We Want Real Food

We Want Real Food is the name of a book that was written by my brilliant friend, Graham Harvey - a man who has been writing innovative and thoughtful things about agriculture for more years than he cares to remember.

Graham often gives talks about things like Regenerative Agriculture and the general feeling is that he conveys an awful lot of sense - an opinion which another good friend of mine (who has appeared on this website before), one Captain Ian Macnab most definitely shares. Ian invited Graham and I to his fabulous centre of philosophy and deep thought yesterday - by which I mean a derelict chicken factory somewhere in Somerset - to discuss the concept of taking some of Graham’s ideas out on the road with the help of an ancient double decker bus.

Discussing things in the chicken factory

The thought struck me that only the post-modernist Captain Macnab - he of the heavily-refurbished, electrified Victorian ferry boat - could come up with a splendid idea like this - and only Graham could speak good sense from its lofty balcony… So that it seemed like an all round good thing to be involved with. In which light, I hope to bring you more news on this unique venture soon - but in the meantime here is an article which I wrote about Graham Harvey and his book We Want Read Food some years ago in the Western Morning News…

We want real food… That is the name of West Country writer Graham Harvey’s forthcoming book, and that was the underlying message of an outspoken and controversial speech he made to members of the Exmoor Society recently.

“I thought I’d talk about farming on Exmoor and tell them how it’s all gone wrong,” shrugged the tall and gently spoken author as we walked across an empty corner of the Exmoor National Park earlier this week.

Mr Harvey is perhaps best known as agricultural story editor of The Archers, but in an exclusive interview for the Western Morning News he emphasised that his forthright views on the ills of modern agriculture were his own beliefs, and nothing to do with storylines that appear in the radio soap.

His basic premise is that modern, chemical based agriculture is bad for farmers, bad for the countryside - and what it produces is bad for us to eat. And Mr Harvey believes that the only way forward is backward – that farmers should return to the ways of their grandfathers and produce real food that has nothing to do with political or industrial interference. 

“I’m talking about farming before it became political,” he told me. “The interference started in the last war – before that what we had here was basically sustainable farming that produced high quality food. 

“On Exmoor there were mixed farms with a range of enterprises - both crops and livestock. The farmers were self reliant – they used few chemicals or fertilisers and grew most of their animal feeds.

“The Devon, or Red Ruby, was the principle beef breed - a hardy animal with the finest tasting beef,” said Graham, who has spent most of his working life writing about agriculture. “The kind of beef, in fact, which is now known to be very healthy. 

“The traditional way of farming was very sustainable and it lasted until the 1960’s. Then it all started to go wrong because of political interference and subsidies. This started in Whitehall, and from the early 1970’s it switched to Brussels.

“But what really messed up Exmoor and West Country farming was that farmers were encouraged to produce cheap chemically grown cereals,” says Mr Harvey. “Under the false prices of the CAP (common agricultural policy) many traditional farmers in Britain turned into specialist arable growers. From the early 1980’s huge surpluses of chemical grown grain swilled around the world, sometimes helping in famine disasters, but more often damaging sustainable farming systems in developing countries.”

Mr Harvey groans when he talks about excellent farming practices which were ruined by the grain mountains, not to mention “corrupt regimes like the Soviet Union” which were bolstered by cheap grain. 

“Chemically grown grain eventually became a global weapon of instability,” he says. “It destroyed well balanced, sustainable food systems that were already in place. 

“With all the surpluses, it had to be fed to livestock to uphold prices – it became feed for beef and dairy cows – and that’s what undermined the market for proper beef. Cheap, subsidised, grain.”

So much for the past, but Mr Harvey realises we’re entering a new era now.  

“These are worrying times for farmers, but to me the good news is that this cheap chemical grain system is unsustainable. The European subsidies are going and even America is saying it will match that. And that kind of farming can’t survive without subsidies because of the cost of sprays and fertilisers and so on. 

“Is this a bad thing? Well, you have to ask yourself what is agriculture for. Is it there to feed people and make people healthy – or is it there to make profits for chemical companies?

“I’m not the only person asking this,” says Mr Harvey. “There are a lot of other writers and experts who are saying these things. Pasture-farming (as the old fashioned techniques are now known) produces better food, healthier food, healthier animals, and it’s better for the landscape.”

Mr Harvey praised the WMN for its campaigns to promote good local food, and said that he believed West Country farming was already beginning to move towards a healthier, more sustainable future. 

“I know one leading farmer in Devon who has got rid of his dairy herd and gone back into Devon beef for exactly the reasons I’ve been talking about,” he told me. “They (the Red Devons) cost nothing to keep, you are not dependent on huge amounts of bought-in feed, and you get an excellent product. 

“We need to market this stuff properly,” he added. “All these messages about omega fatty acids have come out in the last five years (grass-fed beef is believed to have more cholesterol-busting omega-3 than mackerel)  and all it’s done is to say that our ancestors were absolutely right. 

“Someone needs to get out there now and market this message – that will give a much greater future to West Country farms than the industrial system. If enough people go into the supermarket asking for pasture fed beef, it will be there,” says Mr Harvey, who believes Red Devon beef is the best tasting there is. 

“That was proved last week on Radio Four’s Food Programme,” he told me. “They had a tasting and they agreed Red Ruby beef was the best. But it’s got to have spent most of its life on grass, or hay and silage. You can feed some cereals, particularly at the finishing stage – but if you look at modern intensive beef systems, one animal will have consumed a tonne and a quarter of cereals in its life – and that cannot be right.”

Mr Harvey’s forthcoming book, due to be launched in February, concentrates on the subject of real food. “It’s for consumers and it basically says: you can eat better than this – but you have to understand a bit about farming.

“The West Country is an ideal place for beef and dairy and sheep,” concluded Mr Harvey as we finished our Exmoor walk. “Red Devon beef is a world beating food – it should be on a par with things like Parma ham. But it needs to be marketed properly. We need to tell the world about it.”  

Mr Harvey seems to be doing just that, though he wouldn’t be drawn on whether or not Ruth and David Archer would ever would ever buy into his favourite Red Devons for their Ambridge herd.  

One of Capt Macnab’s many belongings - probably not the food message we will be trying to convey - unless of course it is bacon reared in an environmentally friendly way along with veg from a regenerative garden and bread made with Matthews Cotswold Flour