GET THE DIGITAL DIGEST

Sign up to receive the key stories in food, farming + fairness, direct to your inbox, every Friday.

Wicked Leeks logo

Food, Farming, Fairness.

  • News
  • Opinion
  • Features
  • Resources
  • Riverford
  • About Wicked Leeks

Hot topics

  • Farming
  • Animal welfare
  • Politics
  • Regenerative farming

All topics

  • Activism
  • Agroecology
  • Agroforestry
  • Biodiversity
  • Brexit
  • Business
  • Cartoon
  • Christmas
  • Cities
  • Climate change
  • Community
  • COP26
  • Cost-of-living
  • Culture
  • Dairy
  • Diets
  • Diversity
  • Eating and drinking
  • Eating out
  • Education
  • Employee ownership
  • Energy
  • Environment and ethics
  • Ethical business
  • Events
  • Fairtrade
  • Fashion and beauty
  • Fish
  • Flexitarianism
  • Flowers
  • Food waste
  • Foraging
  • Grow your own
  • Growers and suppliers
  • Guy Singh-Watson
  • Health
  • Inequality
  • Land ownership
  • Local sourcing
  • Meat
  • Mental health
  • Nature
  • Net zero
  • News from the farm
  • Organics
  • Packaging
  • People
  • Pesticides
  • Plant-based
  • Plastic
  • Podcast
  • Price
  • Recipes
  • Recycling
  • Renewable energy
  • Rewilding
  • Seasonality
  • Seeds
  • Shopping
  • Social justice
  • Soil
  • Summer
  • Supermarkets
  • Sustainable Food Series
  • Technology
  • The big interview
  • Travel
  • UK Gov
  • Veg hacks
  • Veganism
  • Water
slider image
The AGtivist

The AGtivist investigates the use of contaminated sewage sludge as fertiliser on UK farms

The use of sewage sludge as farm fertiliser poses major environmental and health risks, finds The AGtivist 

Environment and ethics Farming Health
slider image
Features

Are biostimulants the future of eco-friendly farming?

They used to be called muck and magic, but biostimulants are gaining in popularity as more growers look to boost soil and plant health the natural way

Farming Soil
slider image
Features

Lack of agroecological funding could be costing us our future

Research and innovation in organic and agroecological farming is chronically underfunded, finds Nick Easen

Agroecology
slider image
Features

The weakening link between our local abattoirs, organic meat and high animal welfare

The loss of the UK's smaller, local abattoirs would have devastating effects on the food system, finds Anna Zuurmond

Animal welfare Community
slider image
News

Poison for profit – EU exports 122,000 tonnes of banned pesticides

44 Highly Hazardous Pesticides, banned for EU use, are still being shipped to the African continent

Environment and ethics Pesticides
WL Meets

WL Meets: Zarina Ahmad on food justice for the most marginalised

Activism Community Diversity
Opinion

News from the farm: The right way is rarely the easy way

Ethical business Guy Singh-Watson News from the farm
The AGtivist

The AGtivist investigates the use of contaminated sewage sludge as fertiliser on UK farms

Environment and ethics Farming Health
STORY OF THE WEEK

Testing is all well and good, but that needs to come once we turn the tap off. Megan Kirton, Senior Project Officer at Fidra

Features

Are biostimulants the future of eco-friendly farming?

Farming Soil
WL Meets

WL Meets: Tim Parton, championing the power of soil biology

Environment and ethics Farming Soil
Features

PFAS special: 12.5 million Europeans drink water containing “forever chemicals”

Environment and ethics Health
Features

News from the farm: Beans means nourishment in a rush

Eating and drinking News from the farm
News

The AGtivist: Concerns over precision-breeding grow ahead of High Court hearing in May

Activism UK Gov GM Politics
Features

PFAS special: forever chemicals, contaminated eggs & the wider packaging problem

Environment and ethics Health
Opinion

News from the farm: Weathering storms & speaking too soon

Climate change Farming Guy Singh-Watson
Features

WL Meets: Lucy Antal, on a mission to bring fresh food to the UK’s “food deserts”

Activism Community Eating and drinking Health Inequality
About us

Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.

Get in touch

Are you farmer, producer or journalist with a story to share? Drop us a line here.

Resources

New + Noteworthy books, blogs, podcasts + more that are making waves in the worlds of food, farming + fairness.

wickedleeksmag

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

In the second part of David Burrows' report on PFA In the second part of David Burrows' report on PFAS, he looks into the insidious problems that forever chemicals pose to our health and environment.

"I wanted to get something out and demonstrate this Government’s commitment and seriousness on this issue, and that is what we have done.”

So said Emma Hardy, Minister for Water and Flooding at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) earlier this month. Hardy, answering questions posed by MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), was talking about the new plan she had published on PFAS – the ‘forever chemicals’ in our environmental and food systems.

As I outlined last week, these substances are so widely used for everyday products that they have become a top priority for environmental and food safety regulators. They are in our soils. They are in our water. They are in our food. And they are in us.

The potential fallout from years of production and use is becoming clearer. What this government plans to do about it is less so. This is a “roadmap to nowhere”, said Chloe Alexander, Chemicals Lead at Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL), England’s largest nature coalition, of the PFAS plan published this month.

The government’s ‘plan’ certainly leans heavily on more monitoring, guidance and future consultations. There are no binding phase-outs of PFAS. No timetable for ending everyday uses for which affordable alternatives are already available. And no commitment to match the EU’s proposed broad ban on the use and manufacture of all PFAS. 

Instead, there will be “a new website to raise the public’s awareness and understanding of PFAS while also improving transparency of action being taken across government”.

Read the full feature on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.
Women from ethnic minorities, some with disabiliti Women from ethnic minorities, some with disabilities, living in impoverished communities across the UK are the most marginalised in our society. They are at the frontline of food inequality and the furthest point away from some of our urban farmers’ markets, stacked high with produce that is often unaffordable, unobtainable, or culturally inappropriate.

This is the picture that Zarina Ahmad (co-director of @wen_uk ) describes as she campaigns tirelessly for these people. She wants us all to shift our thinking on food and climate justice with under-represented groups placed squarely on the agenda; a lot of strategies cooked up in Westminster or the London bubble land wholly inappropriately with these communities. 

“There are too many people in the UK who are in poverty and having to make hard decisions around what they eat. We’ve created a multi-tiered society, where many families don’t have the financial means to access nutritious, high quality food,” explains Zarina Ahmad, co-director of the charity, the Women’s Environmental Network or WEN.

She continues: “People in my own family have huge, physical and mental health issues, due to the fact that they can only afford poor quality, ultra-processed food. This is not the world we should be living in. Food is definitely a human rights issue. Everyone should have access to affordable, quality produce. Right now, there’s not a level playing field and we’re starting from a point of total inequality and inequity.”

Read Nick Easen's full interview with Zarina Ahmad on Wicked Leeks, via the link in our bio.
The use of sewage sludge as farm fertiliser poses The use of sewage sludge as farm fertiliser poses major environmental and health risks, finds our columnist, The AGtivist 

Water industry records passed to the AGtivist this month starkly highlight the scale and nature of the issue, detailing test results for sampling carried out around 139 sewage treatment works across large parts of the UK between 2016 and 2021. The tests identified more than 13,500 residues of antibiotics – and other chemicals, including the controversial weedkiller glyphosate – in treatment effluent, in rivers, and in sludge that had been applied to land, as well as other locations at treatment sites. 

Read the full story on Wicked Leeks (via the link in our bio).
Wicked Leeks meets: Tim Parton - a farming pioneer Wicked Leeks meets: Tim Parton - a farming pioneer championing the power of soil and biology. 

When you talk to Tim about home brew, he‘s not talking about an alcoholic beverage in a demijohn, but a tank full of brewed microbes and fungi in a vat ready for dispersal on his fields. He’s ditched all synthetic inputs and the vast majority of pesticides in a bid to nurture the lifeblood of every farm – the dirt, grit and hummus beneath our feet. 

“I’ve always had a passion for soil. I could never understand why farmers abuse it so much and don’t care for it; such exploitation of the land can take years to recover,” explains Tim Parton, who’s described himself as a ‘biological nutrition farmer.’

It’s been a 17-year journey of discovery for this South Staffordshire farmer. The penny dropped in 2009 when he realised his way of working at Brewood Park Farm, just north of Wolverhampton had to change. 

“We were using increasing amounts of nitrogen fertiliser, but not getting any higher yields. We were also having to use more fungicide applications. At the same time, the cost of growing crops was escalating, but we weren’t getting better returns. I knew then that we had to come up with a different system,” he says.

Read the full interview with Tim on Wicked Leeks.

About us

Wicked Leeks is published by Riverford Organic Farmers.

Riverford organic farmers

Riverford grows and sells organic food through its award-winning veg boxes, delivering across the country to a loyal band of customers who share a passion for good food, good farming and good business.

learn more

Get the Digital Digest

Sign up to receive the key stories in food, farming + fairness, direct to your inbox, every Friday.

Instagram icon Facebook icon Youtube icon Email icon

Navigate

  • News
  • Opinion
  • Features
  • Films

Most read

  • Farming
  • News from the farm
  • Environment and ethics
  • Eating and drinking
  • Climate change
  • Ethical business
Wicked Leeks

© Riverford Organic Farmers Ltd

Contact Us Cookie Policy Website by Plinth

Stuck for ideas? Try these hot topics!

Farming Animal welfare Politics Regenerative farming