This week on Over The Farm Gate we're talking food.
It’s now eight weeks since the Coronavirus lockdown, and for some it has brought a completely new way of living and working. For a lot of farming businesses though, the soaring demand for British produce has brought commercial opportunities, with numerous producers up and down the country turning to direct selling. We're finding out how businesses have been adapting and not only staying afloat, but thriving.
Writer and regenerative agriculture organiser Cathy St Germans talks about 'Farms to Feed Us', a project to put farms selling direct onto a publicly-available database. Since launching on April 4, the database has had more than 260 farms added and over 8,000 views.
Jonny Crickmore, a dairy farmer near Bungay, in Suffolk, sells his Baron Bigod cheese all over the UK from delis to restaurants and even Harrods. Jonny tells the story of an initial plunge in sales where he had to furlough his staff and consider dumping his cheese. Since then though, things have turned a corner and he's been selling more cheese on lockdown than at Christmas time.
Patrick Deeley, is a mixed farmer near Godstone in Surrey with multiple enterprises, including a farm shop, butchers, tearoom and Surrey's largest annual summer beer festival. Patrick's shop saw a ten-fold increase in sales from panic-buying customers before he decided to shut it and move online. He talks about the opportunity farming has right now to connect with consumers and how he hopes his festival will go ahead and give everyone some hope and joy.
