The Right Thing

I’m on my way back from the organic sector’s BOOM Awards in Bristol. A superb celebration of the best in the now rapidly growing organic sector. I was there to collect an award on behalf of Wilma for her lifetime’s contribution to the organic cause.

It follows on from my trip to deepest Stevenage the week before to give a short presentation at the regen. ag. two-day show called Groundswell. And a groundswell it certainly is! I had never been before and had largely dismissed it as a Southeast, arable oriented event. I think it probably began as that, but not anymore. It is huge! With 400 speakers in several marquees across the event, a thousand exhibitors of every creed and culture and over 10,000 visitors.

As I stood at Stevenage bus station waiting for the shuttlebus to the Groundswell site, I could tell those also heading to Groundswell. They didn’t look very ‘local’. We kind of milled around but no one really engaged with each other. That all changed when we got there. Suddenly we were in our comfort zone, in our community, and general chat spread. I found that interesting.

My day at Groundswell started very positively. As I sat for a coffee just after opening at 8.00am at a bench with a young couple. ‘You’re David?’ they asked. I looked up quizzically. ‘We farm in the Isle of Wight, and we follow you. We are starting a cow-with-calf micro dairy!’ It was Becca’s farm and she is a young woman with a strong sense of direction. We chatted about her and James’ plans for the future and invited each other to visit. Well, you never know!

That started the day as it was meant to continue with a sense of friendship and community. A very similar sense to that which we used to feel back in the early days of organic. Yet different. Now there was scale. And over the initial decades of the ‘same old faces’ now there are new faces. Young faces. Energy and a sense of invigorated hope.

Sure, it’s still something of a bubble. I realised that as I returned to the conurbation to get the train home. But behind all that indifference, something was changing. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed there was a predominance of women manning, sorry, personning, the stands and organising events.

And so, back to Bristol and the BOOM awards. As an elderly figure with a lifetime of experience (ahem!), I was allowed to say a few words.

Almost thirty years ago I visited the Eastbrook Farm of Helen Browning, now Chair of the Soil Association. At short notice she had taken time to show me and another young fellow what they were doing on her farm. I was so inspired that I then decided we’d take the plunge to converting to organic here at Rainton.

‘In at the deep end’, and ‘cold turkey’, just about describe the experience of converting the entire farm to organic 27 years ago, when there was very little technical support, compared to now.

I confessed I’d probably have packed it in had it not been for Wilma’s deep sense of ‘doing the right thing’. Feeding local and organic produce to a largely indifferent customer back in those days brought comments like, ‘It’s cheaper at MacDonalds’. It would probably have been more profitable too, but Wilma was committed to doing the right thing.

I persevered with organic and gradually it began to pay off as our soils regained their health after a decade of being battered by fertilisers and pesticides. To the point that productivity was returning to the sort of levels we had previously experienced with a hundred tons of fertilisers and thousands of litres of pesticides.

Then there was the conversion of the farm to 100% pasture fed. No cereals, no soya, peas or beans. Only leafy pasture. There are still only a very few 100% pasture fed dairies in the UK, but the impact on the stomach (rumen) health of the livestock is pretty dramatic. This is the diet they evolved over millions of years to eat, and for them it is the right thing to do.

That move had been encouraged by yet another forceful figure in the form of Denise Walton of Peelham Farm.

Now it was cow-with-calf dairy. There is no way I’d have contemplated cow-with-calf dairy had it not been for Wilma and our visitor centre manager, Helen Fenby. No way! I mean, the calves would be drinking more than half the milk and I’d be out of business in no time! No way!

And yet, here we are. Approaching our tenth year of cow-with-calf dairying, and none of the team would go back. No way! And once again I have Wilma to thank for giving me the strength to keep going when the, ‘in at the deep end’ and ‘cold turkey’ challenges had to be faced, all over again. But, once again, it was the right thing to do.

There is a theme here, and as I looked out over the sea of keen young faces, of leaders in this regenerative, organic movement, I realised that if you took away the winners in the tech and alcohol sectors, it would leave a ratio of ten to one, women to men. Maybe more.

God knows, we need change and looking around at the movers of change I realised that if it was ever going to happen it would most likely be driven by intelligent, motivated and determined women. So, to all the women I met at Groundswell and at the Soil Association’s BOOM Awards, the ball is firmly in your court! But don’t forget us lads out there too. We’re right behind you, because ‘it is the right thing to do!’

Thank you, Wilma, Helen, Denise, Helen…