Harvest

Aug 30, 2023

What a joyful sight it is, seeing our farmers producing food. Exactly what they should be doing, rather than being paid to grow pretty flowers! Yes, we need to get the right balance in how we care for our environment, but most importantly, we need to grow food to live and feed our families.

Winter barley was the first fields to be cut here at Rawston Farm. We will hopefully be selling our barley on for malting which means it will be made into beer. It’s important for everyone to understand why we grow barley and where it, and other crops go once they are grown. To understand which types of food and drink are made from the raw ingredients off the farm. Remember the saying that if you’re unlucky then you will need a doctor once a year and a fireman once a lifetime? Well, you need a farmer 3 times a day for your breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Supermarkets don’t grow food, our farmers do. It’s important to understand that and remember what the crops get turned into. Barley is also found in cereals and cakes, flat breads, muffins, pasta, noodlesand food colourings. And these are just a few examples.

It’s a fact that higher food prices are here to stay. It’s costly to raise an animal, beef prices are already high and it’s great to see pork prices back up where they should be because of the strong global demand again. We have had extremely challenging times with the pandemic, the ever-changing weather and the ongoing Ukraine war. We have to fight back to make farming work amongst all of that.

It is so sad to see the supermarkets slash the price of milk again and other essentials. What are they doing?! They are endangering the future of our poor farmers that are already being pushed too far.

We are in a wonderful growing season right now in the UK, so let’s make the most of it by eating our British food. Consumers may be going out less often, but many are looking for better quality when they do, so it’s great to see the public’s support for British farmers and food producers and that quality is still important to them. Quality food at a fair price is key for our health and well-being. It’s important that we don’t rely on low-cost foods that have become the norm. Foods should be safe and fully traceable which is exactly what you get when you buy British.

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