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According to Adam Smith and most classic economic theory, trade harnesses and drives specialisation and generates wealth. When combined with scale and global trade, specialisation also produces fantastic mobile phones and cars. I’m less convinced that it produces good food in an environmentally and socially acceptable way, but the same trends towards scale and specialisation can be seen in agriculture.
The first basil and cucumbers were harvested from our polytunnels last week, and very fine they were too. We grow mainly mini cucumbers as they taste better, are easier to grow and avoid you having that soggy-ended cucumber half lurking in the back of the fridge, so I can’t really understand why anyone grows anything else.
It always annoys me when we have to buy stuff in. In a childish, probably very egotistical way, I want us to grow it all ourselves. I would even love to brew our own beer, bake bread, run a cookery school, make sunflower oil on the farm in France and more besides. What’s my problem with specialisation, trade and scale? Maybe it’s time for me to get over it and accept that the economist/moral philosopher Adam Smith and his mates had a point; it is stupid to try and do everything yourself.
Early summer is the vegetable new year: out with the old crops and in with the new. The ‘hungry gap’, when very little UK veg is ready for harvesting, is finally over and the new season is a wonderful time for vegboxes. Even after more than 25 years of growing vegetables, I am still excited by the first broad beans, courgettes, salads and homegrown fruit, including the very welcome arrival of gooseberries this week.
While most of you are probably enjoying lighter meals in this warm weather, we are thinking of stews and roasts as we begin sowing our winter crops. Devon is the traditional home of the swede and my father would sow the crop speculatively, in the knowledge that if they did not grow well or his sons were too idle to pick them, they would be welcomed by hungry cattle in the winter.
Issue 12: Fairness and five years.
Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.