The Weekly Reader

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1993235,00.html

A very local business
Matthew Fort on organic farming entrepreneurs in Suffolk

Saturday January 20, 2007
The Guardian

There must be something in the air of Suffolk that encourages the entrepreneurial spirit. As I trailed around in driving rain, I kept coming across farm shops, farm cafes and greengrocers selling local produce. Butchers, too, and bakers - and an almost complete absence of supermarkets. Strange, that.

ED NOTE: Front page British news, no page US news.

Follow up:

I was on my way to see Simon Loftus, himself an ex-entrepreneur, as the recently retired guiding hand behind Adnams, brewers and purveyors of fine wines to discerning drinkers, and winners of more awards than you can shake a pint mug at. If anyone can tell me who to talk to in Suffolk, it is Loftus, and, after telling me about Adnams' new distribution depot, he did.

Article continues
You may think there's not much romance attached to a distribution depot, and normally you'd be right. But this one has grass growing on its vast, curved roof, and it's made out of the modern equivalent of wattle and daub, and has been designed to be as environmentally friendly as it is possible to be. They are that way inclined in Suffolk - forward-thinking. For example, one of the people who Loftus mentioned was Lady Caroline Cranbrook, the woman whose campaign against the indiscriminate plonking of supermarkets everywhere has led to the survival and revival of farm shops and greengrocers in the area.

Without the likes of Lady Cranbrook, the likes of William Kendall would have a much harder time. Kendall is someone who knows a bit about entrepreneurship: he was MD of the Covent Garden Soup Company and the visionary behind propelling Green & Black's chocolate into the mouths of the great British public. As a farmer's son and a chap who likes to practise what he preaches - and he preaches a high ideal of agriculture and retailing that is organic, sustainable and local - he has now set about turning his and his wife's farm into a model profitable organic farm.

Although Kendall acknowledges that he was always more interested in marketing than production - one of his earliest coups as a boy was selling eggs from his own chickens to his parents - the inspiration behind Maple Farm was the sense of community and rhythms of the farm he grew up on in Bedfordshire. The kind of life he describes was vanishing even then, but little by little his 400 acres of Suffolk are turning back to that kind of production.

None of this has come easy. Technology is so central to modern farming that Kendall has had to relearn many skills that 100 years ago would have been a normal part of farming practice - how to keep down weeds without weedkillers, how to rotate crops, what are the effects of the vagaries of our weather? Here are chickens in sociable flocks of 100, pigs rooting about in an orchard, a mini flour mill and 20 acres of vegetables for the Maple Farm box scheme that is at the heart of Kendall's vision. It unites principles of production, distribution, consumption and financial viability. The farm sends out 100 of its locally made sycamore boxes each week, loaded with whatever vegetables are seasonal, plus eggs and the odd organic Sicilian lemon. Kendall hopes to expand this to 200 boxes, but no more or it won't be sustainable. That may not seem a lot, but that's not the point: if it works, it will provide a template for other producers. And it's not as if it's the Kendalls' only marketing wing - they also go to farmers' markets and have displays at several local shops.

You see, it's all about marketing and branding and networking. The likes of Kendall are weaving together traditional production methods with the disciplines of modern commercial life. But, as he says, the concept of branding was started by burning your logo on to your animal, box or cart so some blighter wouldn't run off with it. It seems there's not much new under the sun, after all. Or under the rain, come to that.