Our latest Selling Organic conference went down a storm in Oxford last week. It was really interesting and productive day.
Feedback has been great and there have been some excellent media reports of the day which are worth sharing here.
It’s a constant battle to communicate to shoppers why they should buy organic products.
Part of this is due to almost having an embarrassment of messages – animal welfare, controlled inputs, no GMs, etc, etc. It’s hard to narrow down what’s most important to people. And even if you do that, communicating it effectively is no mean feat.
We’re very excited that tomorrow sees the return of the conference series we began last year.
This year’s event is titled ‘Selling Organic: The Next Chapter’ and follows on from ‘Selling Organic: What’s the Story?’. You can find out more here (and there are spaces for a few last minute bookings!).
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We were delighted to discover that Adam Henson, BBC Countryfile presenter and respected farmer, was awarded the Farming Champion of the Year title at last night’s Farmers Weekly Awards.
Adam Henson in action at National Organic Cereals 2010
Anyone who reads this blog will know that Adam was good enough to chair the afternoon discussion session at our National Organic Cereals 2010 event this year and did a superb job.
Though not an organic farmer himself, Adam spent the whole day with us and it was apparent that he was interested in and very respectful of his organic peers. We can confirm he’s also a thoroughly nice chap!
Funnily enough, this support for a variety of key farming events throughout the year was highlighted by the judges in the citation that went with Adam’s award, which you can read in full here on the Farmers Weekly website. His work on Countryfile to demonstrate the realities of farming to a prime time audience has been noted and appreciated across the agricultural community.
We would like to pass on our own congratulations to Adam. This is a thoroughly deserved accolade.
Emotions seem to be mixed among viewers we’ve talked to of the current Channel 4 programme Food: What Goes in Your Basket?, presented by food critic, Jay Rayner.
Some think it’s good to be educating shoppers on food and farming. Others think this kind of (sometimes shock/horror) overview approach is just about making TV that gets good ratings.
There was certainly a good result in last night’s programme when they did a taste test on scotch eggs made with organic versus ordinary free-range eggs and 73 per cent of those in the studio preferred the organic version! Though this still doesn’t really lessen our scepticism over taste tests…
In many ways the programme is opening people’s eyes to the way food is produced. When fresh produce leaves the farm it can go through many processes to end up as a finished item. And once that process is complete, it generally goes into the hands of the marketing people, which is often where things get sticky as they try to ‘position’ products for certain audiences, or create brand images that sell certain feelings and concepts to the consumer. Maybe that’s where the most, shall we say, breakdowns in communication happen…
But just like many things, you can present these facts of life in different ways. Depending on how you tell the story, the way products are marketed could be seen as dishonest or misleading in some cases. Alternatively, you could take the view that people’s surprise to learn how things are done is down to the fact that they’ve never before considered the realities of food production. And some of these realities are harsh if you’re not familiar with them.
When you’re making TV for a prime-time audience you have to keep things simple – not because of an assumption that your audience is simple, but because if you don’t you’re probably making really boring telly!
This can sometimes result in fairly broad statements that don’t really get to the heart of an issue. When they looked at yogurt last night, there was an implication that most people think of yogurt as healthy (if not a diet food) and don’t expect the amount of sugar found in many yogurts. There was plenty of faux shock when sugar levels of some products were revealed. That shouldn’t be a surprise when at least one of the yogurts was flavoured with chunks of chocolate!
The problem here is not sugar in food – it’s people’s lack of understanding that if they want nice, sweet treat foods, they will have sugar in. You can buy a low-fat, low-sugar yogurt. Surely that doesn’t mean they all have to be that way? It’s about choice, the point being that such choices should be informed.
It’s good to educate people to look more closely at their food, where it comes from and how it’s presented (although eyebrows were raised when Mr Rayner suggest super dairies might be the way forward…).
We’ve been liaising with the producers of Food: What Goes in Your Basket? as they’ve come looking for facts about organic. We are never, ever shy of sharing those facts because, while the organic system is not perfect (is anything?) it’s working really hard to respect farmers, their animals, their land and, ultimately, their customers.
Now we wait to see next week’s programme, which is looking at chicken, including organic, to see how those facts are treated, in the hope that the benefits of organic food and farming are clearly presented and serve to educate the audience into making their own informed choices. However it comes across, it’s great that people are being made to think.
You can watch last night’s programme via the 4OD on-demand service, or tune into next week’s at 8pm on Wednesday, Channel 4.
Organic Farmers & Growers is a leading UK organic control body i.e. we inspect and license organic food and farming - and were the first independent body in the UK approved by Government to do this!
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