Larder-da

With thanks to Guy Smith for the title of this blog post, this was pilfered from him.

Guy wrote an illuminating piece in FW last week following the new NFU campaign entitled 'Back British Farming' with the news that if all of the home produced food was consumed concurrently, we would have run out by the 14th August. As Guy noted in his piece, the national larder is bare and this is not good news.

Fast forward to a silly Bank Holiday conversation on Twitter earlier today. Bypassing the big discussion on the future of agricultural production for another day, a few of us quickly segued into a discussion on the place where we keep food at home.

Who has a larder these days? Is it a larder, or is it a pantry? Is this a north/south thing? I used to deliver milk to an old lady who had to have milk delivered every day fresh because she didn't have a fridge, she kept everything in the 'pantry.' Another old lady didn't have this, but had a stone slab in the cellar which kept everything very cold. We used to have one in our house in Leeds as well. Turns out, this is called a 'thrawl.'

Do  these even exist in modern homes? Is there some link between how we source, keep and cook food at home - that essentially we don't need to think too much about this as we used to - with what has happened to our self sufficiency? When buying food we can get just about get whatever we need whenever we need it, and over time successive governments have taken a similar approach.

Obviously, things have to change. In the meantime, here are some ridiculous pictures of pantries:

"I bake cakes and I have a dog called Hector."

"I haven't eaten anything that isn't out of a tin since 1994."

"The ladder yah, is vintage, we use it in the pantry and in the library. So versatile."

"I am nuts."

Review: 'A Greedy Man in a Hungry World' by Jay Rayner

I used to be a committed Guardian reader. My final year course tutor at agricultural college (he of bow ties, red socks and a beard like George V) informed us all that if we had any chance of getting a degree then we must must must read a good quality daily newspaper. This, he said, holding up a Guardian, is the only newspaper you need. He had a point; they do a good run in food, international development and environmental coverage. 

I read only the Guardian for ages. Then after a while I started muttering to myself while I was reading it. I started whispering obscenities under my breath at the letters page, and making derisive snorts when reading some back-slapping feature about a couple from Islington who had given up their jobs and moved to raise chickens, knit bespoke placemats and make their own yoghurt on a smallholding in Wales. 

Surprisingly, Jay Rayner, restaurant critic for the Guardian's sister-paper the Observer, is his new book 'A Greedy Man in a Hungry World' is likely to raise hairs on the very people I have just mentioned. This book; part critique of the modern food industry, part memoir, shines a light on our attitudes towards food and will probably make uncomfortable reading for some. He doesn't hold back, giving his views on supermarkets, GM, biofuels and meat eating with an insightful and engaging mix of investigative journalism, family history and his own experience as a self confessed 'greedy bastard.'

He thinks we all need to get real about food, and I agree with him. He bemoans the ridiculous polarised discussions that go on in relation to food; where 'any form of mass production or mass retailing is an evil' and that while our local farmers market and our allotments make us feel good, to produce 50% more by 2030 as the UN suggests the 'holy trinity of local, seasonal and organic just won't cut it.'

The book starts from this juncture: that the future of how we feed ourselves is not black and white, that there is a lot wrong with the food industry, but a solution based on a 'fantasy, mythologised version of agriculture' helps no one. This book sets out to provide some realism in an important discussion that is often lacking any, whatever your view of what the future holds. Or in Jay Rayner's view - he proposes a move towards a 'New Gastronomics.'

He makes it clear that this is a tricky thing to do, bearing in mind that most folk actually know very little about the realities of farming, retailing and the wider food industry. This is summed up in the title of the first couple of chapters - 'Supermarkets are not evil' followed by 'Supermarkets are evil.' Sounds like the beginnings of a contradictory book? Yes, in part, but Rayner admits that. We're all contradictory when it comes to our food choices. We can all plump up our chests and buy our artisan food at the farmers market, then drop into Tesco on the way home and think nothing of topping up with a few special offers. 'Supermarkets make things cheaper' says Rayner. 'They just do.'

Rayner notes that supermarkets have revolutionised the way we buy food, and there are many people of a certain age (I would count my late grandmother in this) who would most certainly not like to go back to how it used to be. Highlighting the economic reality of what supermarkets have done for food prices, he notes that that in the early post war years you had to 'work until Wednesday morning to pay for the family's weekly shop, now you'll have earned enough by some time just after noon on Monday.'

Yes, yes, yes, I can hear many farmers shouting, this is the whole bloody problem. Just look what supermarkets have done, look at their profits and look at what some of their practices have done to the farming industry. I think Jay Rayner would agree with them. But he would also provide a fairly cutting retort like he does in the book: 'This is business. This is what supermarkets do. Complaining about a supermarket chasing the cheapest price is like wandering into a brothel and complaining about all the shagging going on in there.' Ouch.

This sounds like he isn't on the side of the farmer, when he quite clearly is. He is just a realist. He covers, literally, a lot of ground in this book. At times it is contradictory, and at times it is complicated, but then so is the food industry. He summarises by noting that we need to 'embrace a new economic model around our food, one which is flexible and non-doctrinal.' For the moment he says, it does make the most sense, on balance to buy the food grown in our own country where possible. 'It's not about nationalism,' he says 'it's not about patriotism, it's about cash: buying what farmers produce helps them to invest. The more they can invest, the more sustainable a model they can reach for.' Tick!

I gave a resounding nod to Rayner's final sign off - 'It's time we had a very close look at all the assumptions we have been fed about the world of food. We need to stop reacting emotionally and start thinking realistically. We need to read the numbers, understand the maths and focus on the science. Be in no doubt: all of this is far too important for us to risk getting it wrong.' 

I devoured this book, and I suggest that you will, too.