A few snaps from Sean’s trip to the Soil Association Conference last week. And, even more excitingly, a little screenshot of Organic North’s mention in the new Organic Action Plan for England! 🤭👀

Sean’s got more to share on that one, so I’ll hand you over to him below… 👇

MASSIVE news for the organic sector in the UK this week!

As you may have already seen in the news, the government has released its first Organic Action Plan for England in over 20 odd years and for our sustained and continuing growth and good practice, we’re the company that was selected to be slap bang in the middle of it! I’d say it’s one of our greatest achievements as a company to date, and by ‘our’, I mean our growers, our amazingly loyal customers and all us here, together.

Plan unveiled to increase share of land farmed organically in England to 10% | Farming | The Guardian

As you’ll have heard me say on here plenty of times before, any of the work that we look to do for the betterment of our sector is only possible because you provide us with the privileged position and capacity to do so. So please claim this nod as a win for yourselves and share the good news far and wide. Together and in tow with other industry leaders in our sector, we are really changing the UK’s food & farming landscape.

The headlines from the plan are that the government are keen to replace some of the imported fruit & veg with domestically grown produce and we are going to be part of a consultation group that will guide Defra on how we will increase certified organic land in England specifically from 3.4% to 10% in the next 10yrs. As a mark of the government’s intent, Anglea Eagle, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs wrote the foreword to the plan and Stephen Morgan, the Minister for Food, Fisheries and Farming gave a personal address to us all present at the Soil Association’s Annual Trade Conference last week about it. I learnt yesterday that I’ll actually be sharing a panel discussion about the plan with Stephen Morgan in January at The Oxford Real Farming Conference – buzzing for that! : )

Oxford Real Farming Conference 2027

Aside from this work, we’ll be continuing to work with Defra up until and over the New Year to consult about both their plans to transform public procurement in the UK, and also, as part of the UK Fruit & Vegetable Coalition | Food Foundation, help them design their new Horticulture Sector Growth Plan too. It’s all go!

Our Ell’s weekly veg updates: 

• Starting in the UK as always, Royal Oak has red beets with tops, washes carrots, carrots with tops, parsnips, red spring greens and the first of the Halloween pumpkins 🎃

• Next up, Chapel has some large bags of parsnips, washed baking spuds and swede while Strawberry Fields has some cavolo Nero, flat parsley and rosemary too.

• Roddy’s has some savoy cabbages and celery, Bedlam some carnival squash and Foskett some Lily rose potatoes.

• Next up, Trinity has some mixed salad leaves, stir fry mix and coriander.

• And for our Wednesday customers, Moss Valley has some carrots.

• On the UK fruit front, Carey has added some egremont russet apples and rajka apples and Mole End has some conference pears available.

• From Portugal, Vasco has added some green Batavias, yellow peppers, cherry plum tomatoes, gala apples, kiwis, rhubarb and lovage.

• From Spain, Bioalgarrobo has some keitt mangoes, Biovergel some clems and star ruby grapefruits and Bioandalusi some cherry vine tomatoes and regular vine tomatoes.

• Elsewhere in Spain, Haciendas has some aubs, red peppers and yellow peppers.

• From Holland, Zann has some fresh ginger, primasol clems, loose cranberries and pomegranates.

• From France, Bio & Bio has some plum tomatoes and our top picks from Dynamis this week are habanero chillies, purslane, patidou squash, clems with leaves, quince and dried figs.

• Lastly, the following dry goods suppliers will be closed for next weeks orders so if you normally get some bits from them we reckon it’d be a good idea to double up if you’ll be needing things. Orders will resume with them from 3rd Nov.
  • Castagno
  • Classico
  • As Pontis
  • Arcadia
  • Niko
  • Ecoficus
  • Coato
  • Bras Del Port
  • Lehnsgaard

I’ll sign off with a wee moment of joy from last week. At the Soil Association conference mentioned above, as a head honcho from Ocado was lecturing us all about how ‘trust is imperative for the growth of the organic market’, you may smile to know that I felt moved to have a not so subtle pop at all the supermarkets after he opened for questions. I happened to mention (very politely of course) that it would be folly for us not to forget that whilst all the good market data being celebrated was from the so called ‘supermarkets’, that they’re also the folk who gave us the horsemeat scandal, factory farms, fake farms, exploit suppliers regularly, drive our dairies into the ground, unnecessarily airfreight things from the other side of the world, use excessive packaging and all that just serves to breed distrust. I mentioned that they also dropped organics like a stone after the 2008 crash and they’re only in it for the wonga. It was the only question (though more a statement I guess) that got a round of applause, some whistles and hollers and lots of handshakes of congratulations afterwards. A memory I’ll always treasure : )

Have a radical week everyone!
Sean, Mads, Alph, Ell, Cathryn and Team ON

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