Recipes, news, where to buy, how to grow - Blog

Can Farmers Fix the Food Industry?

Successive governments seem to have ignored the plight of the food industry, farming and food security. 20%+ of NHS spend is on food related disease, farm incomes have dropped dramatically and the UK import’s 60% of the food we eat.

Our UK Food Policy has not changed since after World War 2. The conservatives invested in Henry Dimbleby to create a new National Food Strategy then ignored the findings and recommendations.

Is now the time for Farmers to take over? And are people ready for a better way to buy food than from the supermarkets and big business?

Revolting Farmers!

A big WELL DONE to so many European farmers trying to start a revolution to fix the very broken and unhealthy Food system.

To fix it we have set up our first Community Food park where local people, the school, farmers and food business come together to taste, trade, communicate and celebrate seasonal foods, and in the process build a sustainable, healthy, inclusive, enlightened, foodie community. read on……

The Power of Fermented Foods

If you are worried about your gut health and like the taste of sweet and sour try fermenting some veg and take your stomach back to ancient, paleo, times!

Fermentation has long been part of human history unlike highly processed foods and supermarkets. Food scientists say that it played a vital role in human survival because it allowed people to preserve food in a nutritional and safe way.

Please have a go

Food Parks to fix the Food Industry?

News of plans in Norfolk for a huge factory ‘farm’ run by big business, Cranswick, shows what a terrible state the UK food industry is in and why we need to take action with Food Parks.

The Factory ‘Farm’ is a plan for 20 sheds to house 870,000 chickens, and 14 buildings for 14,000 pigs on land that was previously an RAF base.

Horror stories of animal welfare, swarms of flies, pungent smells plaguing local communities as well as discharges of contaminated liquid into waterways should be enough to stop development of these ‘farms’.

YES, supermarkets are to blame for Food Inflation?

The reason why food inflation has not dropped inline with food wholesale prices is mainly due to lack of UK Food Policy and the supermarkets refusing to pay a fair price to farmers last year meaning they are now having to source high priced products from abroad this year.

Local, Sustainable, Food or Food from robots?

Anyone seen this amazing video about Ocado’s Hive distribution warehouse? ‘Hive’ because it is similar to a natural bee hive. Rather ironic if you consider the carbon emissions these hives produce from construction, robots, plastic packaging, and huge food miles getting 50,000 kinds of products to and from the warehouse.

Are you loving the technology and ‘progress’? Or worrying about loss of jobs, farm incomes, healthy food, food security, or who pays for all this, both financially and environmentally?

Is fresh, local, live, cider medicinal?!

Regular media articles indicate that all fermented foods are good for us including coffee, wine, kimchi, sourdough, yoghurt and even chocolate. It seems that the more ‘live’ the food or drink is, the better they are for our gut biome and health. A live yoghurt is better than a pasteurised one and a live kimchi […]

Lab Grown meat is dangerous, unnecessary and a waste of money

To us lab grown meat is dangerous and simply not needed when we have plenty of food in the world and millions of recipes for delicious, healthy meat free meals.

We also have millions of acres of grassland that cannot grow crops and need to be grazed by meat producing animals to regenerate soils.

Lab meat is dangerous because scientist are being paid to produce a product that is as similar to real meat as possible. This entails some very clever, and lengthy, processes that will need to be mechanised to produce enough quantity to supply the huge world market.

The products and systems will be inspected and monitored by regulators mostly paid by the big businesses that produce the products.

How can we guarantee that the scientist testing the products test for everything? And how can they be sure? We also know that big businesses will try to cut costs once production is global, just like horse meat in beef lasagne. The big worry with lab meat is that any slight change in any part of the lengthy lab meat production process could be catastrophic.

COP27: Is Climate anxiety a good thing?

COP27: The reality of climate change for many people can be overwhelming

Especially when marketeers use climate anxiety to sell us products that are not good for us or the planet.

Guest Blog: Introduction to Grow Your Own Booze

As the cost of living crisis gets worse how about making your own booze. Especially cider where nearly every commercial cider is made from concentrate, water and added alcohol. NOT real 100% apple juice fermented naturally. Extract 1 Introduction to Grow Your Own Booze Lorraine Turnbull wanted to be a farmer since she was five […]

Interview with Ant, BigBarn’s Founder

Sarah Kirton food writer with a passion for food and cultural diversity interviews BigBarn’s founder and managing director Anthony Davison.

BigBarn has evolved over the last 22 years.

From a rebellious ‘Fight the power of the supermarkets’ through a Local Food Map to encourage people to switch to locally produced food.

To more gentle, inclusive, initiatives like Crop for the Shop in schools to help people discover and share better and more sustainable ways to buy food and to engage and build their healthy community.

The madness of ‘Pretend’ foods?

News that there is now an avocado alternative called Ecovado, which is meant to wean people off the resource-intensive imported fruit, sounds good. As well as completely ridiculous!

The Ecovado contains a pale green, creamy foodstuff made from a combination of ingredients local to its country and packaged in a fake avocado skin fashioned from wax.

WHY? Wouldn’t it be better, and healthier, to simply make a delicious meal from the local ingredients they mention, probably at less that one fifth of the price?

Easy to save money on food?

As the cost of living crisis grows it is brilliant that the BBC have a whole recipe section on great meals for under £1 per person. If everyone in the UK used this page, bought fresh local ingredients and had cooking facilities, would food be included in the crisis?

Too much ultra processed food in school meals?

Hardly surprising that there is so much ultra processed food in school meals when most kids have been eating these foods all their lives and don’t know any better.

These foods are also easy for catering staff and brilliant for the catering suppliers as they have long shelf lives and a good profit margin.

What we need is to change kids preferences and get them to influence their parents, families and friends.

The way to do this is get food growing, cooking & nutrition in all schools all through the curriculum.

If they grow it they want to eat it. And discover a whole new world of health for their bodies and planet.

Many schools have done this and others can follow. All can hit nutrition standards and within budget.

Localisation for a better world. We have the power!

It seems pretty obvious that the attitude of ‘sit back and let big business, globalisation, and technology fix everything’ is NOT working.

We should however use technology to disrupt big business and find a better way. Including the amazing amount of enabling information on the internet like our Local Food Map, recipes, and ‘how-to’ videos.

We have the power, let’s use it.