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News

All talk, no teeth: supermarkets break promises to planet

Are supermarkets' environmental targets worth the paper they're written on? David Burrows investigates.

Supermarkets Environment and ethics
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Features

What does a fair return for farmers look like?

How can the UK be food secure, build resilience, boost biodiversity, and tackle climate extremes or pollution, when there’s so little money in farming, asks Nick Easen.

Environment and ethics Farming
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News

Sold down the river? Polluters paid £14m in public funds

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has traced huge payouts to intensive poultry farmers. David Burrows takes a closer look.

Environment and ethics Farming
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News

National action plan for pesticides ‘a poke in the eye’

David Burrows digs into the UK’s new proposals, which lag far behind the EU

Environment and ethics Pesticides
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News

The ‘Better Chicken Commitment’ lie

The Better Chicken Commitment has come under scrutiny, with leading signatories yet to make any progress on their promises, finds David Burrows

Animal welfare Eating and drinking Farming
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Features

Cull me quick: the problematic race to rear & reduce carbon

The faster animals are reared and slaughtered, the lighter their carbon footprints tend to be. But this is no silver bullet to sustainable meat, says David Burrows

Animal welfare Environment and ethics Farming Supermarkets
Farm Stories

Farm Stories: 13 years as a grower, not one of them easy

Ethical business Farming Organics
News

All talk, no teeth: supermarkets break promises to planet

Supermarkets Environment and ethics
Opinion

News from the farm – avoiding reliable disappointment

Ethical business Farming Guy Singh-Watson News from the farm
STORY OF THE WEEK

My eyes have been opened to the number of farmers, of all scales, who are not able to pay themselves a living wage, and who continue to do it for the love, honour and duty of being a farmer. Sarah Alun-Jones, organic farmer

Features

What does a fair return for farmers look like?

Environment and ethics Farming
News

Organic salmon struggles against a turning tide

Animal welfare Farming Fish
Opinion

News from the farm: early strawberries in short supply

Ethical business Farming News from the farm
News

Sold down the river? Polluters paid £14m in public funds

Environment and ethics Farming
Opinion

News from the farm: A problem at the top

Business Employee ownership Ethical business
Features

WL Sustainable Food Series: The fishy facts about salmon

Sustainable Food Series Farming Fish
Features

WL Sustainable Food Series: what’s the beef with Beef?

Sustainable Food Series
News

If food isn’t critical infrastructure, then what is?

Cost-of-living Supermarkets Politics
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FOOD, FARMING, FAIRNESS. Wicked Leeks is a digital news channel joining the dots between food, farming & people, published by @riverford ⬇️SUBSCRIBE

The future of organic salmon is hanging in the bal The future of organic salmon is hanging in the balance as the Soil Association (SA) considers closing its certification of farms for the fish. 

“This is make or break time,” Soil Association standards director Sarah Compson told Wicked Leeks as she announced the conclusion of an 18-month review looking at welfare and environmental problems facing salmon farms across the entire Scottish salmon farming industry. 

The review found that despite having the strictest standards in the sector – which have driven positive change on non-organic sites too – they are not going far enough to tackle the welfare and environmental risks on organic sites. In fact, the risks are “unacceptable”.

“More needs to be done to respond to the risks of critical issues including fish suffering amid sea lice outbreaks, mass mortality events, and the release of harmful chemicals into the environment,” the certification body explained in its review findings. 

“These problems are more pronounced in conventional systems, but they are still unacceptable on Soil Associated certified farms.”

A key role that the Soil Association plays as a standard setter is to lead by example and test what the best can be for the environment and farmed animal welfare – and salmon is testing the organisation to its limits.

“...it is possible to give organic farmed salmon a good life while getting the sector onto a more sustainable footing,” Compson explained, but “more needs to be urgently done” to achieve that.

Read David Burrows’ full feature on Wicked Leeks, via the 🔗 in our bio.
Nick Easen delves into what a fair return for farm Nick Easen delves into what a fair return for farmer could look like in his latest feature for Wicked Leeks. 

Today, there are measly returns to be made in putting food on our tables, with a 38% drop in income for fruit and veg producers. 

It’s no wonder that 12,000 farms across the UK have gone to the wall over the last decade. Farmers must make a fair return if they’re to deliver more local healthy food.

It is difficult to see how the UK can become more food secure, build resilience, boost biodiversity and tackle climate extremes or pollution, when there’s so little money in farming, which is now so squeezed for cash that the government has set up a new farm profitability unit. It’s also called for a review, to be headed up by the former president of the National Farmers’ Union, Minette Batters.

The UK’s 209,000 farmers, who sell to the 17 major food retailers, only get between 7% and 10% of gross value added for food, depending on your data source. The UK food supply chain is worth £147.6 billion a year, yet farm income is just £4.5 billion, that’s an alarming 3% of the total, with farmers often receiving less than 1% of supermarket profits – this is a sorry state of affairs. 

“We need a new model, but we’re really entrenched in the old one. Why isn’t there any more money for producers? Is it an unwillingness to pay more? The latter is tempered by false expectations – we’ve lost touch of the real value of producing food. Some campaigners say fruit and veg should be cheap, but the fact is, it is not cheap to grow,” explains Lisa Jack, Professor of Accounting at the University of Portsmouth, who wrote the report, “Unpicking food prices” from SUSTAIN. 

So where is the money in our food system? It’s certainly not sitting with farmers. Is there profit in the system at all? False expectations have again come to the fore with supermarkets in another price war over vegetables at Easter, selling produce at huge discounts as loss-leaders. This again degrades their perceived value, reinforcing the idea that fruit and veg should be super-cheap. 

The full article is a must read. Find it on Wicked Leeks via the 🔗 in our bio. We’ll link it in our stories too.
At least £14m of public funds was paid out over a At least £14m of public funds was paid out over a three-year period to intensive poultry farm operators in the counties surrounding the rivers: Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Monmouthshire, Worcestershire and Powys.

Charles Watson, chairman of @riveractionuk, said the findings are “nothing short of outrageous” and “made a total mockery of any pretence of practising effective environmental regulation in this country”.

Defra offered little in the way of explanation, while the NFU asked for more money from government so the producers could help improve the dire state of the country’s rivers.

Ruth Westcott, campaigner at Sustain, said chucking more money at the problem may not be the right solution. 

It’s the global protein processors like Cargill and JBS that are profiting from this pollution – “the money in the system goes right through the system and into their profits. She added: “Why should the government pay for corporates to be responsible?

The TBIJ research follows significant court rulings that could have lasting impacts on the way that manure from chicken farms – which has been linked to dying rivers in certain catchments – is managed. Another case has just been heard in the high court in Cardiff, while 3,000 people have joined a group claim against the Cargill UK poultry group and Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. 

The government will be watching all this closely as it looks to review the permitting process that has historically allowed these huge, intensive farms to rise up around our rivers.

Read the article by David Burrows, in full via the 🔗 in our bio.
How much do you know about your burger or steak? How much do you know about your burger or steak?  There’s so much to get to grips with when it comes to beef. 

As part of our Sustainable Food Series, @steph_wetherell has dug deep into the labels, names and claims, to help you better understand what’s what. 

Some of the things she breaks down are:

🐄 Indoor or outdoor: While we think of feedlot style intensive rearing of beef cows as something that happens in the US, unfortunately intensive beef operations are on the rise in the UK. This can include cows being housed indoors for their entire life, or being fattened up in feedlot style megafarms. 

🐄 Organic and biodynamic: Cows on organic farms must be out on pasture whenever the conditions allow them to be – the Soil Association estimate this to be around 200 days a year. When they are housed indoors, they must have plenty of bedding and they must be fed a minimum of 60% forage.

🐄 Grass fed and pasture fed: To use the term ‘grass-fed’ the animal only has to receive 51% of its diet from pasture.  If you want to be sure that 100% of the diet of the cow comes from pasture, you need to look for the Pasture for Life logo. 

🐄 Regenerative: Beef is one of the areas in which the use of the term regenerative is on the rise. For many farmers it marks a shift towards farming in a less intensive manner, and with reduced or no inputs, implementing grazing methods and farming techniques that focus on building soil health and biodiversity. 

Steph also looks at the environmental implications, ethics of slaughter and where to source higher welfare and quality beef, if your supermarket doesn’t offer enough choice. 

Head to Wicked Leeks via the 🔗 in our bio to read the full piece. It’s packed with useful facts and information - we’ll link it in our stories too.

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