essence how the human race will overcome the environmental and social challenges we face. I discovered this week that it has been adopted by First Great Western in stickers above the windows of their InterCity train doors – I quote: “Make a Small Change. Closing the windows saves energy and improves the environment for customers”. It’s quite a nice feeling, to improve the way others feel, to I decided to give it a go.

I admit that I’ve digressed a bit from the theme of food and organics, and I apologise if trains bore you! One could argue that environmentally-friendly food is really a sub-category of the general cause of environmentally-friendly life choices, so I hope I’m suitably justified in having a general rant and that you will bear with me!

I applaud FGW for their effort – which is a “small change” in itself; printing thought-provoking stickers and having them put up. I therefore attempted to make the suggested change when I alighted but actually found it a bit tricky, which set me thinking… The design of the trains is now quite old and the sticker is an attempt to “retro-fit” the train to fix a problem caused by a safety feature (having only an external handle). The problem is that in order to alight, a customer is forced to completely lower the window in order to reach the handle (unless there’s someone waiting to get on that is). The window is then fully open, no matter what the weather, when the train pulls away. To save energy (i.e. train heating/cooling) a customer has to make an extra (admittedly small) effort to turn around once off the train and push the window back up (whilst not being stampeded by people behind). Alternatively, the first customer off could assume that someone else will have read the sticker and will close the window – which is akin to assuming that someone else will deal with global warming and no action is needed by an individual as their lifestyle changes alone would have a small impact!

The point of my example of train windows is that the existing design of many aspects of our lifestyles impacts the environment and we need to both change attitudes and retro-fit where we can, to improve our carbon footprints. We also need to develop sustainably. For example, given there are massive home-building programmes at present, house design hasn’t changed hugely and truly eco homes are still very niche/high-concept entities. It makes me sad to see that despite so much knowledge about how we can learn from nature (“bio-mimicry”) to create better environments for ourselves to live and work in, we persist with an outdated model that inevitably will lead us to greater problems to fix down the line. Unfortunately, I think I’m preaching to the converted in this bulletin, so don’t take it personally and thanks for your time!

More soon… Emma

Friday 19th September 2008
The Footprint of Food
Emma Campbell, BFC Administrator
This week, I was stunned to discover that the carbon footprint of a steak is the equivalent of driving thirty kilometres and it is estimated that food is responsible for almost twice the greenhouse gas emissions as cars for an average US household*. Amid increasing political and media emphasis on climate change, some European food manufacturers are putting a logo indicating the carbon footprint of their product onto packaging. This is great, but if you are a person who tries to avoid processed and packaged foods, it won’t make much difference.

1. Livestock account for 18% of all 'man-made' greenhouse gas emissions - therefore both meat and dairy are 'emissions-intensive' product groups - so it’s better to be vegetarian and even better to be vegan. If, like me, you can’t give up the omnivorous life, it is better to only occasionally eat red meat and otherwise stick to chicken (which produces less methane...).
2. Organically grown cereal crops have a much lower carbon footprint, because nitrogen fertilisers are not used - fertilisers account for 1% of the world’s total energy consumption. For fruit and vegetable crops, however, the calculations are more complicated and location-specific so there aren’t hard-and-fast rules. In terms of chicken and fish, there is a much more complex debate around animal welfare, sustainability, fat and nutrient content of the food etc, and the purchasing decision doesn’t simply boil down to that of which has the least emissions.
3. Overall, deep-water wild fish can take a lot of fossil fuel to catch whilst farmed fish need to be fed and the majority of emissions are due to the production of fish meal. The lowest emission farmed fish are tilapia, carp, bream and catfish.
4. Buying unprocessed food (i.e. fruit, vegetables and meat) locally has a two-fold effect - both your own transport emissions and those of the producer/wholesaler - as long as the produce is genuinely local. With processed foods, transport accounts for a lower proportion of the emissions in comparison to processing - so it is argued that choice of food type has a bigger impact than food miles alone. I think that this misses the point that holistically, it is better in the long-term to buy locally (and from independent stores) as much as possible, to generate local jobs and create small-scale industries which serve the community they are formed within.

Friday 12th September 2008
Oil and Water Don’t Mix…
Emma Campbell, BFC Administrator

Monday 1st September 2008
Box update
Laurence Guy, Box Scheme Manager

It's the return of the organic food festival at Bristol's harbourside this weekend and we will be exhibiting and selling lots of lovely produce. The festival is a great celebration of organic food and craft and is well worth coming visiting to sample all the wonderful produce available and pick up some treats to take home with you. It's also a great opportunity for us to meet many of our customers who maybe don't make it to our store but still buy our seasonal veg boxes, so please let yourself be known if you're coming by.

Unfortunately the predicted supply of Runner Beans for your boxes this week have, well, done a runner on us so you'll notice a few subs in the boxes like walled garden lettuce, french beans, peas and the like. The Chioggia Beetroot in a few of the boxes this week is beautifully marbled inside between white and pink rings and originates from Italy (though the beetroot in the boxes was grown in good old blighty.)

Friday 15th August 2008
Scarcity is the Mother of Invention

House prices, food prices, environmental concerns, transport costs… Whatever your personal grievance or angle, there’s no escaping the fact that times are tough at the moment.

But look a little closer, and something really interesting is happening.

Among other things, I do the marketing for The Better Food Company, so I get to hear about lots of events, projects and ideas generated by community groups and organisations operating locally. And it’s true, scarcity, even the threat of it, hones the senses, increases resourcefulness and moves us all forward.

So here, for your perusal, is a random selection of interesting initiatives that scratch the dual itch – saving money and resources:

Friday 1st August 2008
The Credit Munch
Mel Taylor – BFC General Manager

Some of you may know that for the last 4 weeks I have been taking part in an experiment called The Credit Munch, with Brian Price, Chief Reporter for the Western Daily Press. Brian was motivated to start this experiment when faced with rising food, fuel and energy costs. He was finding it harder to make ends meet.

He decided to add up every penny he spent on food, toiletries, entertainment and transport for the month of June and was surprised by the results. What he discovered was that rather than there being any one big expense, it was all the little daily expenditures, coffees, bus fares, sandwiches, pints of beer, that were mounting up. His average spend per week in June was approximately £100.

Having started a small (very) vegetable patch at the beginning of June, he decided that he was going to set himself the challenge of a £20 a week spend for July, and having asked me for help with shopping and recipe tips/ideas, I decided that I would join him in the challenge!

I advised Brian to sign up for a weekly BFC vegetable box. He ditched the car and shunned public transport, made a packed lunch every day, stopped going for coffees/pints so often, but most importantly we thought more creatively, and planned our meals and shopping more effectively.

We both wanted to prove that you could eat organic, good quality, healthy food on a limited budget, by shopping and planning meals and by not wasting anything. When doing research for the project we were both shocked to discover that according to government figures, we Britons throw away more than 1/3 of the food we buy every year. That’s good quality food we just don’t use, thrown in the bin. It wasn’t about being self-righteous, the main aim was to challenge ourselves, change our habits and hopefully to inspire other people and give them some tips on how to live on a tighter budget.

What was really interesting when we started, was people’s reaction on hearing what we were doing. I was surprised that so many people seemed to think we would starve! Some people were even trying to give us food! The truth was we ate really well. What was curbed was our spending on alcohol and other luxuries.

The other reaction, one which I found quite sobering, was from those who said that their weekly disposable income was less than twenty pounds a week. This really made me think about how lucky I am, and want to prove that you can eat healthily on a budget.

I have certainly learnt a lot from this challenge, in fact I really enjoyed it. Growing your own food is so enjoyable, and having to think more creatively about how to use the food was fun. I will certainly think more about how I spend my money, my new mantra before buying anything is, do I really need it? And the answer more often than not is no …

Wednesday 23rd July 2008
Walled Gardens under new management

Last October I decided it was time for me and BFC to leave the Walled Gardens and the cafe behind. It has taken some months to find someone who wanted to take it on in the same ethos as we have had while custodians of this great piece of heritage. New proprietor, David Parkes, is committed to local, organic supplies, to continuing with an education programme and to making the gardens more of a true kitchen garden primarily to supply the cafe and garden shop.

The Better Food Company will continue to grow on the field below the Walled Gardens, and we hope to expand this so volumes of our own grown food will, if anything, increase over the next year.

I first walked into the gardens as a supplier to the cafe there. In June 2002 we took over and for me it was a wonderful dream come true. It has been a joy to so many people and provided so much great food for many of you over the years. It is sad to leave it, but it is in good hands and it will always be there just as before for all of us to visit and enjoy and we will still be getting their wonderful flowers and lots of herbs and fruits.

Its exciting to see David's plans for both the gardens and the cafe and I wish him all the best.

If you want to know more about what he plans to do, give him a ring on 01934 863713.

Friday 18th July 2008
Phil’s in Heaven!

A glass of great wine or 2 …

This is what I’ve just eaten: courgettes, beetroot - stem and leaf, garlic, marjoram, and parsley all from the garden. Eggs from Jane in my village, bacon from Peter’s pigs (Stonebow Farm), cured by Neal, smoked by Jonathan, a little bit cheese made by Sam on Holden’s Farm near Lampeter – delicious – called Havod. All prepared by me while I listen to Billy Holiday love songs.

This is what I cooked:

Crush the fresh garlic (stalk and all) and the chop bacon and sauté in olive oil Add the courgettes, beet stems and leaf, add marjoram and continue to cook. Add some tamari and pepper to taste and leave to simmer just until wilted and soft.

Beat the eggs, put in hot pan, add some grated cheese and roughly chopped parsley. Cook until undercooked and flip onto plate, add the rest of the cheese and parsley.

Wow that was good. That meal had all anyone could want. Local, organic, seasonal, with the soul of lots of producers dear to my heart.

Our Vegetable boxes have a lot of this. I believe we specialise in food with heart and soul. If you want to have food like this delivered to you its easy.

BFC do it every week and deliver it to you early mornings for convenience.

Tomorrow morning at 6am I will be in the fields picking food for the boxes and the shop and then the market. Who knows what the weather will do and I am bound to be annoyed by rabbit damage, but I know the vegetables and the fruit are brimming with fresh healthy vitality.

Come and get your soul food from The Better Food Company and be in heaven!

Friday 11th July 2008
Laurence’s Fruit and Veg update

After a few weeks off trying to find some decent Broccoli, the last lot from France was suffering from heat exposure and looked a bit poorly, we’ve now got a good supply from our friend W Dennis in Boston, Lincolnshire, I hope you enjoy it!

The Walled Garden is providing a lot of the produce in the boxes this week including the wonderful lettuce, bunched onions and beetroot and some of the cucumbers, courgettes and fine beans. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some more berries to you but this bad weather we’ve been getting isn’t ideal for the soft fruit.

It was good to hear Hilary Benn speaking out this week about the complex relationship between what we buy, waste, our health and climate change. Acknowledging that there is something deeply wrong in a culture where so much good food is thrown away and acting to try and remedy this has to be an important step in helping us tackle climate change. That carbon emissions have actually increased since 1992 according to Defra, contrary to the government’s initial claims, is surely a sign that the government should also now speak out against unnecessary consumption of goods produced outside the UK.

Friday 13th June 2008
Food prices and the choices we make
Tim Kekwick

With the cost of food being pushed up slowly by the rise in oil prices and the ever increasing demand for land/crops to harvest bio fuel's, it got me thinking about how my family and I would ever be able to continue eating the wonderful organic food we have become so accustomed to eating. This might seem like a fairly selfish thought to have when much of the developing world is facing hunger strikes and food riots due to demands on both sides of the pond for so-called eco-fuel, but I hope one worth considering all the same…

Some would say that perhaps it is about time that food prices went up and we finally realise the true value of food and gave it the column inches it deserves. Others would argue further that in the last few decades we have never had it so good in terms of 'cheap food' and that the true value of food to people has diminished due to it not being seen as so much of a luxury anymore. This, for me is how organic food has played such a major part in rekindling my love for food once again. Whereas in my early twenty's, I would have been far happier to buy food which did little for the soul, but allowed me to have a few extra pints on a night out, now priorities have shifted. These days I'd far rather sacrifice the latest gadget or even a cheap flight abroad in order to continue eating the way we do - that is: tasty, local (where possible), organic, pesticide-free, home-cooked delicious food.

I have recently been doing some research into the famous American zoologist-turned writer, Rachel Carson, author of 'Silent Spring'. For those of you who don't already know, Rachel Carson was a great purveyor of the natural world and all things existing within it. She believed that rather than us (humans) trying to control nature by using pesticides etc, we needed to work alongside nature in order to live on earth. These sentiments, I definitely share with the late Rachel Carson as well as her passion for nature and the living world. And this is the sole reason why I'll continue to make allowances (if need be) in order to fuel my families love for organic food - not so much for ourselves, but holistically for all involved in the process from the birds and the bees to the suppliers and workers safe in the knowledge that by the end of the process when it finally reaches our hungry bellies, it will taste even better.

'..the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for the destruction...'

Friday 16th May 2008
The Blue Finger
By Chris Adams

A few weeks ago, I met Richard Spalding, a geography lecturer at UWE. Richard has been working for several years now to safeguard the future of what he calls the blue finger. The blue finger is a strip of Grade 1 agricultural land (also called BMV – Best and Most Versatile) on the urban fringe of North Bristol. Blue from the colour used on soils maps to indicate the best quality land and finger from the shape of the tract. While I knew that the area in question once provided much of Bristol’s fresh produce, I had no idea that along the M32 corridor, there exists one of the most fertile growing areas in the entire country. The blue finger represents land that is so good that virtually anything can be grown on it, with minimal preparation. The land drains freely and even after a prolonged period of heavy rain, the soil can be worked after only two days.

We know that, for a number of reasons, we need to move towards producing more food locally. However, the pressures of urban expansion now threaten some of our most valuable soil resources like the blue finger. If the blue finger is lost to development, our task of feeding a post peak-oil Bristol will be made that much more difficult.

In a piece called “Walking with Fruit and Veg: food tales from the blue finger,” Richard writes that,

‘Mechanisms simply don’t exist to protect this soil asset and as market gardeners sell up, retire or simply die they will almost certainly not be replaced. The days of the north Bristol fringe of dairy cattle and market gardens are disappearing at the very time we need them more than ever if we are to make proper contributions to the imperative of reconnecting food and place…

Walking the land and kicking the red mole hills of the blue finger made me think long and hard about the strategic importance of the soil asset before it is lost for ever… ’

To paraphrase Joni Mitchell’s great environmental anthem of the 1960s, we must not wait until someone has ”taken all the soil and put it in a soil museum”[1]’

Friday 9th May 2008
Organic Farming and You
By Phil Haughton

In 2001, I wrote a piece for our Christmas newsletter about what, you, our customers, were achieving in terms of support for organic farming. In it I referred back to 1986 when I opened a one stop organic shop on Gloucester Road.

There are still lots of regular customers using the shop today who used the Real Food Supplies all those years ago. The market in general is vast in comparison to back then, but what interests me is how much our customers are doing now for better organic food.

There are thousands of acres of land under organic cultivation (still only 3.4% of the UK's agricultural land), supplying directly to independent food stores and box schemes.

You have bought millions of organic products over the past 16 years, from the Better Food Company alone.

Having your veg box delivered means a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Every time you and 20 others in your neighbourhood have your boxes delivered, you save collectively approx 300 food miles.

More people are now employed in a sector that puts people before profit. You help support around 40 local family farms and businesses. BFC and our Barley Wood Walled Garden alone employ over 50 people.

You are putting the heart back into food production and local food shopping. You are sending a clear message to supermarkets, and policy advisors like The Food Standards Agency that there is a healthier, more sustainable way forward, which puts people and the environment before profit.

I think what I see more and more is that while the organic market is growing with thousands of new products every year, the market for local, community-orientated shopping of organic foods that come from small producers is growing even faster. There is a sense that more of us are aware of the importance of not just organic, but of organic with heart and soul.

My message to our customers, to BFC staff and to our many amazing suppliers is what strength there is in this loose knit community we've created. Maybe you're a farmer growing food and gaining an income to feed your family, or a member staff working in the shop because you want to promote organic food and be able to buy it for yourselves.

Or maybe you're a customer, coming to buy the local cheese, the garden veg, the French wine, the great local bread… Whichever, we're all doing it to feed our families good, nutritious organic food.

The journey of the food from plot to plate contains buckets full of heart and soul, and it feels to me like it makes for a better world for all involved.

Enjoy the sunshine, Phil

Friday 2nd May 2008
Bio-fuelling the Crisis
By Chris Adams

"How important is life and how important are cars? I say, life first and cars second."
Bolivian President, Evo Morales

Last week, Malcolm Wicks, UK Minister for Energy, announced that the Government is to reassess its position on bio-fuels. Over the last month, riots and unrest in the developing world and noticeably increased food prices at home have cast a dark shadow over the Government’s targets for liquid bio-fuel use. Introduced as a flagship measure in the fight against Climate Change, these targets are now being seen as a crime against the world’s poor. Bio-fuels, once touted as the green saviour of our unsustainable transport habits, are now being demonised as a driving force in the looming hunger crisis.

All of this reminds me of the famous anecdote attributed to Einstein that, ‘we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.’ At the heart of the matter here is our desire to sustain an unsustainable way of life. In seeking to merely swap the fuels that we rely on, without questioning the roots of our profligate fuel usage, we entirely miss the point. As renowned activist and author George Monbiot comments, “these convoluted [bio-fuel] solutions are designed to avoid a simpler one: reducing the consumption of transport fuel. But that requires the use of a different commodity. Global supplies of political courage appear, unfortunately, to have peaked some time ago.”[1]

In some ways, I feel for the Government on this one. After all, wouldn’t it have been great if bio-fuels really were a green panacea? But of course, nothing is ever that easy. Ultimately, we need to make real decisions about moving towards re-localisation and community resilience.

These decisions are best made locally and so we all have a crucial role to play here. There will be no one solution to the current food and energy crisis that is universally applicable. Perhaps, in some places, bio-fuels will play a role in the local energy picture but surely not if they are used merely as a means to keep SUV’s on the road at the expense of people eating. After all, as Malcolm Wicks commented in the Financial Times, “it would be ridiculous if we fill up our cars with 5%-10% bio-fuels if the consequences are that somewhere else in the world people are not being fed."[2]

Let me know what you think...

Friday 25th April 2008
The economy, organic food shopping and ethics
By Phil Haughton

The great thing about most organic food is there are no hidden costs. I was looking at a field of cows today and they looked terribly sick. This is the stress of an intensive dairy system and is part of any non-organic milk chain.

I have been observing other farming practices recently: a field of yellow dead foliage due to Gramoxone weed killers that make it easy to plough before planting; then a field of dark green grass due to heavy chemical nitrogen fertilisers to get bigger silage crops; then crop spraying with chemical fungicides because the winter wheat that was sowed last Autumn is already sick. This is all going on in our very local non-organic food supply chain. Frequently I hear shops and restaurants say some food they have bought is nearly organic, or suppliers say we should stock a product because its as good as organic.

Then I hear that most oil used in deep fat fryers has a GM element to it because they can't guarantee separation on soya and maize crops. That means most pubs, restaurants and chippies are feeding us GM oil.

The hidden costs of the above are not just in Sterling, although there is a lot of that too.

So we know its good to buy and eat good organic food and it does not cost the Earth.

What’s all this got to do with the economy?

Some of us are feeling the pinch with interest rates, mortgages, fuel and now food prices all on the increase. Apart from the obscenity of Biofuel crops pushing up basic grain prices, food prices actually needed to rise. The Euro needed to be adjusted against Sterling even if it does hurt many of us with increased prices through the food chain. A year ago the Euro was around 1.4 to Sterling, its now around 1.2. This means that UK produce becomes that much more competitive so it actually stimulates growth in UK organic sales and demand. You have to be a bit crazy to go into organic growing; in a good year you might break even, in other years you may loose. But thankfully there are more of us crazy people around and they need a healthy fair market to give them confidence to go on and you need them to go on and be healthy.

What's the message, Phil?

As the economy tightens try to continue to back organic production and healthy community because its the backbone of our future.

Let me know what you think...

Friday 18th April 2008
Ripples in the Pond
By Chris Adams

Last month, I spent a wonderful few days helping with the cooking at Schumacher College near Totnes, Devon. For the last 16 years, Schumacher College has been a beacon of positive pedagogy in a world hungry for green education. I first visited Schumacher five years ago to take part in a course on Eco-village design. I had just given up on food and cooking after crashing and burning in the hell-fire world of the London restaurant scene.

But my time helping prepare the meals (all course participants at Schumacher help with the cooking, cleaning, gardening etc.) for my fellow participants brought me to a new and more holistic appreciation of the power of food. Last month, I was invited back to the college to help with the cooking while the chef enjoyed a well-deserved week off. In going back, I was delighted to find that some of the suggestions that my fellow course participants and I had made for making the campus grounds more sustainable had, years after we went our separate ways, been put into action. Where once there was sterile lawn there is now a young orchard. Where once there was a token vegetable patch there are now many productive beds and a poly-tunnel. All food used to be bought in but now much of it grown on-site.

Five years ago, my fellow course participants and I felt disheartened when it seemed like there was little scope to implement our ideas. However, one of the people on our course stayed on at the College. She eventually met Justin, an incoming MSc student, and a few years later, he decided to really get the ball rolling. Who knows if any of our original plans for change influenced Justin as he re-designed the college grounds? What is important is that the change eventually did happen. In these uncertain times, it often seems like our best-placed efforts come to nothing. However, even those actions that seem to have little effect can, in the end, help make change happen. Like the proverbial ripples in a pond, our actions spread out. They carry on laying the foundations for other people to build on, sometimes long after we have forgotten about them.

Let me know what you think...

Friday 4th April 2008
Why Nuclear is Still Not the Answer

A few days ago, I listened to a radio news piece that lauded nuclear power as the answer to our Climate Change woes. It is good that discussions about mitigating Climate Change are finally happening. However, it is not good that the nuclear lobby has latched onto concern about Climate Change as a means to promote their agenda. At first glance, the argument put forward by the nuclear lobby seems reasonable: Nuclear power is a proven, carbon-free technology and so if we want to combat Climate Change, we must build lots of new, safe nuclear reactors. Go nuclear, they say, or face climate catastrophe. However, the situation surrounding nuclear power generation is not as straightforward as proponents of the technology might argue.

Three reasons why nuclear is still not the answer:

Peak-Everything. High-quality, fissionable Uranium is a finite resource and so, like with oil, a peak in production will eventually be reached. After this point, there will be a scramble to extract fissionable materials from increasingly less productive sources. And of course, the more reactors we build, the faster this will happen. As a result, nuclear does not provide a long-term, secure energy option. Indeed, the technology will not even be able to provide the energy needed in the future to maintain its own wastes safely.

Carbon Emissions. Nuclear can only be seen as a carbon-free technology if most of the steps in the nuclear life-cycle are ignored. High-grade, nuclear fuel does not materialise out of thin air nor does nuclear waste conveniently disappear when no longer needed. If the whole life-cycle of nuclear power generation is taken into account, from the initial mining of uranium ores to the eventual containment of radioactive waste-products, the industry actually comes across as rather carbon-intense. According to the Ecologist magazine, only conventional coal and oil production from tar sands have a higher total carbon intensity (CO2 per kilowatt/hour).

Cost/EROEI (Energy return on energy invested). The cost of producing nuclear power is still extremely high in both financial and energetic terms. As well, Nuclear power plants still take a long time to safely construct. This means that, even given the challenge of Climate Change, our time, energy and money are better spent elsewhere.

Let me know what you think...

Friday 4th April 2008
April update from Phil

All is well with the world when the spring sun shines. All is not well when the spring sun does not shine and it’s cold and windy and wet.

There is a real see-saw with the weather and its hard to get a sense of good momentum at the gardens. It is most certainly a very late start: this week last year our potatoes were almost showing through the soil. This year they are not yet in, due to cold wet soil conditions.

We had also picked our first crop of asparagus this week last year, yet as I write its not even showing yet.

This, one could say, is just a more normal spring. What I feel is that there is a very fundamental cause and affect going on. The fact that the ice caps are melting at a phenomenal rate would, I guess, affect water temperatures which would in turn affects the atmosphere etc etc. I know nothing about this subject, but it’s somehow simply the logic of the planet, the Gaia theory etc.

To me the weather is very unsettled, with frequent bursts of anger, often like short tantrums rather than general mood swings. But there is no room to be anxious about this, we are made of tougher things as some say.

Today as I write the sun shines greatly and the dandelions look very happy, as do the rabbits, the blossoms, the bees, the broad beans, the salad leaves, the garlic and the Rhubarb.

So we are today sowing and planting with that great energy and urgency that feeds us in spring. It’s a wonderful thing to do.

Any help with getting crops in over the next month would be great. Its a lovely way to spend a day and we give you a delicious walled garden lunch. For details call the cafe 01934 863713 and ask for Nathan, our new grower.

Take care

Also Friday 4th April 2008
East Bristol – new Foodie Central

Congratulations, St Werburghs City Farm Café, who won The Observer Food Magazine’s Outstanding Ethical Achievements award on Sunday 30th March. It’s fantastic that all their hard work and vision have received the recognition they deserve.

Friday 28th March 2008
Pilgrim’s Progress
By Chris Adams

Mark Boyle (Saoirse), a former BFC employee, returned to Bristol last week after spending more than six weeks travelling around the UK without money. Mark’s journey focussed a great deal of attention on the Freeconomy Community that he helped found last year. Mark’s belief in the need to create a society where people look after each other rather than fight for personal advantage lies at the heart of the Freeconomy concept. His journey embodied this belief. Indeed, his journey became, for many, an incredible symbol of faith in human kindness and the power of community. Although he has returned to Bristol, Mark feels that, ultimately, his journey of service has only just begun.

At least in spirit, Mark took many people along on his journey with him. Friends, family, colleagues, and Freeconomy Community members all read his regular blog updates, eagerly following his progress. The journey also garnered a great deal of attention from the press. While some of this press coverage was sympathetic, much of what was written or reported about the journey, and indeed about Mark himself, spoke more about the in-built assumptions and bias of the media than about Mark and his message. That reporters were quick to jump on Mark’s failings and very slow to talk about the achievements of his journey, did not really surprise me. However, the media coverage still hurt, still angered me.

It took great courage for Mark to give away his possessions and start off on his journey but perhaps it took even greater courage for him to come back. Mark feels that he will be of more use here – working on taking the Freeconomy Community to the next level – than on the road. So, he has cut his journey short, he has returned to Bristol. The media tells me that Mark is a naïve scrounger, a failure. But my heart sees it differently. My heart celebrates what Mark has achieved, the awareness that he has raised. My heart tells me that we need more of what Mark stands for and less of the negativity that the media seems to think we want.

Let me know what you think… chris@betterfood.co.uk

Friday 21st March 2008
Can Britain Feed Itself (Well)? Part II

Following on from Chris and Phils' pieces (in the ‘previous bulletin’ section)…

In his bulletin piece two weeks ago (see www.betterfood.co.uk>bulletins>previous bulletins), Phil wondered “if anyone has designed a diet based on sustainable UK organic agriculture?”

A bit of research later and I found that surprisingly little work has been done on addressing this most pressing of questions. Nutritionists and celebrity chefs have looked at improving the nation’s diet. Farmers and government bodies have looked at agricultural productivity. Planners and academics have looked at land use. But very few people outside of Permaculture circles seem to be putting the pieces together. Perhaps this is because somewhere deep inside, we know that what we have to change is not one piece of the puzzle but everything – our diet, our farming and our land-use.

I did come across an article by land-rights activist, Simon Fairlie, titled “Can Britain Feed Itself?”. In the article, Fairlie reworks equations drawn-up in 1975 by George Mellanby. Mellanby concluded that yes, Britain could feed itself (through ‘conventional’ agriculture), if a sensible diet were followed and better use made of the land. Much however, has changed since 1975. In his article, Fairlie updates the figures and includes stockless, organic and Permaculture scenarios. Fairlie’s rudimentary calculations indicate that orthodox organic agriculture alone is not enough and that we must go further, be more creative, if we are to feed ourselves sustainably from the land around us. In other words we must burst the bubble that we have trapped our food in and look at the bigger picture (I will discuss some of Fairlie’s specific findings in another piece soon).

Ultimately, this is what I think Phil was getting at in his piece two weeks ago. After all, what good is an imagined healthy diet if none of the prescribed food-stuffs are available due to shortages of transport fuel? What good is an enlightened re-visioning of agriculture if all the best growing land has been built on? And what good is any of this if we do not bring the soul back into our food-culture?

Let me know what you think… chris@betterfood.co.uk

Thursday 13th March 2008
Can Britain Feed Itself (Well)? Part 1

Following on from Phil’s piece last week (in the ‘previous bulletin’ section)…

Judging by the feedback that came pouring in, Phil’s latest bulletin piece touched on a number of issues that we should continue to discuss. Phil’s main point was, that while the recent emphasis by Jamie Oliver and Hugh FW on free-range poultry has, broadly-speaking, been a good thing, we need to open the debate up and ask whether or not we should be eating much white meat period. Even free-range poultry and pigs consume vast quantities of grain and other foodstuffs that we can eat directly. Should we not eat proportionately more red meat, Phil asks, as cows and sheep can largely feed on the grass and clover leys which build fertility under organic systems of production?

A number of respondents pointed out that we need not assume meat consumption a de facto requirement and that vegan organic agriculture is becoming an increasingly viable option. While many of my closest friends are vegan, I have to say here that when it comes to debates about land-use and food security in Britain, my general feeling is that a creative return to mixed farming represents the best way forward. Mixed farming necessarily involves animals and therefore drives the diet of people who farm mixedly to include some animal products. So for me, as it was for several people who emailed in response to Phil’s piece, the question is not about individual components of agriculture, such as poultry or beef production, but about seeing agriculture in a more holistic light. As well, we need to move the debate on from being one about fulfilling basic dietary requirements to one about creating a vibrant and creative food culture.

Shortly after Phil’s piece went out last week, I came across a very relevant article by Simon Fairlie, which appeared recently in The Land. In the article, Fairlie revisits the equations put forward in 1975 by Scottish ecologist Kenneth Mellanby in his book Can Britain Feed Itself? The article can be found online at www.tinyurl.com/2eg3qu. Next time, I will discuss the article, so please read it and let me know what you think.

Friday 7th March 2008
10 million battery chickens are not sold, while free range chickens sell out

Friday 29th February 2008
New Season of 'Soil to Plate' Education kicks off at the BFC
A Report From Chris Adams

At the Better Food Company, we have always seen ourselves as food activists. While many people will know us primarily as shopkeepers and as growers of fresh organic produce, many will also recognise that education and awareness-raising have always been high on our agenda.

Our fruit and vegetable growing operations, based at Barley Wood Walled Garden, are an important part of our food activism, of what we do, but the Walled Garden is also an amazing educational resource. The Gardens provide a beautiful back-drop for conversations about not just how we grow organically but about the bigger picture – about why we grow organically. If we are to build resilient, oil independent communities in the coming years of transition, better food and farming will be absolutely central.

On Tuesday evening, Patrick Holden, carrot farmer and Director of the Soil Association, addressed this issue during a talk in our Bristol Café. During his talk, Patrick’s inspirational vision of a challenging but positive future brought home to many of us just how important education, and I use that term loosely, will be in the coming years. It is unfortunately true that many people still do not know where their food comes from or about how drastically insecure centralised food supply chains will become in the face of peak oil and climate change.

This year, with the help of the Soil Association, we are looking forward to hosting more school visits at the Gardens than ever before. We have always wanted to use the Gardens as a venue for programmes that truly represent ‘Soil to Plate’ learning and so we have entered with great excitement into a year of partnership with several local schools through the Soil Association’s Food For Life program. Through this partnership, we hope to share with a wide-range of students our love of growing, our passion for change and our commitment to better food.

On Tuesday a group of year eight students from St. Katherine’s School in Pill took the short trip down to Wrington to spend the day with us. This outing was the first of four seasonally-themed visits that students from St. Katherine’s will make to the Walled Garden during the course of the next year. The students enjoyed a full tour of the Gardens and took part in a hands-on seed sowing session with Lizzie Buckle, one of our gardeners.

The students came away from this visit with more questions than answers, which is just as it should be. We need to teach our kids to question, to look critically at the way things are and we need to give our kids the tools and empowerment they need in order to make good choices for us all in the future. If you are interested in booking a group tour of the Gardens, a presentation or indeed a tour of the Bristol Shop itself, please get in touch with me, Chris Adams via email at chris@betterfood.co.uk or by phone on 0117 935 1725.

Friday 22nd February 2008
When the barrel runs dry.
An unusually positive vision of the future…

CAFE EVENT, TUESDAY 26th FEBRUARY

We're used to environmentalists telling us about the end of the world as we know it, about how resources are running dry while temperatures and sea levels rise.

Now, Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association, tells us it's easy… Just dig for victory.

Sound like a call to arms? More of a call to the garden shed. The premise is simple, and if you're over 60, probably reminds you of your childhood.

We know we should reuse, reduce and recycle and that taking the bus is better for the environment than hopping in the car. Whether we take these things on board is largely a matter of personal choice.

While environmental organisations such as The Soil Association, Green Peace and Friends of the Earth work tirelessly to get a public agenda for these issues, it's often easy to think that they're an 'other', and therefore something easy not to engage with, something that indicates a dark future we don't really want to think about.

So how about this for a vision of the future: oil is running out. Even the most modest forecasts conclude that we will pass the level where production is less than demand within a generation. But don't see this as a tragedy, a doom-laden prediction. See it as an opportunity, a real, tangible, step-by-step chance to rethink and improve our little piece of where ever we live. Most importantly it's a chance to reorganise ourselves into mini-economies, all helping to sustain each other.

Intrigued? Come and hear Patrick speak about his vision of the future, at the Better Food Company Café, St Werburghs. 7pm Tuesday 26th February. See www.soilassociation.org to find out more about the work of the Soil Association.

Thanks, Lucy

Friday 8th February 2008
SEE Companies Go Live
Today SEE Companies launched their website (www.seecompanies.com). Please take a look. They have worked really hard to bring this concept about.

The SEE Companies accreditation scheme has been created to identify businesses that are honest and open on a range of social, environmental, and ethical (SEE) issues.

This website offers full public access to the policies of companies which have been through the rigorous SEE Companies accreditation process and guaranteed their information.

The BFC have signed up. It was hard work but it was rewarding, in part because I knew that our ethics etc would be out there for all to see, but also to see our shortcomings and think about what we ought to be doing about them.

As you can see, several of the companies we deal with are also part of this initiative (Pukka Herbs, THTC, Vintage Roots for example), which, in my opinion, points to a positive future for us all.

Phil

Friday 1st February 2008

Mark was our General Manager here at BFC until last Summer, so I know him well.

He is a man of passion and belief. He came into BFC and made lots of great changes and sort of swept us off our feet. His website and blog give you a good idea of what he is like.

Having worked with Mark over a two year period I know that he has thrown himslef into this new venture with all his heart and all his soul. One thing I feel for sure is that before the end of this journey Mark will discover something new and big and important to add to, or change his route map, maybe both literally and spiritually.

Many staff and customers have got to know him and will miss his infectious charm and his warmth. I have this feeling of wanting to watch over him to make sure that he doesn't accept the bad times as being part of the deal for the sake of humanity, maybe that's my lack of faith or my old Catholicism coming out. Who knows? What I do know is that today after hearing he had departed, I and hundreds of others felt a loss to our community which will be a rolling gain for all those he meets on his amazing journey.

Just for the love of it. What a great phrase.

Keep up with Mark's journey, and find out about Freeconomy, at www.justfortheloveofit.org.

Friday 25th January 2008

Transition Bristol is trying to persuade the good people of Bristol to buy fruit trees and plant them in their gardens as part of the biggest Fruit Tree Offer ever! Following on from the project that has run in Easton and Barton Hill for years we're hoping to extend the project city wide and get hundreds of trees planted.

Lower food miles, increase biodiversity and improve the environment all in one go. And you’ll have fresh, tasty, organic fruit on your doorstep.

Trees are available to buy online and will be delivered to one of 10 collection points around the city on February 16th. When you pick up your tree Transition Village groups will show you how to plant and care for it. All the trees have been selected to be easy to grow, the right size for small gardens, self fertile and tasty. Due to the scale of the project we are not able to specify varieties. However we are sourcing them from a local, decent supplier.

See www.transitionbristol.org and order before end of January.

For details or enquiries please contact Matt and Rob on trees@transitionbristol.org

Friday 18th January 2008

Yes Phil you are getting cynical in your old age. Hugh FW might himself be annoying but the programme has brought this issue into people’s living rooms so good on him. It is us consumers that will ultimately be the catalyst for change, not only through the cash tills but also through increasing the political imperative. Chicken is a great high protein, affordable, locally produced food. People flocking (..sic) to buy free range is music to my ears. What has been missing is that link between the producer and the consumer.

We are "getting it". Food is not just another commodity. Where is comes from and how it was produced can be part of our experience and enjoyment as all those who harvest food from their garden know. As do the supermarkets who are rushing to put the friendly face of the 'local' farmer on every cellophane-wrapped offering.

Friday 11th January 2008
Chickens

Maybe I am getting cynical in my old age, but I find Hugh Fernley Whittingstall’s chicken programme slightly annoying. I keep hearing how supplies have already run out as the public rush to buy free range chickens. Firstly I hate the fact that we seem to need celebrities to highlight issues which frankly we should have been sorting out a decade ago. Secondly I have seen it all before.

I remember Edwina Curry on salmonella in the 1980s and how, as a result, we had this mad rush on organic eggs. The first BSE scare in 1987 had us all rush out to buy organic beef - my organic butcher’s shop on Gloucester Road enjoyed a real burst of activity!

It’s all good really, because it does raise awareness. But it seems to me that until we take the whole picture into account and fundamentally challenge our lifestyles, we will never have sustainability. Hugh’s programme is, as I write, pushing battery chicken farms into financial ruin. This means yet more farmers will go bust because the fickle market pushes them about. These inhumane farms would never have come about if supermarkets had not driven food prices down and down in the first place.

• Reduce waste by half,
• Reduce energy consumption by 20%

A mixed family farm, with cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, arable and vegetable crops, has become a thing of the past as it has become a non viable unit. But farms like this can feed local AND, in part, city areas.

The price of sustainability means you and I pay the real price of good farming, with little waste and healthy food. I reckon this is about 70% more than we pay now. Not possible I know. So we have to challenge the whole structure of our society and culture and look at CSAs (see Soil Association web site for more about Community Supported Agriculture – www.soilassociation.org).

In the mean time we could do worse than reduce meat consumption, especially chickens which need a very high energy input to produce. Beef and lamb are much better because they can be reared on mostly grass and even on land that cannot be used for growing crops. Eat more veg and pulses and less tinned and processed foods. My son asked why we haven’t got jars of curry sauce in our store cupboard. I replied that while they are great as a last resort, it’s much more fun to cook with fresh ingredients and not only do you have a much nicer dish, but what you end up with also has soul. People think I am mad when I talk about food with soul, but for me it’s probably the most important aspect of what I eat.

I could go on for ever and if you have read this far, thank you. It matters to all of us to be heard sometimes!

Garden news
Friday 4th January 2008
Winter is well and truly bedded in. The hungry pigeons and rabbits are feeding on the purple sprouting broccoli and swede. The mulch and compost spreading is underway, ready for the first crops to go in in early spring.

Our seed potatoes arrive shortly to be spread out for chitting. This helps them get away early after planting. Our seed order and our plant module orders are in and larger than any previous year, so if the weather is more on our side we will nearly double our output this year.

One exciting bit of news: our 108 year old grape vine has been cut right back ready to graft on to a new strain of grape. This is being done because the old vine was very susceptible to mildew and we lost all our grapes every year.

Friday 14th December 2007
Who’s dreaming of a green Christmas?

But things are changing. As shopping becomes a more conscious pursuit, we’re prepared to seek out more local alternatives, and everyone benefits.

This Christmas at The Better Food Company, we’ve got sprouts from our walled garden in Wrington, North Somerset, potatoes half an hour away from Gloucestershire and amazing organically reared bronze turkeys from just 45 minutes away in Weston Super Mare. In fact, you could put the whole main course on the table for less than 100 food miles, if there is such a unit of measure.

Peter Hemmings has been a farmer for many years, and an organic one for seven. ‘It feels like the only honest way to farm’ he says. His turkeys are raised with complete freedom and fed only wholesome organic grain. He continues, ‘Selling through a small company like Better Food gives us that vital link with our customers’.

So your Christmas feast can be fresh, regionally sourced, delicious AND support the local economy. Surely that’s a reason to celebrate…

Friday 7th December 2007
Sustrans bid for The People's £50 million?
This is a great opportunity to support a fantastic local charity with big ideas.

Friday 23rd November 2007
Garden news

The pigeons are ever more hungry, but most of the brassicas are big enough to take it. The sprouts are looking great for Christmas, I am sure some of you have had some in the shop and a few in boxes. Its tempting to pick more now as they are so good, but I am being a bit stingy with them now to make sure we have enough for Christmas week.

The kale, red cabbage and swede are all good, and the January king cabbages will be ready right on target for January. The cavelonero will be ready soon, although they have been knocked back by the pidgeons.

The winter salads coming on well and we will pick more for the boxes in two weeks.

A bunch of winter herbs will also be coming your way next week for you to use in stews and other winter warmers. You can also dry them and use as you need them.

I spend a some of my time travelling to farms – recently I’ve visited Jo Brake, who supplies us with Guinea fowl for restaurants, and Peter Hemmings, who as you know, does our turkeys, as well as beef and pork. You will have lots of sausages made with his pork this week. Look out for the new chorizo. I used to make these many years ago, but its the first time I’ve made them for the shop. They’re great in casseroles and hot pots. They have paprika, chilli, garlic, and red wine in them, as well as some of my secret spices.

I also went to the butcher I use to help put some legs and loins of pork down for curing. This is a salt brine which is not organic, but makes great bacon and ham. We have just cooked one off from the last batch and after a honey glaze in the oven we sliced it and it’s on our garden menu as well as going into sandwiches in the shop. In three weeks you will be able to buy the gamons and bacon in the shop. Look for the GoLocal label.

I note that the biggest box scheme in the country cover the country from Land’s End to Manchester from one group of Devon Farms and still portrays an image of being local. How does this work?!

I also note that Kelly Bronze Turkeys have a lovely sepia marketing image which makes them feel small, local-ish and with great animal welfare. They are good birds and so they should be at £14-odd a kilo. They don’t use organic feed, and small organic farmers, who pay about 40% more for their feed, are selling theirs for between £10 and £12 a kilo. I can only conclude that their prices are so high because big marketing budgets lead to big sales and big profits.

Small producers depend on local people who want to feel connected and support their local community and economy. I don't want to be schmaltzy, but BFC do it for love and hope we can make an honest living.

Friday 16th November 2007
Anti-plastic campaign is going from strength to strength:
Article from the WESTERN DAILY PRESS, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2007 by Brian Price

A CAMPAIGN to banish plastic bags to help clean up the environment is gaining pace with 12 West towns and cities considering a ban.

Figures show that British shops hand out up to 17 billion every year – more than 300 for every man, woman and child in Britain. That adds up to 60,000 tonnes of plastic going to landfill sites – where the material will take anything up to 1,000 years to beak down. Eighty British towns, cities and villages are considering introducing a plastic bag ban including Bath, Stroud and Fairford in Gloucestershire; Glastonbury, Wellington and Winscombe in Somerset; Lyme Regis, Wimborne Minster, Portland, Weymouth and Dorchester in Dorset; and Hereford.

They are following the lead of Modbury in South Devon, which became the first community in the country to go “plastic bag-free” after a campaign by BBC camerawoman Rebecca Hosking. Ms Hosking, who lives in Modbury, persuaded traders there to ditch plastic bags after seeing the devastating effects of plastic waste on sea life around Hawaii.

Earlier this week, the prospect of a nationwide ban came a step closer to reality after 33 London councils voted for legislation to prevent shops in the capital handing out free plastic bags.

In the next fortnight, Westminster Council will present a private Bill to the House of Commons that would apply to every London shop from the humblest newsagent to Harrods. Shoppers will be asked to use sturdy reusable plastic “bags for life” or cotton or string hold-alls as an alternative.

In Bristol, organic supermarket The Better Food Company is planning to introduce a 5p levy on plastic bags from December 1, with the money being donated to an environmental charity.

Store manager Melanie Taylor said: “Our policy is to offer customers boxes to take home their shopping so they have to ask us if they specifically want a bag. We’re finding that more people are becoming aware of the problems caused by plastic bags, and they prefer to use boxes or bring their own bags.” The Government says it is monitoring the situation, but is against a plastic bag tax of the kind introduced five years ago in Ireland, where the number of carrier bags distributed has fallen by 90 per cent.

Officials claim Irish shoppers are using other types of plastic instead.

Friday 9th November 2007
Garden news

The rabbits are hungry and so are tucking into the swedes and leeks, the slugs are rampent starting on the sprouts ans the pakchoi. The waether is wonderful and the soil is still very warm.

We are speding time clearing the crop debry including been poles, preparing ground for broad beans which will go in soon and general site maintenance.I am delighted that due to having the field we are able to expoand the fruit growing in the walled garden area. Next week we have lots more soft fruits and straberry plants coming which should keep us busy. I really hope we will have enough starwbs next year to put in our fruit boxes.

At present we are down to picking little more than brassicas, which are doing really well this year. With the box numbers going up and up as well as the shop geting busier we strugle with the volumes needed, so its important we plan now for alot more of everything next year. Thankfully the field was only partly used last season so we have lots of room to expand the cropping. I now need to spend a few evenings in front of a fire doing next years seed orders, a task I am very much looking forawrd to. All we need next is a better summer in 2008. Heres hoping!

Friday 26th October 2007
Protect our values

Having read the small piece in the bulletin about national box schemes a couple of weeks ago (see ‘previous bulletins’ section), I decided I wanted to add a voice to the sentiment.

In 1986 I was running a shop on Gloucester Road called Real Food Supplies. Part of its mission statement displayed on the wall was to bring producers and consumers closer together. This was a reaction to big supermarketing. Twenty-odd years on, supermarkets are even more powerful and have taken out a further 25% of independent food retailers.

Farmers are at least 25% worse off, and food miles have gone up by well over 25%.

So it was great news when box schemes gained popularity within the mainstream.

This was brought about by hundreds of small farmers turning their back on supermarkets as customers and sold their produce direct. The reality is that, however good these all were and still are, they did not amount to a large percentage of organic veg sales in the UK. That was until some clever growers worked hard to put national box schemes on the map. They have in many ways done a great job. However we now face many of the same issues that arose when dealing with the supermarkets. We will soon see 25% fewer small box schemes. The ones still doing it could be 25% worse off in part because they have to cover a greater area to keep the customer number working for the land mass they have, and in part because they cannot grow on a small scale for the same price that big (industrial size organic) farms can. This along with national box scheme juggernauts zooming up the motorways would mean food miles increasing within the box scheme sector by maybe 25%!

This is not sour grapes and life is full of compromises for businesses and individuals, but before we allow this trend to continue, just understand that the cost is always the same, ie a reduction in community values, a reduction in food values, and a reduction in spiritual values.

Friday 19th October 2007
And the Nobel Prize Goes to...
A Report from Canadian Chris Adams

Little more than a week ago, Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were recognised with joint Nobel Peace Prizes ‘for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.’ The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC was decried as scandalous by the usual suspects – those who profit from the continued destruction of our planet. However, it seems that, even despite the recent legal challenge against Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, climate change is well and truly on the international agenda.

Now, I do understand the arguments leveled against An Inconvenient Truth by people on both sides of the spectrum but surely a few errors on Gore’s part do not put into doubt the scientific consensus around climate change. The climate change deniers have gone several steps too far here by claiming that since no one has actually witnessed a polar bear drown as a result of warming temperature trends at the polar ice-caps, that climate change and the science surrounding it is still just enviro-freak fantasy. Let’s be honest here, the climate change deniers think that we, the general public, are stupid and that we can not discern for ourselves just how important this all is. Human-induced climate change is just one symptom of a greater disharmony that we have created for ourselves. It is this underlying disharmony that we must now address if we are to safeguard the future of our children and grand-children.

By acting now in creative, local and interesting ways, such as through grass-roots initiatives like the Transition Towns movement, we risk nothing but the short-term profits of a few already very wealthy people. By waiting for ‘the data to be perfect,’ which of course it never can be, we gamble with our future ability to exist on this planet in any sort of recognisable way. Many people have been arguing this point for a very long time now and increasingly, the world seems to be taking notice. This is why the Nobel Committee’s decision to award the 2007 prize not just to campaigner Gore but also to the IPCC represents a crucial step towards international acknowledgement of the current scientific consensus about just how much impact we really do have on the ecosystems, chemical cycles and weather patterns that sustain us. And we must remember that the IPCC figures are themselves rather conservative due to the editing influence of, amongst others, the Bush Administration. The tide has turned. Despite the incredible and disproportionate amount of media coverage that climate change deniers still enjoy, the real freaks in this story have been unmasked. Some commentators have questioned the Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s Peace Prize to Gore and the IPCC but I, for one, applaud the Committee for taking this holistic stand. For without a livable planet, there can be no hope of achieving peace between nations.

Friday 12th October 2007
An extract from an interesting article published in the Autumn 2007 edition of Organic Farming (published by the Soil Association).
from Autumn Respite - Farewell
by Miles Denyer, Hankham Organics, East Sussex

In the time I have been writing for [Organic Farming's] Four Farms column, you could say not much has really changed. We grow the same crops, but not quite as many. We run a slightly smaller box scheme, with slightly fewer customers. And we have retained most of our staff but we have slightly fewer of them too. What we have much the same of as ever is pests, disease and difficult weather - as physically demanding work as it always has been.

So, when there is a shortage of local organic produce, our food miles are minimal, the quality and value of our produce is excellent and we have expanded our growing area, why are we doing slightly less of everything? Well, while we have concentrated on growing more produce, the national box schemes concentrate massive resources on seemingly endless expansion and marketing ... everywhere. They are selling tens of thousands of organic vegetable boxes each week. This is having an impact on many small growers I have spoken to, and I feel must be a deterrent to new growers starting up who want to sell their own produce locally. I live in a hamlet in the middle of nowhere and regularly get national box scheme leaflets through my door. The leaflets do not have addresses for the companies, and one states they are part of a local organic co-operative while failing to mention which part of the country 'local' actually refers to. In reality it is over 200 miles away.

A few years ago, small organic producers thought the main threat to their livelihood came from the supermarkets. I suggest they think again. The organic buying public are clued-up enough to know exactly what a supermarket represents, but a national box scheme is a far more confusing and misleading offering.

For me, organic means small, sustainable and truly local. The Soil Association needs to appreciate, support and protect the unique infrastructure of truly local producers and markets, and address with haste the indiscriminate empire-building of the national box schemes.

Friday 5th October 2007

For many village halls in the countryside it has become a festivity mainly for adults eating what I call plastic ham, tasteless imported tomatoes and so much else. The real highlight of the food for me has always been the apple pies made by local folk and served with cream. Don't get me wrong it’s a great community ritual, with church before hand (for some) and any reason to come together is good, but it really is time that they had more connection with the real reason for the feast.

Before we had all the mod cons and convenience of fridges, freezers and preservatives, Harvest was about a feast of abundance and a way to prepare you for the winter to come. There would have been genuine frantic work to get the vegetables in store, fruits preserved, pigs salted down or smoked and so much other activity on and around the land to make sure winter was manageable.

It was a chance to thank your neighbours for the help in getting the crops in before the weather changed and a chance to taste the best of the foods before the winter scarcity. Baked Hams, roast beef, cider, apple pies, bread from the new wheat, and so much more.

It’s all a bit romanticised and most of us would not want to return to the hardships that went along with it all. However there are some elements which we have the freedom to choose, and really celebrating the fruits of the land is one which I think is the best form of celebration there is.

Friday 13th July 2007
How Jon Bon Jovi saved the planet.

Last weekend could prove to be a historic moment in history. Two billion people apparently tuned in to watch the biggest names in the world of music shake their collective stuff in the name of Gaia. A lot has been written about the event, and a lot of commentators mentioned that it seemed to them that most of the revellers showed little or no interest in the environmental issues being conveyed during the events, but a lot of attention on the modern day eco-warriors Madonna and Jon Bon Jovi. So whilst reading the broadsheets on Monday, it would have been quite understandable to feel cynical about it all, especially when you have celebrities telling ordinary folk to buy more energy efficient light bulbs when they're getting on their private jets to fly back to Hollywood.

But when I said it could be a historic point in history I was serious. Up until very recently, environmentalism, seemingly, was the domain of luddites and hippies, two labels which have never had a positive stigma in the mainstream public. Ecology wasn't cool. In fact it wasn't even understood. So when I heard that Shakira et al were pleading with the world to start looking after our only home I had mixed feelings at first. But the more I thought about it, the more I believed it to be a hugely positive step.

Of course I don't believe that what was talked about at Live Earth will be radical enough to make a big difference at this stage. And very few will change their way of life drastically this week. But seeds were planted on Saturday, and the power of a seed is not to be underestimated. A forest can grow from the germination of one seed, both metaphorically and literally. These seeds won't germinate right away. But if we keep watering them everyday, make sure the get ample amounts of sunshine, and fertilise using green manures, then each one of those seeds will turn into a mighty tree, and boy do we need mighty trees right now.

If we are going to do this, if we are going to turn this around like I believe we can, it's going to have to involve everyone - pop stars, luddites, Christians, Muslims, politicians and even the fans of the Pussycat Dolls, which I'm reliably told are all the rage these days. God I must be getting old.

So let's embrace it and encourage every single person who wants to make a difference, regardless how big or small it is.

Mark Boyle

Friday 6th July 2007
Hope…

Apparently it has all been decided by Mother Nature; we’re doomed. Reports say we have already passed the tipping point, the rainforests are dry, the ice-caps are melting, and more importantly, Lampeter is under water. And so now all we can do is to plant a few trees and make sure we boil only the amount of water we need to make a cuppa, so when we go, we go with our consciences bleached nicely white.

Here’s my advice for the week - start turning off the TV at six o’clock and stop buying the daily newspaper. This isn’t me talking about energy saving measures to halt our seemingly imminent road to destruction, although that’s a nice benefit. I’m talking about halting the flow of despair and negativity which you get exposed to in any given day. It’s bad enough knowing the damage we, as humans have caused over the last one hundred years, but feeling like there’s nothing we can do about it is infinitely more damaging.

The current situation brings me back to my early teens, when I decided I was going to stop using my favourite deodorant because it was causing kids to get skin cancer in Australia. My mum then decided she didn’t really need hairspray anymore and dad decided to rest up instead of spraying Deep Heat on his aching muscles. None of us liked it at first, but we got on with it and even the government made some very important changes. The problem was that there was a hole in the ozone layer, and scientists had just realised that CFCs were causing the problem. Which was funny, I remember thinking those things can’t be good for the air a long time before that, and I was only a 12 year old boy!

But in the subsequent years lots of stuff came out in the news saying the damage was irreparable. So for a while we believed it, and hence bought lots of sunscreen. But after the Montreal protocol we realised that actually this wasn’t a done deal. It appeared that we could not only halt the deterioration, we could actually reverse it.

And we have. It’s healing has been slower than some expected, but a lot of that is down to the natural cycles of the sun. It’ll be 40 or 50 years before it completely returns, but when Mother Nature made time she was very generous. So where does that leave us? I agree that our current situation is a lot more drastic. But all that means is that its solution just needs to be a lot more radical. Instead of giving up our collective deodorant, we’ve got to stop buying salad packs from China.

Instead of giving up hairspray, we’ve got to get on our bicycles. Instead of shopping in Tesco’s, we need to resume shopping in our independent shops and farm shops. Yes it is going to be a bigger change, but if we embrace it we will not only stand a damn good chance of making our planet habitable, we will actually become more enriched human beings. For me there are three lessons here; One, we probably shouldn’t listen to scientists.

Two, we probably stop reading the newspaper or at most taking it with a cup of salt. And three, never, and I repeat never, feel that it’s too late. Nothing ever positive came out of pessimism, and nothing negative ever came from optimism.

There is always hope.

Mark Boyle

Friday 28th June 2007
It's all very simple.

Or is it? No of course not, life and the universe are anything but simple. There is however in a very simplistic way with good reason to trust cause and effect. I am talking Global warming here and how our actions impact on it.

If I get on a plane it has no tangible impact on the environment, or global warming today, but we all know it does make a difference to the future.

Watching the flooding around the country was a reminder of cause and effect. If we are to make big enough changes to our behaviour on this planet to make it habitable in the future then we must surely know this means acting responsibly and doing everything in our power not just our convenience to avoid passive murder. It is fact that thousands of people are dying now due to global warming, heat waves, floods, drought etc. In the last week at least three people in the UK lost their lives in floods.

If I know that flying on an Aeroplane has a big impact on the future climate and I fly anyway I am effectively indulging my convenience or desire at the potential cost of other peoples lives. Of course flying is only one act. Much of the way the world is organised does not exactly support people or the environment but there is much that does put people and the environment at the top of its agenda. I feel it is our absolute duty as caretakers of the planet to seek as many of the positives as possible and to recede the negatives to a minimum. If there were no aeroplanes we would not worry, we would simply organise ourselves differently and have different expectations of travel.

Or debate. Let’s hear what you think about all this!

Update from Barley Wood Walled Garden at Wrington…
Wet, Windy, Muddy, Sunny and Weedy!

That’s it really. Well there is actually a lot of lovely food growing in the gardens. The Tomatoes are just ripening and the Courgettes are picking up pace of growth. The Spinach and Chard are abundant now, the salads are wonderful, and onions; red and yellow are still green and great way to use them over the summer.

I put all my tops in a soup with some bacon rind, a bay leaf and some lentils. Soft fruit is abundant. There are red and black currents galore. The berries are doing fine but our strawberries are finished. Plums will be next month along with beans and squashes.

Friday 22nd June 2007
The C-Change Trust

In the last few weeks some of you may have noticed the new banners and information leaflets in the shop, carrying the C-Change trust logo. The C-Change trust is a relatively new charity dedicated to tackling the issues around climate change and carbon consumption. We at the Better Food Company have decided to promote and support the C-Change trust by raising awareness about who they are, what they do and why, and by sponsoring them and collecting donations for them through our tills.

You may be aware of the term ‘carbon offsetting’ whereby companies or individuals undertake to “offset” their carbon footprint by working with/donating to carbon offsetting companies who invest in environmental projects (such as tree planting) in a bid to describe themselves as “carbon Neutral”. This term ‘carbon neutral’ is very misleading and as far as I am concerned a marketing term or “green washing” undertaken by companies to give themselves green credentials. This does nothing to tackle the real problem, which is the amount of energy (or carbon) we as individuals or businesses actually consume or require. Unless we seriously start to address this issue, and as a society consume less, then it doesn’t matter how many trees we plant, the point is to reduce our energy consumption, both individually and as a society. The only answer is to consume less, fly less, use less electricity, drive less, shop locally, build sustainable local communities, use renewable sources of energy, share with friends and family and take a radical look at the way we function as a society.

What makes the C-Change trust different from other carbon offsetting companies is a completely fresh approach. Firstly their mission statement is about “carbon acknowledgment” and not about “carbon offsetting” or “carbon neutrality”. The C-Change trust works with businesses and individuals to “acknowledge” their carbon foot print, and whilst they do run offsetting initiatives, what they really work towards is getting businesses and individuals to reduce their carbon/energy requirements. The acknowledgment is the first part of the process, but what they really do well is educate. The C-Change trust is dedicated to running an education program in schools, to raise awareness about climate change and reducing energy consumption, as well as supporting renewable energy projects, such as planting broad leafed native woodlands in the UK (incidentally most carbon offsetting companies invest in oversees projects). They are truly a local company, their headquarters are based just around the corner from the St. Werburghs shop, and they are keen to support local projects.

You can help us support the C-Change trust by choosing to make a donation at the tills of 20p/50p/£1.00 or any unspecified amount of your choice, by taking one of their ‘sow what’ cards and planting some wild flowers, and then by visiting their website and finding out more about what they do and why, where you can also calculate your own carbon foot print, and if you are really keen to help, they urgently need volunteers to help them with various projects. I hope you will join me in giving them your support.

Friday 15th June 2007
Paper accepts all ink.

The one thing big corporations are really good at is planning. In board rooms across the planet in January 2007, executives would have been talking about the increasing media attention given to climate change and the G8 summit which took place last week, and what they could do to maximise sales from it all.

The one thing big corporations are really bad at, is doing what they say they do. They call it good marketing, environmental practitioners call it green-washing. For anyone who hasn’t heard the phrase before, it means promoting yourself as the greenest thing since un-sliced organic bread, whilst in the meantime having an extremely negative impact on the planet and its people in the course of their normal business.

The winner of my new award ‘Green-washer of the Month’ for May was Shell, who beat of lots of pre-G8 competition for the gong. For those of you fortunate enough not to have seen it, the advert depicted the outline of factories with hippy-styled flowers flying out of the chimneys, under the heading “Don’t throw it away. There is no away”, whilst then proceeding to talk about re-using everything and, astonishingly, saying how the carbon they produce can be used by greenhouses. My jaw dropped. I thought if this is comedy, then I take my hat of to them. If it’s serious, this is an extremely dangerous advert, as it gives the public a very false sense of doing the right thing, and that as long as they buy Shell oil everything will be OK.

Thirteen years ago Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other peaceful protestors were executed for campaigning against the devastation that was being inflicted upon the Niger Delta and their homeland by Shell amongst others, including Chevron. They all eventually moved out, but were obviously not happy about it. Two years later the Nigerian Government, under financial pressure, sent a strong message to the world by executing them. The extent of Shell’s role in this is unsure, but as we know, all major oil companies have a big influence on most of the governments of the world. You don’t have to look any further than Iraq to see that. Last year, in Ireland, the police, in huge numbers, were extremely heavy handed in dealing with peaceful protestors who were trying to stop Shell causing destruction to part of the west coast of Ireland. The state weren’t going to do all this for free – you can be sure large payments were made for the services.

But I think that explains it all. It doesn’t matter that they are in part responsible for wars, or that they wreak havoc on the landscape of indigenous societies in countries out of the reach of most of the media. As long as they recycle the paper in their offices and plant a few trees somewhere everyone can see, then all will be fine.

However, this is not a campaign against Shell. This is an alert to people who believe that just because something appears in an advert, it must be true. I counted eight real examples of greenwash last week, and I don’t even read the newspapers, I just happened to see them lying open on tables in our café. But paper accepts all ink. If you look at all the companies who are claiming to be the earth stewards of tomorrow, they are exactly the companies who are causing the destruction in the first place. If you don’t destroy, there’s no need to reconstruct. At this point in history, green-washing is as dangerous as throwing toxic waste into the ocean or dropping bombs in middle-eastern countries. Why, because it fools people into thinking they can carry on as they are as they are doing the right thing, while in reality nothing has changed and that they are in fact, still contributing to an unjust, unsustainable world.

Spread the word, stop listening to the green-wash and start listening to your hearts. It’s not about off-setting your carbon, it’s about undertaking the right livelihood so that you don’t create so much in the first place.

Mark ‘The Ranter’ Boyle!

Wednesday 13th June 2007
Let’s take the power back

Its that time of year again, when a bunch of people I personally wouldn’t trust to baby-sit my nephew get in a conference room together, call it the G8 summit and procrastinate about cutting their respective huge contributions to climate change amongst other things. Its not that I don’t welcome the debate and the fact it is now on the mainstream agenda. Its just experience tells me it’s, at best, motivated by fear that mama nature may actually strike back and hurt the speculative foundations of our economy, and at worse, blatant green-washing. And so it makes me think – why are we expecting these people to be the panacea to the world’s environmental problems. They’re motivated in the most by profits, the economy and personal political gain. And they got us in this mess in the first place. So I wouldn’t hang around waiting for them to get us out of it.

What these people decide in the coming days will affect the planet; there is no doubt about that. But to what extent depends on us, and how much we actually regard what they are saying. They’ll decide macro-economic matters, change policy on a certain number of things and set targets for CO2 emissions that they will then pass down to council level. And then inevitably not meet them.

But what they can’t decide are the following: The fact that we will choose to eat organic food over non-organic food. That we decide to eat British produce over imported food. That we take the train instead of one of the cheap fare airlines. That we buy our shoes from a local shoemaker instead of the high street. That we pay a bit extra for a local carpenter to make our furniture instead of a Swedish multinational. That we buy our food from local independent traders and farmers and not the supermarkets chains. That we walk or cycle instead of driving at least two days a week. That we turn our thermostats down in winter. That we stop buying the products of companies who put profit over the environment and community. That we drink water over some hormone disrupting soft drink.

The important decisions will not be decided in Germany in the coming days. They will be made in the hearts and minds of everyone of us in the general public, every time we decide to consume or not consume, to shop ethically or unethically. We don’t have to listen to them, but they have to listen to us.

Friday 7th June 2007
The farmer comes to the Market…

I remember the first year the supermarket opened and we had our first season in the gardens. I would arrive at the shop, van brimming with boxes of freshly picked vegetables. I used to plonk it on a pallet in the middle of the floor, no packs, no frills just abundance and vitality. For me the 5am start was worth it just to see our customer’s faces.

Well at the gardens we are picking at 5am or 6am in the morning to bring you that abundance and freshness. This weekend why not try:

Red Duke of York Potatoes: they are fantastic and are dug daily for the shop.

Cos Lettuces: We have Lettuces galore and my favorite at the moment are the Cos Lettuces; huge, crisp and tasty.

Bunched baby beetroot: Use the tops and then roast or boil the root. Hot or cold they are sweet and delicious.

Fresh Garlic: This is the stuff we should all be using several times a week. Just treat them like onions. Put them in with toms to roast with a bit of rosemary, chop them finely into green salads and then add a bit of raw mushroom or use with a dribble of local honey for a sweet dressing.
Do the same with these fabulous fresh red onions with all the tops on. You can also use the tops in soups or stock.

Broad beans: They are so good in so many ways. In salads, in stir fry’s, in soups, if they get too big just puree them and make a dip with some of fresh garlic, lemon and olive oil.

To all these put in some herbs. I will be bringing in our usual selection of free herbs from the gardens that you can help yourselves to … Mint, Apple mint, Rosemary, Purple sage, and Chives.

It’s the weekend and that is when most flowers are sold around the country. As you walk into the shop you will notice lots of bunched garden flowers. We are doing loads this year as a way of trying to reduce the carbon usage of most flowers you buy.

While I am on the flower trail, I will just say that the gardens are at their most stunning just now and well worth a visit. Why not come and visit us…after you have taken your fill of the gardens you can enjoy a lunch or indeed dinner on a Friday or Saturday

evening. It is proving very popular to arrive at 7pm and walk around the gardens which are free after 6pm and then relax with a drink on the terrace followed by diner in the orangey. TELL ME, WHAT COULD BE MORE PERFECT?

Phil Haughton (MD)

Friday 1st June 2007
Garden news from Phil

What is this all about? I am afraid it is part nature and in part a field that is not yet in balance. It is being affected by past use of chemicals and does not have the levels of predators needed to create a natural balance. The hot weather in April caused much of the bolting in the beet family.

• Cover the crops with fleece as we plant to stop the pigeons helping themselves.
• Put up low level electric fencing to keep the rabbits out.
• Install light timed strings of bangers that go off every half hour and scare away birds.
• Spray aphids with Savona, an organic soap solution which helps but does not eradicate and is harmful to ladybirds who we want more of.
• Put on a brave face and remember it will get better. Nature will quickly work to find a natural balance. We are now seeing ladybird numbers increasing. Longer days and warm rain means plants recover from night munching quicker.

The best thing of all is to arrive at 5am yourself when all the rabbits and pigeons hurry off and you’re left with the beauty of rows of vegetables, views of the Mendips and the birds singing.

Peace and optimism returns.

Friday 24th May 2007
Barley Wood Walled Garden news and a view

The gardens are starting to produce some lovely fresh foods.

We are very proud that this week we picked our first cucumbers.

You can expect more and more garden produce in the boxes and the shop from now on. Despite too many pests like rabbits, deer, mice, flee beetles, aphids, and many more there is some left for all of us.

Asparagus, lettuce, salads, cues, leaf beet, bunched beetroot, true spinach, chard, strawberries are all ready or nearly, with lots of others to follow.

To add to this we now have some beautiful flowers to brighten your homes. We call these Lizzy's flowers because she has lovingly sowed, grown and weeded, and now picks and bunches them. All this is great, and it's also really important. Producing good food on a small scale is what peasant farmers have done for centuries. Part of what makes it so good is that it has soul in a way that mass produced food, organic or otherwise, just never has.

It's sometimes hard to keep this in mind when faced with so much cheaper food. When I started an organic shop in 1984 it felt like organic was great as long as we remembered it came from farms and not from supermarkets. Now organic is no longer enough. The world is demanding that we rapidly move towards a sustainable way of living and mass produced organic food is no better than building an energy efficient house except with loads of cement. Making the links in our lives is the new challenge. I play mind games with myself to see how long I can make a thread of links before I loose the original point. It's a bit like soil, plant, animal, Man, but always remembering that the simple circle is integrally linked to a galaxy of circles. Cause and effect are a great part of the game.

What if I buy that t-shirt? What company owns the label? Who owns that company? Where is the cotton grown? Who grew it, harvested it, bleached it, dyed it, and wove it? The questions go on and on. And in each one of these parts is a story with thousands of other stories. The big question is this - 'Are they stories of happy fulfilled lives, or drudgery and resignation'? Is the soil it was grown in full of life and natural balance, or is it always in need of its next fix of chemicals to grow the cotton, to keep the owners unhappily rich? And on, and on.

Some say it's easy to get stuck and never be able to do anything. Ok it has its moments of frustration, but who ever said that trying to fix a patient who is close to terminally ill (The Planet) was going to be easy. What I am sure we can all agree is that when you embark on the journey its rewards are great as well. Celebrate life with great food and happy stories.

The cafe is going really well and the kitchen is excited by the new season produce. Our New Manager Joe is doing some staff training, including getting Daisy who runs her own coffee business to train us all to make the best coffee.

The new Bistro nights are proving very popular on Friday and Saturday giving our chefs a chance to move the lunch menu up a notch but still with the relaxed informal air about the place it's worth a visit.

Friday 18th May 2007
Slow Food Nation

I am often intrigued by the amount of time it takes for different types of knowledge to infiltrate modern western culture. It would seem that anything relating to technology and mislabelled ‘science’ spreads like a spark through dry leaves in our gadget and drug filled society, where not knowing how to download music means excommunication from the Church of Consumerism. However, anything relating to knowledge that we need in order to be healthy, both as individuals and as a society, seems to take decades to filter through to the masses. Whether this difference is due to a peculiar aspect of the modern human mind or because of the weight of big industry’s marketing budget, or both, is unclear. Or is it just because we have a now a greater kinship with machines than the soil?

This whole issue went through my mind after watching a film called ‘Fast Food Nation in the Watershed during the week, a movie based around the results of a book of the same title by Eric Schlosser. It highlights the effects of the modern food industry on almost every aspect of our society, all the way from its environmental impact, to the abuse of animals, to the fact that drugs are a now a reality for its workers as a form of escapism, brought on by the terrible conditions they have to endure.

So we talked afterwards about how long we thought the message from this piece of work would take to be, not only understood, but acted upon, by the masses of our population. It worried us. It wasn’t until the mid-nineties that the nutritional benefits of different types of food began to permeate western society, and even now there is still some very poor information out there. The effects of the industry on the environment have taken even longer, and it’s really only since last Christmas that it has had an effect outside of green circles. So how much longer do we have to wait before we wake up to the realisation that the pace at which we produce our food has repercussions on almost every aspect of the daily lives of every species on the planet.

Slower food is the answer. We look at the world today and see many problems, and it all looks so complex that we feel disempowered to do anything about it. But it’s so much simpler than we think – food is at the heart of most of the issues, and if we could manage to reconnect humans with the soil and to start cooking fresh organic local produce every day, most of the issues above would simply evaporate in a matter of years.

But it does come back to that question - why is it we know more about computers today than we do about the thing that sustains us and keeps us healthy? For me, this is a question that eats at the very core of the way we educate our children.

Lets become a slow food nation.

Feedback is always welcome, some of which we may start posting on this web-site in order to start some debate over the important issues of our time.

Mark Boyle

Friday 11th May 2007
Bio fuels - Our saviour or a new way of maintaining an old problem?

Environmentalists and oil companies rarely see to eye to eye - how could they when the former battles to sustain the worlds resources without any desire for personal gain, whilst the latter does exactly the opposite. But with a new UN report coming out on the whole issue of bio-fuels, we may have finally found a subject that both are starting to agree ever-so-slightly on, although both are still polarised on the reasons.

These renewable fuels have been seen as a cleaner, greener and more sustainable alternative to crude oil over the last 10 years. And in theory it is. The problem arises when, as outlined in this new report, forests are inevitably flattened in order to make way for the plantations of crop which will be grown to feed our need for easy and relatively cheap fuels. Add to this the further pressure on the world's water supplies that this would entail and bio-fuel becomes less and less bio and more and more just fuel. So oil companies don't like them because they get can't get rich of them, and environmentalists are swaying because of the knock-on effects on the rest of the eco-system.

So if whatever reason we don't believe that bio-fuels are a sustainable long-term holistic solution, what next? At the Better Food Company we are saying what we've been saying all along - Go Local. Instead of finding an alternative source of fuel to satisfy our addiction to cheap energy, why not just stop using so much energy. Let's stop buying our milk from France whilst they import almost the same amount from us. Let's stop flying food from China whilst farmers in the UK go out of business. Let's stop getting veggie boxes that are transported around the UK in arctic trucks from national companies (or even worse multi-national companies) whilst local box schemes are freely available. Let's buy local and buy in season. Let's remember where our food comes from.

The answer to the world's future energy problems is not how to we replace oil. Its how do we use less? And maybe one day none. Local food for thought.

Mark Boyle (General Manager)

Friday 27th April 2007
Transition City Bristol and the ‘Talks for Life 2007’

May Day was historically a pre-Christian pagan festival; today it has become a celebration of the labour and socialist movements and for those who believe they are working towards a better world. What better day then to kick-off our amazing line-up of events called the ‘Talks for Life’, which in themselves are designed to help us all make more informed decisions and start positive micro revolutions in our own lives.

The first of these is on ‘Transition City Bristol’ at the Trinity Centre on the 1st May at 7.00pm. For those of you who are totally unaware of the transition town’s concept, the following is a very brief insight:

We are reaching a point in history where our use of oil is a lot higher than the rate at which we are finding new sources. This point is called Peak Oil, and it’s when the price of oil will rapidly increase. Not only that, but even conservative government figures say we have only 30 years of oil left at all, whilst more realistic figures state 15-20 years. This leaves us with a problem – our whole society is currently run on oil. Just think about it – the pesticides on 95% of the nation’s food, the fuel used to get it transported around the world, the plastic it’s wrapped in. The diesel that powers our cars and the machines that construct our buildings and makes all the things we seem to like buying. Your computer and keyboard, TV, and pretty much everything we own has been transported to us by oil. You may say there may be alternatives in the future, but nothing as safe gives anywhere near as much energy at such an extraordinarily cheap price. Oil is to global economy what a mother is to a new born child. So what is going to happen when it all runs out?

There are two routes we can go down. The first is where it all suddenly comes as a shock to us, we’ve no localised food systems and lots and lots of people die. We don’t like that one.

The second one is where today (or even Tuesday 1st May!) we decide that we are going to make the transition to a world without oil, so when the inevitable does happen, we don’t even know it’s gone. We’ve got about 15 years to break our addiction to oil, and for most of us it’ll probably take that long. Not everything has to be done today – it’s about getting rid of it piece by piece so that we set up systems that will be functioning long before they are a life and death situation. This is the option we think is best. And even if we do find a bit more oil, would it not be desirable anyway to phase it out and cut our C02 emissions and reduce our overall environmental impact anyway!

Tickets are selling fast, so if you are interested in the talk drop us a line and we can reserve one for you. The talk is headlined by founder Rob Hopkins, and with speeches from Patrick Holden of the Soil Association and Sarah Pugh of Bristol Permaculture Group.

The talks will then continue every Thursday afterwards for the next 3 months. If you haven’t already received an electronic poster let us know and I’ll get it sent out to you. It’s a terrific line-up, lots of great names and there is something in there of great interest to almost anyone we reckon!

Friday 20th April 2007
Blurring the lines between Soil and Plate

Recently I have had the privilege of spending the spring splitting my time between working in the gardens and in the café kitchen cooking or serving. The spring is a busy time in the Barley Walled Gardens, weeding and preparing beds, sowing, planting and sadly lots of watering due to our April drought. The Café has been very busy with Mothers day, Easter and sunshine making it a wonderful place to visit.

What struck me about my work was the blurring of the lines between the soil and the plate. Since the Second World War we have done so much to modernise our life and food. Words like CONVENIENCE and SUPERMARKET became commonly used as good and inspirational life-style CHOICES.

These words in capitals are the very things that have served to separate us from our food source, our food culture, and our food communities.

Whatever Tesco's may say about thinking similarly to Jonathan Porrit (Article in Observer I think and also Channel 4 Program re consumerism) about the need to move away from consumerism, they are empty sentiments because they are all about SUPERMARKET, CONVENIENCE & CHOICE.

So, looking to ourselves and our choices we can make more and more choices to get closer to our food source and hence start blurring the lines between the soil and the plate.

Here is a little list of things that I feel make a difference.

• Never sanitise food.
• Use wooden chopping boards and only wash with warm soapy water.
• Forget the whole notion that killing bugs is good. For me it is the reverse. Blurring the lines between soil and Kitchen keeps lots of organisms alive and contributes to healthy and strong immune systems.
• Get an allotment or come down to our gardens and work with the soil for a day.
• Pick some food from our gardens and take it home to cook with dirt on your hands and the fruits of the earth for your table.
• Oh and when you come and work with us you get to have lunch in the cafe with us.

There are many ways I would recommend to anyone to blur their lines between the soil and the plates, including the following:

• Talk to those you buy food from about how and when it grows.
• Reduce the number of times you use recipe books etc and cook with what you have, remembering that the lack of choice in ingredients increases creativity and builds confidence in food which is part of building a food culture.
• Share food with others more often - spending time preparing and sharing is at the heart of a healthy food culture.
• Walk on grass or earth as often as possible This is in part why we love to go for walks, we know it feeds our soul and yet many of us have little daily access to open fields and big parks.
• Eat more fresh food and less food that has been through any kind of manufacturing process. The very nature of processing beyond simple cooking takes away from its vitality and goodness; it also produces more packaging, branding and promotion which detracts from food culture to so called CONVENIENCE.

By the way it is a great honour and a privilege to be working on the land producing food for our boxes, our shop and our cafes.

This week we have planted out 7,000 plants and sown 3,000 more modules.

The Tomatoes are doing well in the big poly tunnel, the pots are up and heaped up, the Asparagus is doing great, and the weeds are under control largely due to the dry weather. When it rains they will come in force. Help will be needed if you can.

Cheers to all of you

Phil

Friday 13th April 2007
If Wilberforce was 200 years younger
Several weeks ago, I went down to the Walled Garden at Barley Wood to see our new field. I took the bus to Congresbury, and then followed the footpath that meanders along the River Yeo. The path passes through the yard of All Saints, Wrington and I popped in to the church to have a look. On the wall opposite the door there is a white marble memorial. The memorial, to prominent abolitionist Hannah More, caught my attention not least because the plaque mentioned that she had been resident for a time at Barley Wood.

Bristol, London, Glasgow, Liverpool all enjoyed the spoils of the slave trade. When William Wilberforce first stood up in Parliament and called for the abolition of slavery he was barely taken seriously. To his peers, it seemed that Wilberforce was intent on bringing about the financial ruin of the country. Indeed, many of Wilberforce's fellow MPs benefited directly from the proceeds of the slave trade.

However, this did not sway Wilberforce and year after year, supported by activists like More, he brought Abolitionist bills before the House only to be repeatedly defeated. Wilberforce envisioned a better world, a world without slavery, and did everything in his power to make that world happen. This year we mark the anniversary of his eventual victory; we celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the Parliamentary Act that made it illegal to transport slaves by sea wherever the British Navy could enforce its authority.

For me, there are distinct parallels between the struggle that More and Wilberforce were engaged in and the battle that we now face. As we strive to make trade fair, to kick our oil habit and bring wholesome food to our tables, we battle against vested interest, against greed and against the inhumanity of the modern-day slavery on which our current economic boom is based. Some governments even continue to argue that to combat climate change in a meaningful way is to commit economic suicide. Many corporations argue the necessity of the status quo.

To me this just shows an incredible lack of imagination. We have created the system that we as a global community now labour under; with vision we have the power to change it. There is no credible argument for continuing to pursue short-term economic interests at the cost of people and planet. This year, as we observe Abolition 200, we not only celebrate the work of Wilberforce, More and other abolitionists but we also learn an important lesson about how truth, justice and vision can eventually overturn even the most entrenched of interests.

…what do you think he would do?

Monday 9th April 2007

What next for Whole Foods Market?
Here at the Better Food Company we historically haven’t had much time for the big Supermarkets, mainly because of the complete lack of ethics involved in the way they do business. Because of this we’re often asked about our opinion on the expansion of what was once a little vegetarian ‘natural’ food company called Safer-way, now the juggernaut of the ‘health food’ industry that is Whole Foods Market.

For those of you who have never heard of them, Whole Foods are a big American multinational company who have recently entered the UK under the guise of Fresh & Wild. Started many moons ago as a solution to the American supermarket Safeway, Safer-way couldn’t have had stronger principles. And because of this they became quite successful. I’m not sure anyone back then could have imagined how different it would all become though. They now have stores to match Tesco’s worst, and stock food from the four corners of the world, a claim which is only surprising in the fact that the world is actually round. And they recently just bought out the US’s other big health food chain, Wild Oats, giving them as much as is possible of a monopoly in the US market.

So when asked what we think of them and the whole concept of the juxtaposition that is a huge ethical multinational company, we’re a bit stuck. Yes it’s better than a Wal-Mart (ASDA in British terms). But only in degrees. The food is better, though a lot of it is not organic or local. But its size is now making it into the Wal-Mart of the ‘natural’ food industry, and hence killing off the independent local traders in the process, whilst driving down prices for farmers in pretty much a similar fashion to the mainstream guys. This we unequivocally state is not healthy, for communities, farmers or the environment. As I stated earlier they now have entered the UK market through Fresh & Wild, and you may have spotted their logos and ‘Core Values’ all over their store in Clifton. And with the logo came the conventionally grown produce and move towards non-local and non-organic. This is what I’m worried about. I foresee that over the next 10 years Whole Foods Market will proliferate at the rate it has it the US, and not only kill of some of the oldest and most traditional independent organic and health food stores in the UK, but also add to the increased Americanisation of British culture, something equally as scary. So I think instead of asking us what do you think, the British public need to make up its mind what it wants. The choice is simple.

Big and superficial or small and truly wholesome?

As Fritz Schumacher once stated, “Small is beautiful.” What will the British public state?

Monday 2nd April 2007
Update on Billboard Campaign
A couple of points here - Firstly the landowners have expressed that they have always supported the removal of the boards but have not had a way of doing it. Together with the campaign it may be possible to discover how it could be done and so they are happy to join the community in this endeavour. Secondly, the money received from the billboards is used to help finance a project which benefits the community in many ways.

So it is essential that the way forward is to continue to work towards removing the billboards in a way which doesn't impact on the community project in question. In order to achieve this, we are in the process of organising a meeting of people in St Werburghs who want to get involved. We already have 600 names on petition and looking for 800+, so keep them coming.

Anyone interested in coming along to the meeting, email Mark at markboyle69@hotmail.com - We would also like to thank everyone for the overwhelming support so far. Let’s make St Werburghs the first 'Billboard Free Community' and be a shining light to the rest of the country.

Monday 2nd April 2007

GM - back in the news
The public debates one of the biggest issues facing the planet today – GM – and unanimously says NO. So the hype dies down and hence leaves the news. Is it just me or is it then fair to assume that the government have listened and have decided not to play god? Obviously not!

I’m not sure if any of you seen a programme during the week on the genetic modification of salmon for industrial farming purposes. Transgenics, generally known as recombinant DNA technology is the ability to combine DNA molecules from different sources into one molecule in a test tube. A fairly new and innovative type of molecular study, used in part to study the effects of certain transfusions and blood born viruses. Apparently, by using a certain strand of D.N.A from another species of fish, the fish farm is able to produce salmon that (within the first year of its life) grow to up to 4 times the size.

The reason for this is because salmon, as a species of fish tend to breed and survive in warm water, and therefore only tend to grow a certain amount in the first year of their life. The gene that these "super salmon" have been injected with is from a cold water fish, thus enabling the salmon to grow larger in warm water, as their new genetic disposition gives them an advantage over non-genetically farmed salmon. Because of this process, the new "super salmon" are also rendered sterile, so therefore cannot do something that is integral to the traditional salmon’s lifestyle. I think this is absolutely absurd, as we are creating these GM monstrosities purely to satisfy out own needs. The reason this particular farmer gave for this development was that his new breed of salmon would enable us to be supplied with the fish well after the natural stocks would have run out. The question must be asked - would it not be better to just stop our insane fishing practices instead of playing around with ecology and life?

So it seems the best way to way to protest against GM is with your pocket. We recommend not giving your money towards any product contains genetically modified ingredients, or even giving it companies who engage in such activities.

Or maybe GM is the key to all our problems. Why don't we genetically modify humans too so that well before we have exhausted all our fossil fuels, chopped down the Amazon, and blown half the world apart with nuclear bombs, we can be injected with genes from a bird and fly to the moon. But we all know what happened to Icarus when he tried to play god.

If you are interested in a debate on organically farmed fish, come along to one of our ‘Talks for Life’ on Thursday 24th May 7.30pm title “The Great Organically Farmed Fish Debate”, with Tony Wardle of Viva! And Tony Free of Purely Organic Trout Company outlining their contrasting perspectives.

Tickets available through The Better Food Company or Seven Generations.

8th March 2007
The Role of Supermarkets in Fair-trade and Organics
For years, the fair-trade and organic movements had been solely in the realm of independent health stores and organic retailers. Not any more. Both movements are no longer the strivings of idealists; they are now niche markets for the supermarket chains. Here at the Better Food Company we are in two minds about all of this.

Of course we congratulate everyone who makes any movement into doing things a bit more ethically. Both our planet and its people need every little gain it can get right now. But when the supermarkets run a big campaign about fairtrade, forgive us for being sceptical. A lot of the time what these companies are doing is what is known as ‘greenwashing’- a PR attempt by big organisations to make themselves look like they are the most ethical thing since sliced fair-trade organic bread!

Take Sainsbury’s fair-trade promotions for example. Over the last week they’ve been shouting about all their fairtrade stuff. This would be great if it weren’t for the fact that behind the scenes they have been doing something completely different. I’m sure as part of their promotions they didn’t advertise the fact that they have just started importing cheaper organic lamb, which undercuts British farmers. I bet not. This means the market price for organic UK lamb has dropped to below what English farmers need to make a fair living. This is free-trade (not fair-trade) in full flow. Likewise, is going into a small town and opening a new shop with abnormally low prices, whereby killing off the smaller retailers and then raising the prices also deemed fair-trade? And yet they’ll be the first to sing about the fact that they’ve got fair-trade mangos from Tobago.

With organics it is no different. For various reasons, supermarkets will sell all of their organic produce in plastic bags.

It helps keep them fresh when they are being flown over from China 3 weeks earlier than they should be, and also prevents the produce from going dead whilst being transported from their hubs in London around the UK with their just-in-time systems. OK, so technically they can still call some of these products organic, but is this what we mean when we say organic? For us, certainly not and for the Soil Association it would seem this is also not the case – at the annual Soil Association conference in Cardiff, they very bravely spoke about the prospects of not certifying anything that gets air freighted.

We also believe that if a company is claiming to be moving towards fair-trade, it should be a policy for all of their products and not just on a few lines they have selected which will give them a nice bit of public relations and greenwashing.

If I felt that the big supermarket chains were truly trying to convert to a way of dealing with suppliers that was a lot fairer and organic, I would be the first to congratulate them. But I don’t believe it is the case for a second. So it’s up to us as the market to decide whether we want to buy fairly traded organic produce from people who do it because the believe in it, or from a company who dabble in it because it makes a good TV advert!

Let me know what you think…marketing@betterfood.co.uk.
Mark Boyle

5th March 2007
A Fair price for both UK and international farmers
I remember a conversation I had with a certain politician a number of years ago, when I was trying to convince him that Organic food should just be labelled as normal, and products grown using pesticides and fungicides should be labelled “Non-organic - produced using pesticides and artificial fertilisers”.

• 40 English farmers and 30 farm workers have got to leave the land every day as the price the big supermarkets are giving them for their crops aren’t enough to even cover their costs. That’s an astonishing 490 every week. All whilst the supermarkets report record profits. That’s not fair.
• Some fair-trade food is produced using pesticides and synthetic fertilisers. This puts the farmer’s health, land and the planet in general in jeopardy. That’s not fair.
• It leads to monocultures of coffee and cocoa in countries where their own people are dying of hunger. We’re currently encouraging farmers to ship huge quantities of goods across the planet whilst people there can’t get enough food. For those people and the environment, that’s not fair.

25th February 2007
‘The Supermarket that’s Killing Communities’
Another week, another mainstream media damning the actions of the UK’s biggest corporations. If some of you didn’t see it, this week it was Channel 4’s Dispatches programme titled “The supermarket that’s eating Britain”, it’s aim being to highlight the appalling practices of Britain’s largest supermarket, Tesco’s.

• They go into small towns with really low prices, kill off the local retailers and green-grocers, and then the prices once they have a monopoly.
• They buy up loads of land around the country but refuse to tell us how much. Even worse the government refuse to tell us, even though Tesco’s are a PLC and this information should be classified as being in the public’s interest.
• They have set up HQ in the Cayman Islands with bank accounts called after every conceivable colour. Which means that not only are they taking a lot, they’re giving back very little in terms of tax.
• MPs and local councils have admitted being bullied and feeling pressurised into making certain decisions in relation to planning etc.
• Driving down prices by giving farmers prices that are forcing thousands of them off their land every year.

16th February 2007
The NEW ‘Gert British Box’!
Here at The Better Food Company we are always trying to go one step forward and challenge everything we do. We’re not one to rest on our laurels. So we started to look at the contents of our boxes and the food miles attached. Whilst being pretty good compared to the vast majority of other box schemes in existence, like rail freighting much of our produce, we knew we could do better.

So we set ourselves a challenge. To make a box which is 100% U.K. all year round and to make it our number one selling box. Well here it is, the Gert British box, a blend of produce from our own walled gardens just 12 miles away on the outskirts of Bristol and produce from all the other magnificent farmers we work with closely each day.

We cannot over-emphasise the importance of this box. We have got to get crude oil out of our food in whatever form it takes. We have got to start supporting our local farmers as thousands of them are being driven off the land every year. We have got to get used to eating local seasonal food again, especially in a world where peak oil is now inevitable and the cost of transportation astronomical.

So if you feel you want to go completely local and switch to this box let us know. If you know anyone who would be really interested in a UK box then also let them know! We cannot promise a huge array of fruits and vegetables every week in it (especially in the winter), but what we can promise is that it will significantly reduce our impact on the environment.

Even if you decide against this box, we recommend you check out its contents so you can get a feel for what is in season in this country each week.

And in the meantime we are currently working hard on our new field down beside our Walled Garden so that by the summer we will have as much as possible in all our boxes from just 12 miles away! Great eh!

Oh and thanks to Markus for the great name – a truly Bristol box!
Mark Boyle
General Manager

12th February 2007
A week off from the campaign trail
The BFC team have been very fired up about our future recently, which is great but today with it being February and cold and wet I felt we all need to take a weekend off the big picture and put some warming energy into the smaller but most important picture of all, our family and friends.

I have just walked around the gardens with Mark, (he was in his open toed sandals and trousers rolled up, mad or what!) to bring him up to date with what is going on with the growing operations. It made me very aware of the importance of winter food, wine and warmth. In the gardens this meant getting cold mucky hands digging some of the last parsnips up, picking some spinach, some parsley and a sprig of rosemary, for any of you it will mean looking in your BFC veg box, and then buying a good bottle or organic red Rioja towards an evening in at home.

There is nothing I like more than making a fire, cooking a good meal and sitting down with family and friends for an evening of food wine and chin wagging. Its all about good earthy, heart-warming food and nourishing the soul with the help of those we love, in part to help us get through what for many is the toughest month of the year.

So on that note, can I toast you all with love and warmth from all of us at BFC and just say have a wonderful weekend.

Phil

5th February 2007
The Time is NOW!
This is not a call to arms. They have no place in the future of our planet. This is a call to reason. A number of people from the BFC went to the Soil Associations ‘One Planet Agriculture’ conference in Cardiff last weekend.

It was amazing, inspiring, frightening, overwhelming and exciting all at the same time. We all left feeling angry at the corporations but inspired by the swelling tide of people who are positively and actively changing the world.

Firstly, the almost depressing facts which came out of the conference:

• Peak Oil: It has already happened, we are using more oil than we are finding. This in the short term means higher oil prices, in the slightly shorter term it means no oil. This in turn means economic meltdown. Take a look around – we are so dependent on oil and plastics derived from oil that we are in a fragile position if it were to run out tomorrow.
• Global warming: 99% of all climate change researchers now say that we have less than 10 years to sort it out. Last year they said we had 15 years. You see where this is going?
• Food security: If we don’t change where we get our food from and how we grow it pretty soon, we may not have enough food to feed the people in this country as only 1% of people work the land nowadays and of that 1% only 4% do it organically. It really is as serious as that.

• Transition Towns: This is a growing number of towns which have decided to start making the transition form a false economy based on oil to a real economy based on people and community.
• Plastics: Buy fresh unwrapped organic produce. In our opinion plastic shrink-wrapped organic food isn’t worthy of the name.
• Buy local seasonal food: Local is as important as organic. A plastic wrapped organic courgette flown in from China is just as bad for our future as a non-organic local one.

• Join one of the many causes the Better Food Company has initiated or joined since last week’s conference. If you have some spare time, email marketing@betterfood.co.uk.

THE BFC NEEDS YOU!
29th January 2007
Dear customers,
The year 2007 has got off to an interesting start. We’ve had some of the worst weather and highest temperatures for January. It’s a worry for most of us, and yet the response to the affects of global warming is that the media has really got behind the notion that it’s down to all of us to get on and make the difference.

Many of you along with BFC have been making the connections for years and have been at the heart of our ethos in life. BFC have really stuck their neck out for years, challenging the supermarkets, the corporations and conventional farming methods. I am saying this because I genuinely and wholeheartedly believe that you, our customers are shopping in one of the most important and ethical shops in the country, which makes you the most important shoppers in the country. We would like to get recognition for this but your help is needed.

The Observer newspaper is offering awards for several categories including Local Retailer of the year: Observer Ethical Awards, in association with Ecover…From ambassadors of Fairtrade to solar-powered boats, we want to hear from you about the inventors battling climate change, the children doing the most to protect the biosphere, and the shop keepers promoting community equity. The 2007 Observer Ethical Awards are a chance to promote and celebrate the best in class, the most exceptional examples of social and environmental justice and to encourage the drive for positive change in the future.

In the last attempt to get noticed so many of you were good enough to vote on line for us and yet we were not even short listed. I feel that this award, which is sponsored by The Ecologist, is of more interest than the last one which seemed in the end more like a promotion for the program.

If you think we should be noticed then please vote for us! Go to www.observer.co.uk/ethicalawards and then vote for The Better Food Company. It will take approximately 1-2 minutes to go through. You can vote for just one or all categories, and yes, you are in a prize draw if you vote.

Thanks for reading and here’s hoping
Cheers
Phil
Director, BFC

January 2007
WHAT WE PUT ON OUR BODIES IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT WE PUT IN IT!
The rise of Organic food over the last 10 years has been well documented. In the early 1990’s you would have been deemed clinically insane or at best, eccentric for declaring you ate chemical free food, but not any more! Thankfully more and more of us are turning the corner and thinking about the impact that the food we eat has on both ourselves, the planet and all other species who share this planet with us.

Eating organic is the new black. This means that those who have been doing it for years have started thinking about what new levels they can reduce their carbon emissions to. Enter organic clothing and footwear.

Firstly both are good for our body and mind. Regular cotton is the biggest consumer of pesticides in the world, taking up 25% of the total. Just like any other crop it has residues. On top of that, it will first be bleached with something I wouldn’t recommend dipping your finger into, followed by being dyed by something also nasty so it can match the colours of our eyes. So by the time it gets to you there are a lot of chemicals on it.

Synthetic clothing is just fundamentally flawed from the beginning and is quite symbolic of our society at present. Leather and synthetic shoes are the same. As most leather shoes are imported, they have to be treated with a selection of the following - solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. Synthetic shoes don’t have the same treatment but are equally criminal in that they use so much non-biodegradable materials and energy to make them.

So what is the answer you may ask? More and more people are stepping up a level and realising that what they wear is just as important to the health of both themselves and the planet as what they eat. Organic cotton is now widespread. Organic hemp is getting there and both have become a lot more stylish so you no longer have to compromise your personal flair for your beliefs. Hemp shoes are almost always organic as hemp is, so resilient it doesn’t need pesticides anyway, and now not only do they look really good, they also, shall we say, reduce your carbon footprint - literally. And they are as durable as anything else on the market.

Let’s make 2007 the year we all start wearing organic as well as eating organic. Let’s make organic clothing the new grey!

Mark Boyle

January 7th 2007
2007 – Its here and it’s a very special year…
Its here and it’s a very special year. Never before have I seen so many papers both national and local covering so much environmental stuff. It’s great to see them all guiding us on how to improve our environmental ratings in the home and at work.

The Better food Company had a piece on this topic in The Seven Magazine (30th December 2006).#

TURNING POINT was an idea I had in September, looking at how we can all become wardens for the planet.

Please have a look at the TURNING POINT page that will help you on your way. Can I personally ask you all to join up and help us launch the New Year with more determination than ever to turn the planets fortunes around?

We will be growing twenty times more vegetables than ever before this year. The crops will start coming in from May onwards. This will ensure that most of our UK produce is grown by us. That represents a fantastic food mile choice. Our target for box numbers this year is to get from 200 to over a 1000. We will be asking for your help in achieving this shortly.

Our newest department, the Eco shop was very popular before Christmas and we intend to expand the range further to make sure it has lots to offer the green household all the year round.

So welcome to BFC in 2007, come and tell us what you want and bring your friends down to the shop. Happy New Year!

Phil Haughton (Director)
The Better Food Company

19th December 2006
BFC GO BIG ON ETHICAL GIFTS!
Want less stress this Christmas?
Having always had repulsion for Broadmead, you can understand how I felt when I had to walk through it last Saturday. Hoards of people rushing aimlessly from shop to shop, stress levels high, credit cards at the ready. I felt nauseous. And I suddenly thought – this isn’t good for anybody! Not the people shopping, not independent local retailers, not children in sweatshop labour and not the environment. A lose-lose-lose-lose-win situation (the last one is the corporations and boy do they win). So I decided to create a win-win-win-win-lose situation (the last one is the corporations and boy they’re going to have to get used to it. What I propose to all you wonderful people is to avoid Broadmead this year. Go somewhere, like the Better Food Company, where you can trust what you buy, where the staff actually care about your experience and where stress is non-existent. And you may even feel great into the bargain. Here are some of the Christmas gift ideas that are flying out through our doors at the moment:

• ‘Green Glass’ – a range of glasses made from used Grolsch and Sol bottles to name but two. Amazing looking!
• Organic Clothes from People Tree, Hug and THTC.
• St Werburghs Pottery – local, natural and beautiful.
• Sierra Woodwork – beautiful wooden chopping boards made by local woodcarvers.
• Tweedmill Rugs – recycled woollen rugs made in the UK – ethical rating 99%!
• Revolve Recycled goodies – everything you can think of which once was something else, even mouse mats made from old circuit boards!
• T&G Woodwork – great wooden kitchen utensils.
• Traidcraft fair-trade gifts.
• Books Galore! Everything from Nutrition to recipes to home-building!
• The Crafty Crows Planters – made from de-nailed wood.
• Lots of fun fairly-traded kid’s toys direct from Santa Clause!

1st December 2006
'Five a day for RDA' - Try ‘Fifteen a day’!
Here at the Better Food Company we don’t believe a lot of what the government tells us. So when we feel them gently tugging at our proverbial leg we do some research to seek the truth behind the PR. This time it’s their ‘Five-a-day’ campaign. Recent news it certainly is not. But the reason I bring it up is due to the amount of companies now claiming to sell ‘Natural’ products which will supply you with two or five or whatever of the government’s recommendation.

• Over 95% of all fruit and vegetables in the UK are not organic. This in reality means that most of the soil in which these were grown will be depleted in vitamins and minerals, and hence the crops it produces will also be. Organic food has up to 40% more nutrition than those grown with chemicals.
• Even if the conventional non-organic food which the government thinks is bulging with goodness was actually nutritious, we believe ‘Five a day’ would only be enough to keep you over that thin line between health and sickness. To be brimming with energy every day and to go years without colds or illness, ‘Fifteen a day’ should be your policy. Why live life constantly on the verge of illness, falling below the line a couple of times a year? It’s a short life; you may as well feel great!
• The companies who are selling their products with claims of RDA are getting off on technicalities – most of their stuff is either pasteurised or processed to the point where they are almost nutritionally dead. I kid you not.
• Whilst consuming non-organic food you are also getting your RDA of carcinogenic pesticides. So the good vitamins and antioxidants are being negated by the fact they’ll be battling against the pesticides ironically on the same crop!

16th November 2006
Our land is in whose hands?
We don't own the land, we are simply guardians of it for generations to come. Shortly there will be three fields and a barn sold off near where I live. All the land will go for inflated prices for horse keep, not viable prices for those who might consider making a go of a small holding.

So land is more and more a play place for the rich and farmers who are hanging on to all they can afford to. It is deeply saddening to know that the land being sold is often on the market because it’s the only way the farmers can stay on the land. The sale price of a couple of acres is another year’s income for many. Many of them have been squeezed into non commercial units due to lack of a fair price for there produce. However, maybe this does not matter because I believe it won't be very long before more and more land goes back into real production to supply the demand for food.

This land will then be in the hands of many more people, who hopefully will be the next generation of small holders feeding the city people. It will be the next agricultural revolution. It’s a fascinating time through uncharted territory.
Phil Haughton (Managing Director)

Making the connection
It was truly amazing to see so many people last weekend in London marching for climate change, all hoping to force the government into taking some serious action on the issue. Apathy isn’t so widespread after all. And the fact everyone there passionately campaigned for the government to make a real shift in policy, in order for us to make the necessary changes, made me feel like we have real hope. But midway through the day (whilst watching every third person drink a Diet Cola or Starbucks) it dawned on me - in a capitalist society like ours, we don’t actually need the government to make the shift for us. We really can do it ourselves!

It’s simple. Here’s what we do - we stop buying products from the companies who are refusing to care about this earth we are borrowing from our children. Like food wrapped in three layers of plastic, covered in petro-chemicals and flown across the world, or made using a lot of fossil fuels. Like not buying the products that none of us really need, or if we do buying the most environmentally friendly version of it. Like not giving our money to the corporations whose remit from their shareholders is to increase their profit regardless of the cost to the planet.

We the public could reduce the rate of climate change tomorrow just by taking a lot more responsibility for the things we purchase every day. If we don’t demand it, they won’t make it. If they don’t make it, they don’t waste lots of energy.

Buying local organic unpackaged produce is an amazing start. Last Saturday was an amazing start. Let’s just not depend on the government though.

Mark Boyle, General Manager, Sevier Street, St. Werburghs, Bristol

17th SEPTEMBER 2006
NEW 3G MAST PLANNED – NOT THIS AGAIN!
Some of you may be aware of two successful attempts by local residents in the last couple of years to block a new mobile phone mast being erected in the heart of St. Werburghs (just across from the new Muslim school). Well the company involved has now made a third attempt.

Some of you may be wondering what the problem is? We all use mobile phones. Yes, unfortunately most of us do. But the reason most of these new masts are going up is because of 3G technology, as it requires more masts due to the extra data being sent. This means they get erected in residential areas, despite numerous reports on the implications of mobile phone masts near people. For non-3G technology, phone masts miles away from people are enough for good reception.

So we’re asking you to do two things if you are outraged by this lack of respect for people’s health:

1. To join our campaign to stop the mast by signing our petition and / or dealing with the council and the company involved.
2. To reject 3G technology. Yes we have mobile phones. And yes sometimes they seem necessary. But is 3G a step too far. Life is all about balance and I believe that if 3G means building mobile phone masts 10m from a Muslim school, then it’s a step to far.

SPECIAL EDITION SEPTEMBER 2006
EXCITING TIMES IN ST.WERBURGHS
There couldn’t be a more exciting time to visit the Better Food Company’s St.Werburghs shop. At the time of writing we are just completing phase one of a major refurbishment, which will include a café and more eco household products.

Phase one has involved us moving out of our shop and setting up temporary home in the empty space next door for a week, whilst we carried out these renovations. This has included raising the ceiling height, redesigning the lighting, improving the tills (speed, service and flow) and the overall layout of the shop.

Whilst we have used a number of contractors for specialist work, the majority of the hard work has been undertaken by our amazing, dedicated (and crazy!) staff, whom have given up nights, weekends, bank holidays and in some cases their sanity, to make this development happen.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all for being so brilliant, and to thank you the customer for sticking with us during this often chaotic period. We hope you love the transformation as much as we do.

We have changed the layout of the shop considerably, including a new improved fresh produce section, a greatly expanded alcohol section (whoopee!), new shelving layout, and new tills.

At the end September our café should be open, effectively doubling the size of the store, allowing access to and from the Scrapstore car park. Despite the expansion and the more polished image, our ethos remains the same, we aim to be as local, organic and ethical as possible.

To all you regular customers thank you so much for supporting us, and to those who have never been through the doors or haven’t visited the store for a while, why not pop in and see for yourself why better food is an exciting place to be, we hope you will agree that it really is a change for the better.

Mel Taylor (Store Manager St.Werburghs)

WHAT ELSE DO WE DO?
You may know the Better Food Company from the shop in St.Werburghs or the Café and Restaurant in Wrington. Perhaps you know our Wholesale Department or have been to one of the places that we supply fruit and vegetables to or do you know us from our Box Scheme? – Maybe you don’t know us at all!

Which ever aspect of the company you know or have heard of, there is much more out there than meets the eye…

In Wrington, Somerset we grow our own produce organically at the wonderfully restored Victorian walled gardens. Here you are able to visit us and spend some time walking around the pathways watching the fresh produce being harvested. Within the Walled Garden you will find the beautiful café and restaurant with views into the gardens and beyond to the valley – on a clear day you can see for miles. The restaurant is also open in the evenings and makes a gorgeous place for a romantic meal for two or is equally suited to a night out with friends. A bistro style menu is carefully chosen using as much produce direct from the gardens as possible. The Walled Garden also makes a popular event for private parties and wedding receptions and has hosted a number of events this summer. If you are interested in finding out more then give them a call or have a look at the website for more information. Our busy Wholesale department is a vital part of the business and is the longest running part of The Better Food Company. We deliver fruit, vegetables and milk to businesses around Bristol and Bath. These vary from Schools to Restaurants and Café’s. If you are interested in wholesale supplies please get in touch with us and we will do our best to accommodate your needs. Please give us a ring on the Bristol number and ask to speak to Markus our Wholesale Manager.

The Fruit and Vegetable Box Scheme is distributed by the Wholesale Department and has been up and running for the last 6 months. We serve Bristol postcodes BS1-BS9 and deliver early on Thursday mornings like an old milk delivery. We leave the boxes outside your front door, so you don’t have to be in when we call! Check out our website for more information or e-mail boxisback@betterfood.co.uk to find out more.

‘ORGANIC’ – What does it mean for you?
I was reading in the business pages the other week about the influx of more and more multinational companies into the organic industry. I’m sure you have all heard enough about it by now. Then I read how in the short term this was going to cost them in terms of investment and branding, but how it would give them a foothold in a niche market in the medium term. Just then I thought to myself, this isn’t what organic is about - Which forced me to think ‘Well, what exactly does the word ‘organic’ mean to me?’

For me organic is not just about refusing to use chemicals on the food we eat. It’s much more than that. It’s about changing a social infrastructure that will return the planet our world into something beautiful again. This infrastructure is as complex as the human body. This structure needs changing on so many levels - not just food - if we are going to have any hope of leaving a positive legacy for our children. The word organic needs to encompass so much more than just status quo.

So what does ‘organic’ mean to me? It is about knowing that the food I am eating came from a farmer who cares as much about the environment as I do, and gets a fair price for doing so. It’s about applying the laws of the physical world to the spiritual world, namely cause-and-effect. It’s about living like the other species on earth which live freely, such as birds - they don’t accumulate wealth but live day-by-day, singing merrily while we fumble at our alarm clocks.

It’s about eating food that’s unprocessed and buying it in packages we always bring back to the seller to refill. It’s about equal distribution of land so that everyone has the opportunity to grow their own food, instead of depending on a few insanely powerful multinationals.

It’s about ecology over economy, long-termism over short-termism, altruism over materialism. Playing your own music with friends, instead of listening to a CD. Telling someone how special you think they are.

Fighting injustice regardless of where it raises its head. Free instead of free-range. Trips to the theatre over trips to Hollywood blockbusters. Travelling to the corners of the world inside of your mind over cheap flights to the Algarve. Saying sorry. Giving love unconditionally. It’s about not reading the business pages.

The word organic, by definition, means natural, and all words really are is an expression of an emotion, a sensation, in a very limited language. What are all of the above if not natural, and what kind of a species are we if they’re not.

What does this word ‘organic’ mean to you? Is it a method of growing crops or something more? Please, please, please let me know what the word means to you – whether it’s a farming method or a lifestyle (email accounts@betterfood.co.uk). I will keep all the responses and make them freely available to anyone who would like to see them, so we can all maybe get a better insight into how we think society should function. How else can we go forward? Look forward to hearing from all you wonderful people.

Stay Free,
Mark Boyle (General Manager)

TEAMWORK
As Mel previously mentioned, it is an amazing time to be part of the Better Food experience. As a member of the Better Food team, the refurbishment of our St.Werburghs shop has meant more than just moving shelves and labelling new products. Our team has grown together as the work has progressed. Long nights in the shop punctuated by shared dinners and mad midnight dancing have shown that heart is just as important as hard graft when it comes to growing dreams. As the old adage has it, many hands make quick work. But working together is not just about accomplishing a set task, or finishing a physical job.

Working together is about sharing, about revelling in the convivial side of our nature.

Ultimately, the convergence, the meeting of spirits that work towards a common goal can facilitate is a powerful end in itself. The bonds that emerge from meaningful work, performed in community are surely strong and lay the foundation for future success. Like neighbours helping to raise barns in rural America – each barn built strengthens the ties of the community. As Phil mentioned, the time is now upon us when we must strive to remember what we can achieve when we put our hearts, heads and minds to work for the benefit of our communities. But now, as ecological awareness grows, we begin to perceive a more broad definition of the word community. In his piece, Mark touches on the idea that ‘organic’ is about more than just a physical system of producing food.

We now see that working for our own good means working for the good of the more-than-human-world as well – that we share a common path with the species that we drive to the brink through our bizarre practices. The time has come for us to recognise the real power that we can wield when we work together for a common purpose. The barn that we must raise is vast and will require much work, much midnight dancing and much laughter in the face of frustration. I have come to see, more clearly than ever, that my Better Food dream is about bringing head, heart and hand together. My Better Food dream is about remembering the sensual side of my nature, about working hard for change and above all about staying positive.

Chris Adams (Supervisor St. Werburghs Store)

TURNING POINT
It’s hard not to be concerned by the flow of news; items about the global warming, melting ice caps, the slowing of the Gulf Stream, droughts in the Amazon, desertification of Spain, the list is endless.

This is our planet under threat. Is it too late to stop a global catastrophe, and do we have what it takes even if it’s not?

Judging by the continued increase in global CO2 emissions it seems we are wavering about whether global warming really is an issue. Many of our world leaders and corporation giants are driving policy and action, which seems to deny that a global problem even exists, but there are as many who are doing great things to bring about big change, so maybe we are at a real turning point. At home and work we interact with family and colleagues with little sense that our time as humans maybe running out, and yet I would be amazed if there is a single person who reads this who is not worried and is trying their best to live in a more sustainable way.

TURNING POINT is a new idea to help us accelerate the pace of change for the better in the belief that it is never too late. The idea is for all of us to become world wardens for sustainability. It is solution driven, practical, and it must have an element of celebration of both life and our achievements. It has to be enriching and challenging. It is an idea with a challenge for you to take it up, and one which just may become a world phenomenon. This is surely what is needed to turn things around in a very small space of time.

This is how it works.
You sign up through a TURNING POINT website (in the process of being created) in a pledge to measure how sustainable you are through a scoring system. You also pledge to get 5 people a month to sign up to the same website, making sure at least one of them is outside your familiar circle of friends. The ultimate aim for all of us is to find the point at which our lives are in balance with the world. If there is a point that is called sustainability for the world, most of us live below this point. Can we move far enough to live above the point? This is the turning point at which the world gets a chance to recover. Your score does not matter, what matters is the pledge to improve it, as well as getting others to join. Scoring opportunities come from Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Below are broad areas of focus which will form the basis of developing a scoring system.

1. Increase the percentage of organic food and shopping with reduced packaging and share your food and drink more often with friends and family.
2. Reduce dependency on cement and other heavy CO2 users in buildings etc.
3. Increase dependency on lower CO2 transport
4. Depend more on local supplies of food as well as most household items.
5. Work towards buying more sustainable clothing and cotton and reduce the “cheap” options which cause so much damage to water supply, lands and people.
6. Develop an interest in work places within your local community to reduce commuting and increase community strength.
7. Take action to help reduce conflict either at home or abroad to aid our ability to focus on the global needs that every human has in common.
8. To support others in their endeavours to change, and encourage others to make changes, as well as actively seeking new TURNING POINT members.
9. Think of oil as a commodity of the past. What alternatives can we create in manufacturing etc
10. Make fair more important than cheap. Cheap is often not fair.

Phil Haughton (Managing Director)

4th August 2006
THE EARTH’S BLANKET
When I was young, my father worked as an advisor to a number of small museums dotted throughout British Columbia (BC). He would often bust me out of school for days at a time so that I could ride shotgun with him as he made his thousand kilometre rounds in an old van. During our travels we crossed the mighty Thompson River, which runs right through the heart of BC, many times.

The Nlaka’pmx people have lived along the banks of the Thompson, fishing salmon and harvesting abundant berry resources for a very long time. I remember my father telling me about a Nlaka’pmx concept that had a great impact on me. In short, the Nlaka’pmx traditionally saw the grasses, flowers and trees that once clothed their territory as a vital protective layer; as the Earth’s Blanket. To damage this crucial mantle would be to flirt with disaster. Wanton destruction of the Earth’s Blanket would result in torrential rains, fog and bad weather; the Earth would weep with sorrow. This view would have guided Nlaka’pmx actions and indeed indicates the advanced state of their ecological wisdom. So-called modern ecological science now tells us that local habitat destruction can have a direct and immediate impact on local weather patterns. As the spectre of global climate change looms ever larger during this hot summer we would do well to learn from the Nlaka’pmx about relating to the environment.

The Earth’s Blanket metaphor speaks powerfully of the need for human activities to be pursued not blindly but with a view to how our actions impact the more-than-human world. We need not travel as far as the Thompson River however to find inspirational ecological stories. Through our farming we have a massive impact on the greater ecology and this is one of the reasons that we at BFC strive so hard to increase access to good organic food. But now, we are ready to grow the shop a little, move forwards with our vision and bring an expanded range of eco-living products to you our fantastic friends and customers. Lovingly produced, the food that we grow and source, represents a major step towards creating a new story, one that links love of food, love of life and love of planet. As we go through the inevitable stresses of expansion, we will need all the moral support we can get. Please share with us your stories of hope and inspiration.

Chris Adams (BFC Bristol Shop Supervisor)

SOW THE SEEDS OF COMMUNITY
Lazing beside a crystal clear stream in a small veganic community in the Mungamuka forest of northernmost New Zealand, the humblest mind begins to expand. And after putting the final touches to a new composting toilet and taking a dip in the gift that flowed beside me, my mind wandered to the economy they call Ireland and my imminent return to the homeland. And I started to contrast my life in the forest to that I had planned to go back to. From Serenity, selfsustainability and simplicity, to chaos, consumerism and craziness. My heart despaired, but the egotistical urge to change things said go back.

The change came as a bigger shock than I expected. Ireland’s rate of spiritual, environmental and communal decay was linked exponentially to the rate of economic growth. Over there the size of your car has replaced the size of your character. Before EU structural funds we used to help each other. Now we’re apparently too grand to need it.

So when the opportunity arose to come back to the BFC and St Werburghs I jumped at the chance. The Mangamuka forest it may not be, but the seeds of community you have in St Werburghs and in almost every part of Bristol are without doubt in abundance. But like all seeds they need sunshine and watering. Do you want to see them grow into something beautiful? Then go turn off your TV. Go open your front door. Bake more than you need and then share it with your neighbours. Plant flowers together. Buy from local merchants. Smile at passers-by. Fix it even if you didn’t break it. Pick up litter. Dance in the street. Put up a swing. Barter. Hire local kids. Organise events. Turn up the music. Turn down the music. And ask for the help we’ve become afraid to ask for.

Make the change today. You’re so lucky to have such wonderful communities in Bristol. Just don’t take it for granted.

Mark (BFC General Manager)