Milk and Meat Merry Madness

Talking to a Dutch colleague of mine this week, he was getting finished helping with the CAP money decisions in The Hague and other stuff like that because he has a much more important job to do this weekend. He was off to help in his Father's butchers shop for the Christmas rush.

Working in a butchers shop in the days before Christmas is brilliant. It is second only to delivering milk on Christmas Eve. I did both for years and I loved every minute of it.

That's me on the left (from here by the way)

Delivering milk on Christmas Eve is a bit mad. You load up with a double lot of milk and a buckets of cream all noted down on order forms. I remember the land rover would move slowly, blinding every passing car because there was too much weight on the back end. It took ages, because nearly every conversation between my mate the milkman and us lads delivering milk before every customer went something like this:

"Down there, down the side of that terrace, put it under the bucket as normal. Now let's see, jesus where has that bloody form gone? She wrote it all down. It's like a bloody essay. Where's the damn form gone? IT WAS HERE A MINUTE AGO! Are you sat on it you big lump? Oh hang on, hang on, panic over, here it is. Right. Normal milk. That's 2 for today. 2 for tomorrow 'cos its a double day, that's 4. And 4 extra? 8 PINTS? There's only bloody two of 'em, and their Michael lives in Canada now with his new wife and they're off to her family this year, she told me last week. Anyway, bollocks, they're having it. I'm not taking this lot home. Milk, sorted. Sooooo, cream. 2 small doubles. Sorted. 1 big whippin' - grand, jesus we're short of them. 1 pint double. A PINT OF DOUBLE CREAM? She does this every bloody year, she'll be bollocking me next week for leaving too much."

 

And so it went on.

After delivering milk, I used to go into the local butchers then to help with the Christmas orders. People go mad at Christmas. They shop all year at a supermarket, then go all dewy-eyed at Christmas time and use the local butcher for everything. This isn't a problem of course, it is just a shame they don't do that all year round. 

My job was two fold. First, keep the queue happy. They would snake out of the door, past the garage joining the shop and sometimes be stretching round the corner to the Working Mens Club. You keep a Christmas butchers shop queue happy by bribing them with Christmas cake and mince pies. The butcher was always so cheerful and happy that people were in the shop and interested in them that he had long conversations with everyone. This didn't alter on Christmas Eve either, so it didn't matter whether people were spending 50 quid or a fiver, they all got the same attention. This meant there was a long queue, but of course, that is part of the charm.

 

Out of the door, in front of the garage, round the corner near the Working Mens Club (from here)

Second, you had to work through the logistical nightmare that was THE CHRISTMAS TURKEY ORDERS. Essentially, I realised that you never ever please everyone. There are only so many turkeys to go around, and you have to try and get it right. "Put all them big 'uns in one place. Good god, look at the size of this one, who is going to eat all that? Where's the little 'uns? Remember Barbara always wants a small one. If she moans she'll have to have a big chicken."

 

And the story that came out every year was the butcher, since retired, who had only one turkey left on Christmas Eve late on. It was completely and utterly the wrong size. The lady who came to collect it was particularly forthright, and when he went to collect it from the fridge she was horrified. "That really won't do, it really won't, you must have another one that's bigger" she said. The butcher went back to look in the empty fridge, shouted at a fictional person to 'BRING THAT BIGGER TURKEY FROM OVER THERE,' said a few words to the patron saint of happy customers and big turkeys and turned round back into the shop with exactly the same turkey he had presented before, this time with a beaming smile. 

"Lovely, that's better!" she said.  

 

And that is why delivering milk and working in a butchers at Christmas is brilliant. Even better, it hasn't changed either.

 

Animal health and human wealth

There is a lot of talking in Brussels. The city of compromise is also the capital of conferences, and when you work here it is important to pick and choose the ones to go to. I am a sucker for sandwiches, free pens and badges with my name on but there is also the day job to be getting on with.

I try to attend conferences concerned with animal health, and this week has been no exception with one yesterday focussed on antimicrobial resistance. A pretty dry but very important topic, it looked at what can be done to cut down on resistance in human and animal medicine. If you're interested, take a look here. I also re-discovered some notes from a conference last year on the 'Economics of Animal Health' which you can see here.

From my notes from the conference last year, I scribbled that:

- In the EU, livestock represents 40% of the farm sector that employs 12m people.

- In Asia and sub-Sarahan Africa, 900m people rely on livestock for their livelihood. 

- Globally, the livestock sector and related industries employs 1.3bn people.

- The livestock sector is a $1.4 trillion global asset. 

You can easily see that the health of livestock and livestock in general has an impact on a hell of a lot of people in the world directly, and everyone else indirectly as we interact with the food system and the environment around us. What often strikes me at these type of gigs though, is the different and sometimes conflicting mindsets that policymakers and NGOs have on this topic.

In the developing world, livestock pulls people out of poverty. Too often in the developed world, some people see livestock as a problem to be dealt with. Why is the role of livestock in the developing world illustrated like this on the left below, but too often like this on the right in the developed world?

Cows in Africa as a development tool (see here) 

A sheep with BTV (see here)

Yes, I am speaking very generally here. 

However, imagine how positive it could be if it wasn't like that. Imagine if we focussed on livestock as a driver for development in Europe as well. Think of the jobs that could be created through a thriving and profitable livestock sector; where farmers have the money to be able to reinvest and grow their businesses, spend money in the local economy, develop new products and export them. Just think how positive that could be.

In the developing world, a farmer wanting to double his cow numbers would be applauded for striving to build a better business and a better life for his family and quite right too. I am not sure a farmer in Europe wanting to do exactly the same is viewed in quite the same light.  

Eau dear

I met up with someone yesterday who works for a chemical company. We see each other periodically to put the world to rights and swap stories. This train of thought is entirely down to him but is worthy of attention. I haven't really thought about this before.

Here are a few things that are entirely normal about how we think about food:

- Consumers want to know where their food is coming from. 

- Consumers want to know where an animal was born, reared and slaughtered.

- Consumers want to know that the chemicals that are used in farming are safe.

- Consumers want to know when they buy beef lasagne it is beef lasagne.

- Consumers want to know that the animal they are eating was well looked after.

- Consumers want to know what farmers are doing with the taxpayers money they get.

- Consumers want to know about all of the above but they want it better and cheaper.  

- Consumers want to know they can have all this and a beautiful countryside. 

Here are a few things that in comparison are not normal about how I think about water:

- I live in Belgium, I have no idea where my water comes from. I didn't in England either.

- I don't know where my water started, what was done to it, or what it went through.

- I have no idea what chemicals are put into my water, and I don't think to ask.

- I presume that the water I drink is actually water, but it could be anything.

- I have no idea if the people giving me water look after it properly.

- I presume water companies sometimes get taxpayers money but I have never asked.

- I don't know if I want my water better and cheaper, I pay on direct debit and don't think.

- I don't link the countryside and water together when I am filling up a glass.

So I spend a lot of time getting hot and bothered about food and farming and environment and energy and politics and do you know I never ever think about water. I turn a tap on and presume that what comes out of it is what I think it is, that it is safe for me to drink, that getting it to me hasn't harmed the environment and that I can afford to buy it.

A strange thought isn't it? Is this because the water is always abundantly there and I don't have to go to a shop to get it? Do we need a shortage to make me appreciate it more? Why do I think about the coffee I drink, the vegetables I cook and the meat I eat but I don't think about the water to make the coffee, the water to cook the vegetables and the water the animal drank?

Reasons to be cheerful

Sometimes there are a few things that come our way all at once that make us unhappy. It is useful to remember though that somewhere hopefully there will be some nuggets of something positive. As this blog ACTUALLY deals with food and farming rather than general health and wellbeing here are some agricultural reasons to be cheerful:

1. General trend for pesticide use is down

See here 

2. Farmers are using less man made fertiliser 

 See here

3. Milk prices for hard pressed dairy farmers are looking rosier

See here 

4. Over time there has been increasing amounts of land in agri-environment schemes

See here

5. Also, Higher Level Stewardship shows a positive trend

See here

6. The trend for nasty stuff going in water is down down down

See here

7. Stupid people are tipping less crap in places they shouldn't be 

See here

Enjoy your day and remember that it is often helpful to think of the good things.

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. 

Shear Pleasure

Sometimes you just need some time away. I have just come back to Brussels from a week in Scotland. I spent the biggest chunk of the week shearing sheep with a good friend of mine who is a shearing contractor in Aberdeenshire.  

Shearing is a great leveller, and also binds people together. I first learnt when I was 16 after I took myself off to a course on a farm in Lancaster, and I am still friends with people from that time. I then tried and tried after that to get on to as many farms as possible. I hate driving machinery and I am also terrible at it, so my route to gain farm experience was through shearing. It worked.

You're either serious about shearing, or you leave the job to someone else. I love it. It is sweaty, hard work and most farmers are more than happy to call it a spectator sport, roll wool and make cups of tea instead. Shearing for me is a way to think about nothing in particular for a while - I am too busy concentrating on holding the sheep, making a good job and gently perspiring in the agricultural equivalent of running a marathon in a sauna. 

I was hotter than the actual sun for most of the week

I have done a fair bit of thinking since. Re-wind. I read this before I went away. I read this often. And this. I went to a meeting in Brussels on sustainable agriculture where the platform was dominated by an anti-pesticide campaigner with no room for moderate debate. I get into Twitter debates about animal welfare. I went to the Natural History Museum in London recently and saw their wildly outdated depiction of modern agriculture. Then yesterday I read this.

You know what? I don't recognise this as the farming industry I have just been practically involved in for the past week. I didn't see millionaire subsidy junkies; I saw farmers building their businesses on what of late has been little return. I didn't see huge faceless agribusiness operating; I saw family farms working hard to make sure their farm was in a better state for the future. I didn't see a barren decimated landscape; I saw rolling productive countryside and farmers bursting with pride in the sunshine. I was bursting with pride myself.

And here I am back in Brussels. I can still feel a twinge in the bottom of my back, and I know that this week away has done me some good. I am reminded why I do what I do. Next year when I go shearing, I think I'll invite George, Mark and Philip. We could get a holiday cottage together. I could take them to meet some farmers I know. I could teach them to shear sheep if they fancied it. 

Wouldn't we have a lovely time in the countryside together?