Monday 13 September 2010

LF members review: What People Want? by Alice Carey and Jonathan P Watts




On the 28 June 2010 the Angel pub in East Harling, South Norfolk, was the meeting point for East Anglia – the urban to the rural, Art Farm Walk, an event coordinated by independent regional curators Jes Fernie and Deborah Smith. The day’s event was presented in association with Turning Point East – a consortium of organisations and individuals in the east of England responsible for developing and implementing Arts Council England’s regional plan for the visual arts. It was part of a wider public realm, site-specific project Fernie and Smith currently are undertaking in the Breckland region of west Norfolk called Rural Landscape.


At the foot of a two-meter grass bank, screened by beech, the Angel is easily overlooked from the cell of a fast-moving car. It sits inconspicuously at the side of its bedfellow the A11, the London Road. It is a long cream building with ziggurat gables at each end; extensions that bear the style of their era proliferate from the rear. The approaching road is smooth and generously wide. There is ample parking.

As we passed through the bar to the function room a surprisingly large number of people sat eating their lunch. More still ate in two adjoining rooms to the side. Perhaps these lunchers were symptomatic of a gradual change in pub culture over the last decade that has seen establishments outside of towns rely increasingly on food for income. If one criticism of the so-called ‘gastropub’ phenomena is that its focus on food detracts from its traditional feel, the Angel does not fall prey.

Entering into the function room, ducking beneath the low doorframe overhead, the walls were hung with pictures representing the sagas of rural life – the hunt, the rural poor, the nags. Following reacquaintances and chit-chat we formally introduced ourselves, pitching our interests in the rural one after another. Most in attendance were practicing artists with some kind of link to the rural, whilst a few others with specialties in landscape, archaeology and food policy represented a minority non-art contingency.

If the group seemed sure of their interests and investments in the rural, few seemed particularly clear of Jes and Deborah’s. Besides a conviction that farming and food production remains largely a mystery to the consumer, both share a sense of the uniqueness of the East Anglian landscape, a landscape that in many ways has historically been shaped by agriculture. It is their intention to combine these two aspects to establish a centre in which farming can be communicated and investigated, where the region can be celebrated for its particularities whilst increasing public understanding of where the food on our plates comes from. With their excellent communication skills artists could, apparently, be instrumentalised to mediate between farming communities and wider communities.

Present were two farmers from west Norfolk who had been invited by Jes and Deb to talk about their particular methods of farming and distribution. The contrast between the two was marked: Henry Brown is director of Produce World a root and crop supplier to British supermarkets including Waitrose, whilst the other represented a young e-business called From My Farm that supplies organic locally sourced vegetables to the customer’s front door.

Henry began efficiently and professionally. He followed comprehensive notes, appeared to time himself and supplied mashed, roasted, baked and boiled samples. As his talk proceeded questions were asked, discussion opened up and his pitch became less formal. Later he conceded that his well-rehearsed talk, normally the reserve of supermarket buyers, probably was a little over the top! We felt humbled by his willingness to answer questions about farming and business frankly.

Perhaps Henry’s most fascinating insights came from his experiences of buyers for supermarkets, a matrix that holds power and agency in setting food prices and constructing public knowledge of how products should appear. It is a simple logic that most of us live with everyday: the big supermarkets compete against one another for custom by driving down food prices, but achieve this by paying suppliers less. This drive for lower prices equates to a stranglehold on the farmers by supermarkets who will simply go elsewhere if they cannot get agreeable prices. Similarly, if products are not up to cosmetic standards – i.e. they do not look perfect, buyers will not take them. 'Substandard' products constitute a staggeringly large percentage of food waste in the UK each year.

It occurred to us that when talking about ‘what the customer wants’ Henry attributed them with too much individual agency, as if it is entirely the consumer who influences what is available on the shelves. Essentially buyers guide customers' expectations since they set the trend and a variety of advertising across media presents immaculate representations of products. How is the public ever to know that a scabby potato is just as good to eat?

The second speaker was interesting precisely because he short-circuited the relationship between farmer and consumer. Though trained as a butcher, this farmer quickly realised the potential to develop a market for organic, locally sourced (160 mile radius) vegetables that can be ordered online and delivered to the doorstep. His is a business experiencing continued growth as concern for the environment permeates popular consciousness.

From the pub we drove the dusty half mile to Roudham Farm, losing a sump guard to a drainage rut on the way. The cars parked up along the baking tarmac of the farm yard, and we gathered round Farmer Tim Jolly. He had never seen so many water bottles on a farm walk.

First stop on Tim's fluent tour was the ruined church of St Andrew's overlooking the site of a medieval settlement, currently hired out for grazing cattle. We moved on to learn about his core business harvesting and processing onions, asparagus and potatoes. As we stood at the edge of a dusty field of asparagus, now gone to seed after the end of another busy season, the conversation opened out into a discussion about migrant labour,. Tim asked if there was anyone in the group who had never tasted asparagus, conjuring at once the historic social cachet of tender spears dripping with butter. We remained silent.

Standing in his cool, empty barn - ready for the onion harvest and cleaned out after the asparagus - the group expressed delight at the rich orange ceiling interior. "Insulation," he laughed, a crucial cost-cutting feature of the building. We stood round, as Tim explained the market forces behind vegetable production, and we heard once again that the customer gets what the customer wants. An onion had started to sprout, unnoticed, in the sunken bolt-hole of the huge barn doors.

The last part of the walk took in the all-important irrigation pump, and we stood around its verdant periphery as Tim outlined the rules and regulations for tapping into the water table- crucial on a farm with such light, sandy soil. From there we wandered along, chatting in small groups. Tim pointed out poplar trees lining the track, and felled in the distance: the legacy of timber production activities no longer current. We stopped near the edge of the railway line - along which many of the group had travelled from London that morning. The day finished with homemade Victoria sponge cake and tea at the farmhouse.


Alice Carey and Jonathan P Watts

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