Ting Ting! Joining the Good Food March to Brussels!

A few weeks ago I headed off to Calais to join the Good Food March to the European Parliament! We cycled with French farmers, consumers and representatives of Confederation Paysanne to  to a Civil Society consultation on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy!


I will post some of my musings from the Good Food Blog www.goodfoodmarch.wordpress.com


12th September 2012


Having brought in the last of this years harvest yesterday (phew!) and leaving our family farm at the busiest time of year (Sorry Dad!) I am heading down to Dover to meet Sam and Darren to hop over the channel to Calais!

I am joining for a number of reasons. Firstly because I feel that among a multitude of other factors, the Common Agricultural Policy has encouraged more export orientated farming. This has effects all along the chain, and encourages farms to increase in scale (as the payments are per area) and to produce monocultures of commodities such as sugar, wheat and oilseed rape (i.e like our farm and many in our area). These commodities are sold at global prices on 'the market' where they are also victim to speculation. There is no real encouragement to grow food for local people, to reduce chemical use or for small scale farmers to stay in business (in Europe and globally).

As I have spent more time on the farm and pondering its future over the last few years I am concerned that although 'the powers that be' (that is big-agribusiness, seed and chemical companies, the food processing industry etc) assure us that chemical based industrialised farming is the only way we will feed the world (as if that is really their goal... they just want to sell us more products!)... it just feels that the way we are farming is not sustainable. And when I think about our farm in 20 years time, I would like to see something a little different.

So I am joining the march to learn and share ideas and hopefully have some kind of an impact on the future of farming in Europe! I am super excited about sharing ideas, foraged foods, delicious dinners and the French countryside with like minded people over the next few days!

Ting ting! (that’s our bike bells you see!)

More from us soon!
Katie