OF&G :: The Blog

The long running saga that is the Farmers Weekly jumper hoo-har draws to a close today – at least for us…

We’ve picked a winner from those kind people who made a donation to the RABI via our JustGiving page. We raised £57 in the end.

We thought it would be fair to let everyone see the draw take place, so here’s our short film in which you will discover the name of the winner, to whom we send our warm congratulations! Bad luck to everyone else who were keen enough to get their hands on it that they were willing to part with their cash!!!

Our now almost legendary jumper was spawned from a pattern found in a drawer at the Farmers Weekly offices. They were probably all the rage about 20 years ago.

The pattern ended up with us because our Certification Manager tells awful jokes and Community Editor at FW, Isabel Davies, took pity on him, told him he was ‘funny’ and sent him a ‘prize’.

Now, we’re all very fond of the jumper. It’s been something of a talking point, even outside the OF&G offices. Steve, as far as we can tell, appreciates the craftsmanship, but probably wouldn’t choose to sport a tractor-themed sweater on a daily basis. So on the strength of that we thought it could be put to better use.

We’re going to give everyone the chance to get their hands on our jumper and make a bit of money for a deserving charity in the process.

A page now exists here on JustGiving.com for you to make a donation to the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution. Anyone who makes a donation of one pound upwards will earn themselves an entry into a draw we’ll do at the end of February.

As a bonus though, you’ll get an extra ticket for every £5 barrier you break in pledges. So, give a fiver and we’ll enter you twice. Make it a tenner and we’ll give you three chances, and so on.

Click here to donate and earn your chance to win the jumper…

[If you donate, please, please, please note the instructions on the page about leaving an email address and unticking the Gift Aid box!]

The jumper is made from sumptuous organically certified wool, with its pedigree in the hills of Wales. Find out more at Ystrad Traditional Organics. It really is very nice stuff.

Bearing in mind that OF&G bought the wool and Katie has given her own time in knitting the jumper, we thought it would not be unreasonable to set a fundraising target of £50. But we’re pretty sure with everyone’s support we can better than.

Remember, you can’t find these things in the shops and apparently tractor patterns are like gold dust these days (just ask all the people who keep emailing us requesting copies!). And in a minute I’ll tell the boss that we’re throwing in an OF&G mug and pen to go with it. Surely that seals the deal?

Size-wise, the jumper comes in  just shy of a 44″ chest (or a snug 44″, depending on how you like to wear your jumpers!).

And with that, it’s over to you. It’s easy to pledge and the RABI will benefit from every pound. Please spread the word too. The more entries we get, the better.

This is the prize. Just look at that marvelous detailing!

One more time – here’s the link to make your donation.

And here’s Steve modeling for us:

The Farmers Weekly tractor knitting pattern jumper, as modeled by Steve.

It’s that time of year again. You know the one. It’s when we all say things along the lines of “Blimey, it comes around faster each year.”

Without the benefit of deeper analysis, you can probably sum up 2009 in organics as “not too bad”. Let’s face it, it certainly could have been worse.

This time last year, and into the start of this, we were wrestling with talk of a “feed break” to help struggling producers. It was very badly portrayed as an idea to lower the defences of organics when the going got tough. It wasn’t that and it never got beyond a talking point, but it didn’t give us a very positive beginning to 2009.

From there we were all still wrestling with the realities of the economy and still wondering how bad it was all going to get. That’s where some of the good news kicks in for many. Figures that have been knocking around in recent weeks suggest there was no collapse of the market for organic food. Some dips, yes. But demand remains and most producers have reasons to be positive as we go into a new year.

Across the sector we’ve all felt some pain, but we go on and there’s still so much to do.

The summer saw the Food Standards Agency release a report that baffled many knowledgeable people by claiming that there was no nutritional benefit to organic food. Putting aside that organics doesn’t sell itself on nutrition, it’s going to become pretty clear in 2010 that this was wrong and unhelpful. It made for some very negative headlines as the naysayers were given their head in the national media.

As far as we’re concerned the rest of the year held many positives. Our National Organic Cereals event in July was a tremendous success that saw one of the biggest and most useful dedicated gatherings of organic farmers, buyers, processors, merchants and service providers ever seen. Connections were made and information was shared. It was a truly useful event and will be repeated, in another part of the country, in 2010.

Following this we held our first conference aimed at processors. It was called Selling Organics: What’s the Story? and took a long hard look at what we are saying to our customers and how we are saying it. Held at London’s South Bank University it was attended by almost all of the key people in the sector and was very well received. Again, it focused on practicalities, not rhetoric – something that has been missing from the discussion for too long.

Highlighted at the conference was the Sustain-led OrganicUK initiative (discussed plenty of times in this blog). This hugely positive bid to attract industry funding and matched EU money to promote organic to a wider audience is on course now and we will learn in the New Year if it will be successful in getting Euro cash. It has been heartening to see the sector putting its money behind it – from the big brand names to individual farmers and processors who can see the benefits.

Every year brings its challenges for a growing part of the food and farming landscape, and always will. But if we were to sum it up we’d have to say it’s been a year of progress, certainly for OF&G and hopefully for its licensees and the organic sector in general.

Thank you for dropping in to this blog this year and we’ll try and keep it relevant throughout next.

Merry Christmas and a happy prosperous New Year to all.

A fascinating day was had by all at our Selling Organics: What’s the Story? conference, held at London’s South Bank University, on Thursday.

Pretty well all of the top names in UK organics were there to hear from industry leaders, marketing experts and academics with real insight on how the organic sector can look to take itself forward.

The main point was to address the failings we’ve all come to recognise in how organics tells its story to a wider audience and a lot of views and experience were shared in a packed schedule. There was also plenty of chance for networking and it was a really good day for meeting new people and catching up with familiar faces.

You can read our full report in the news section of our website and below is the Flickr set from the day. Please forgive the quality of the photography – I am not a professional snapper

The impartial observers among us are getting the distinct feeling that the great OF&G sunflower competition is all over bar the shouting.

Er, do you think we have a winner yet?

The picture probably says it all. That fine specimen of a perfectly formed sunflower is the pride and joy of Certification Officer, Alex Patchett, who has nurtured it from seedling to strapping XX-footer.

The deliberate avoidance of giving a height there comes down to the fact that we are nearing ‘official’ measuring time, when the man with the tape will give his final verdict (this week or next depending on when he can be bothered or is actually working from the office instead of a train).

Given the sorry state of some of the other entrants, you’d have to say things are looking good for Alex, but after a nail-biting summer it will be a relief to all to have an official verdict and chance to name-check  the runners-up (politically correct speak for ‘the losers’).

It’s not clear at the moment whether there will be another seasonal event to harness the competitive spirit that bursts forth from OF&G Towers, but somehow a poinsettia growing contest in time for Christmas just doesn’t have the same kind of unbridled drama…

@organiman standing with @carolinefw and @farmersweekly at FWi spontaneous farming tweetup. @jakedrum behind the camera.

[Ed: All these '@' thingies, denote usernames on Twitter. We, for instance, are @ofgorganic, or http://twitter.com/ofgorganic. If this makes no sense, why not go and have an explore?]

Posted via email from Organic Farmers & Growers

Okay, at three per cent land area it’s not huge growth. But the latest figures from the statisticians at Defra show stability and small progress in organics, rather than stagnation or decline.

You can read the report for yourself [click on 'latest release' for PDF download], but the headlines are quite straightforward:

• Organic cattle: +28%
• Organic sheep: +37%
• Organic pigs: +41%
• Organic poultry: -2%
• Cereals area: +10%
• Vegetables area: +16%
• Total producers/processors: +4%

As with all statistics, there is more of a story behind many of these figures. The report does explain that some changes in recording have affected the total hectares, for instance.

The figure for pigs may be a bit of a surprise. It’s not entirely clear what’s behind that (your suggestions welcome in the comments) but the poultry figure is possibly surprising only in that it’s not a larger drop.

All-in-all, these stats are reassuring. They reflect a state of the industry as we, here at OF&G, recognise it. The figures in the report run to the end of 2008 and, the way things are currently with the economy, there could be fluctuations to those figures already in the first half of 2009. That said, our own experience to this point in the year tallies loosely with the picture the statistics are painting for last year.

The report contains plenty of breakdowns by product, land area, region, etc. which make for interesting reading.

If you’re planning to take a look at the stats yourself, fear not – it’s a ten-page summary that won’t send you wonky-eyed trying to follow it!

Any regular readers will recall that we had some fun when our Certification Manager, Steve Clarkson, was the lucky winner of a Farmers Weekly knitting pattern. Oh did we laugh.

We promised then that the jumper would be made and he would be forced to model it. Well, I’m afraid that hasn’t happened. The reason being that Mr C managed to stymie us by failing to obtain the wool – a task we foolishly left in his hands. So, we’ve taken it out of his hands.

Our CEO, Richard Jacobs, is a man who appreciates the value of a good woolly pully, so he’s authorised a mission to locate the necessary yarn, have the jumper knitted and ensure (on pain of the removal of hot drink privileges, if necessary) that the man of the moment is photographed in it from as many angles as possible.

The excitement at this prospect is tangible in the office.

Oh and to all those who have contacted us trying to track down a copy of the pattern, we have that in hand. It’s being scanned (with the permission of the good folk at FW) and will be emailed soon. We hope you get as much pleasure out of it as we are!