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Natasha Bradley, cider-maker and Smallholder' reader

IT is all good news for growers. London now has two big shows to show off what Britain's growers are growing, and more importantly what they want to sell, and where they would really like to sell it.

The Natural and Organic Show at Olympia goes on for two days, with an awards dinner linking it at night, and attracted more than 8,000 members of the trade. It is not open to the public, but has been here for many years and has been the only innovator, until this year. The Soil Association has a large presence, both in its own region for producer-members and also dominating the daily seminar programme. Not as interesting this year as it has been in the past.

What was interesting this year was the Demeter stand, which represents the bio-dynamic movement. The movement comes from Europe and was funded by them, but their English counterparts were there for consultation with Richard Swann. There are 1,000 members in Britain, but there has been a significant increase and interest in this more specialist end of the organic market.

It is the tastings that draw passers by to stands at these shows. Not that I wanted ice cream at 10 in the morning, but there were plenty who did, and quite important buyers at that, like the chief buyer of As Nature Intended, who was looking and tasting the organic yoghurt from Helsett Farm, near Boscastle in Cornwall. Sarah Talbot-Ponsonby, who farms 300 acres with her husband, who was also on the stand in the Soil Association section, told me, "Eight years ago we bought eighty Ayrshire and the business evolved gradually from there. We started making ice cream, and then we started on yoghurt, and three local Waitrose stores took our products. We buy all our fruit in locally. I suppose we would like to grow our own fruit, but that would be far too complicated".

Sarah comes from Ross on Wye, in Herefordshire, and started out on a 22-acre smallholding.

The show's innovation this year was an organic kitchen led by Barny Haughton, who owns and runs the Bordeaux Quay in Bristol, which has everything under its huge former warehouse space, including a deli, bakery, cookery school, and, of course, the centre point its restaurant.

It is an enviro-friendly centre where even the lavatories are washed down by rainwater. There is no air conditioning, and all the food is organic and locally sourced.

His mission is to present cooking that could be done at home for hardly any money at all, compared with the egocentric TV chefs who continually make dishes that most of us cannot cook, or cannot source. Haughton is a missionary as far as his art of chef is concerned and he says, "We're setting a precedent. We think it is very important for the future of our industry, which is profligate and wasteful. We're just trying to become a model for the industry."

Everything he serves is seasonal and argues that you can even serve salad in the winter, if you do not demand lettuces. He sources this salad from Barleywood Garden, three miles away from his kitchen, and a Victorian walled garden that has been restored. He says, "We work with the local community. I do feel the Government is not taking food education seriously enough. It hasn't got the vision it seems to me".

In the seminar room, Helen Taylor, the Soil Association's director of marketing, pointed out that there were now an incredible 55,000 products carrying the Soil Association symbol. Britain was now third in Europe as organic consumers just behind Germany and Italy. She did not feel that the increase in food prices would have much effect upon the organic market, adding, "people are really waking up to the fact that eating organic ticks off many of the boxes".

She explained that the multiples had to have long-term contracts so that they could be guaranteed supply, and as a result much more land was being laid down to organic in Spain. And she also made a good point when she said that people eating out should have the same opportunities as the choice of shoppers.

Turning to growers she said that "sampling has a major effect upon sales". If you produce a product that is not high quality, and if there are bad products it can affect others in the market.

The Real Food Festival was something else. A four-day show at Earls Court with the opening day only open to the trade and media, and after that the public could swarm in at £15 a ticket, and £5 for a programme. It was the brainchild of Philip Lowery, who told me, "It's been in my head for a year and a half. I've been a member of Slowfoods for a number of years. I felt there were really good food shows all around, but they always featured the big producers, and firms with money. Small producers needed an outlet. So we decided to subsidise the small producers by charging them £150 for the whole show. The money came from our sponsors. We had a selection committee who decided who was a small producer and who was not. It was based on turnover. The other producers had to pay £1,000 up to £1,500 for a stand. Without people like Tyrells, Daylesford and Whole Food Markets we could not have done it. We sold thousands of tickets up front to the public".

From the entry to the giant groundfloor everything was different. There were two piglets in a pen, with a notice describing their breeds and what their meat was good for. Throughout the floor was dusted with sawdust, which gave it a relaxed feel. And there were events, not only cooking, where Barney Haughton had his own cookery school area, where the public could come up and join in the lesson at desks. In the commercial kitchen the other side were the usual selection of TV chefs.

The most popular entertainment was the sheep show, where several breeds of sheep went singly on to the "stage", where they ate eagerly, and New Zealander Richard Savory, who now farms in Norfolk, explained their advantages and their meat uses.

He ends his act by a superb shearing of a sheep within two minutes ending up holding the whole fleece up to the audience, and telling them that the shearer gets £1 and the farmer a mere 20p!

Another interesting factor was that a pub run in the middle of the show was run by Geetie Singh, who runs the Duke of Cambridge in Islington, the only Soil Association-certified pub in the whole of Britain. Next door to her was a restaurant run by the Konstam staff, who have their gastro pub at the back of King's Cross, and source their food from within the M25.

What I liked about this show was not only all the small producers, that you could talk to, but the wide aisles. I wonder if its success will cause more cramped quarters. When I talked with Philip Lowery after his success he said that this would not happen, and small producers would still get their subsidy. I must say it was great to meet new exhibitors. At Olympia they are mostly the same, or are already successful. Here I met an amazing collection like "Smallholder" reader Tasha Bradley, who started Heron Valley Organic Juices and Cider in Kingsbridge, "deepest Devon" as her business card says.

Natasha told me, "My father started it all 15 years ago, but I took over. We have 10 acres of cider apples. Everything is organic and we put 5lbs of apples into every bottle of our apple juice. We have just started making our own ginger beer and that has caused a lot of attention from buyers at this show. We draw apples from up to 70 acres farmed by other farmers and we pay their Soil Association fees for that".

West Indians Sophie and Ian Jennings had a tiny stall pushing their home-made chutneys and sauces, which were wonderful to taste. As most of these small producers they started their business in their kitchen. Ian had worked as a chef for 20 years and as he told me "got tired of the hours, but realised I could do something else".

I tasted a very pleasant home-brewed beer from Wales, another business that started in a kitchen and has ended up as Pen-Lon cottage brewery. Farmer's wife Penny Samociuk told me, "We farm 35 acres with Welsh mountain sheep. My husband, whose parents came here after the 1939-45 War, started to make some beer in our kitchen. It was only made for our friends. Then we entered it at a local show, and it won a prize, beating a lot of established brewers, and we were encouraged to go into professional brewing ourselves. We have even grown our own hops, which we got from America, but do not know what sort they are. We do not use any unnatural ingredients. We do not call it organic, but it is really, and a local organic shop sells it".

The first day ended with a debate, but the panel was far too large with seven personalities, such as Sting's wife, Trudi Styler, who billed herself as an organic farmer. There was the new Conservative enviro voice, Zac Goldsmith, Professor Tim Lang and Waitrose boss Mark Price, plus Italian chef Giorgio Locatelli. It was the chef, whose English is not that good, who made the most telling point when he asked why in Britain the school curriculum demanded that school-goers studied maths full time, a subject they would probably use for two per cent of their lives, the subject of food had no time given to it at all... And as he said vehemently, "Yet food will involve all those pupils everyday of their lives".

Professor Tim Lang is the man who invented the words "air miles". He got involved in a discussion about TV chefs, not as popular as TV bosses and the chefs believe. Certainly not with this audience. He said, "I accept the reality of the influence of TV chefs on the food that we eat. It is an indicator of the society we live in. when Mark says that things just leave Waitrose's shelves after being mentioned by TV chefs. I find it a ludicrous state of affairs."

Zac Goldsmith felt, "A lot of what we call cheap food isn't cheap. It is directly subsidised by £250m of public money to keep pesticides out of our water in this country. Unfortunately the CAP is not a level playing field. If the price of pollution was paid it would be different." He also attacked the European agricultural policy that had led to as much British poultry meat being sold to the Netherlands as we buy from the Netherlands.

There is a lesson from smallholders and farmers from these shows, and it is that townies love to meet country folk, and at the end of the meeting there will be business to be done. If you are good enough!

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