The hungry years
Many people in our society are struggling to afford to feed themselves. Philip Reynolds hears how a project is trying to combat this and help the environment
As we turn our thoughts towards Christmas and buying food to share around the table with family and friends, spare a thought for those for whom their sole focus is where their next meal is coming from.
On the face of it, this might seem like a common bromide handed out at this time of year served with a helping of sanctimony. That is maybe, but when you learn that more than eight million people in the UK are struggling to feed themselves on a daily basis, any cynicism about the aforementioned statement is misplaced. Yes, that’s right – eight million people, and in the world’s fifth largest economy.
The reasons for how this has come to pass will be complex and myriad and way beyond the scope of an article in Sporting Gun. What we can tell you about, however, is how some people are doing their utmost to alleviate the problem. Actually, more than one problem.
Focus
The primary focus is helping to combat food poverty, but a concomitant effect is solving a wildlife issue and at the same time doing some environmental good.
Any thoughts? Donner and Blitzen would, perhaps, be a corny Christmas cracker-type clue. The answer: deer. To be clear, not reindeer, but the burgeoning population of the six species of deer found in the UK, from the native red, Britain’s largest mammal, to imports such as the muntjac.
Charles Smith-Jones, Sporting Gun writer, says it is impossible to count wild deer accurately, but an educated guess says the current population is around two million. The last official estimate, published by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, was in 2009 and that put the number at about 1.5 million. It is a fair guess to say that the population has burgeoned over the past 12 years, especially given the strictures on culling imposed by the various coronavirus lockdowns.
This is where the Wild Venison Project (WVP) comes in. It is the brainchild of Tim Woodward, the outgoing chief executive of the food poverty charity the Country Food Trust (CFT), and Mike Robinson, restaurateur and renowned game chef with a particular interest in deer, as patrons of his restaurants around the country would confirm.
The equation is a simple one: there are people struggling to feed themselves and there are too many deer, which are also causing environmental degradation to woodlands across the country, which is in turn harmful to the UK’s stated pledge to be carbon neutral (net zero) by 2050. So, manage the deer and at the same time feed people in need with a plentiful source of high-quality meat while helping to solve an environmental problem.
The zeal that Messrs Woodward and Robinson have for the project is palpable. “This is a win, win, win – no downside,” says Mike.
Numbers
Aside from his restaurant commitments, Mike manages deer on about 40,000 acres across Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, the harvest of which also goes into his online wild venison business Deer Box. He has first-hand experience of the burgeoning
“It deals with an excess in one place and a shortage in another”
populations of deer on his patch. He says he has seen a herd of fallow about 400 strong charging over a hill in Gloucestershire and heard reports of large populations in the South Downs, New Forest, Essex and Northamptonshire. A rough calculation based on an average ratio of up to six females for every male says the population could have expanded by up to 30% in a year. This, Mike says, is not sustainable.
The problem is not a new one, he says, but has been exacerbated by a reduction in stalking during the pandemic. “Wild deer have outperformed our ability to cull them for the past 20 years.” He says it is not good for the deer nor the environment. The deer get out of condition and the land denuded. It is, says Mike, “what happens when a population grows beyond the capacity of the land to sustain it”.
The Government, in the shape of Defra ministers Rebecca Pow and Richard Benyon, is certainly interested, says Tim. Perhaps it is a case of needs must with its pledge to plant 30,000 hectares of trees every year until 2050 as the UK strives to become carbon neutral by that date. An out-of-control deer population stripping carbon-capture trees on a large scale will not help the UK meet this target. The Forestry Commission is also said to be keen.
The environmental imperative along with the social benefit of helping to feed people in need makes the WVP an attractive prospect, says Tim. It is a message that “people could get on board with”.
Andy Gray, a Devon farmer (see his article on p20-22) who is helping process the venison for the CFT to distribute in ready meals, says: “In all ways it is a winning idea, dealing with an excess in one place and a shortage in another.”
Levy
To help raise money for the CFT, the project is reaching out to the country’s chefs, not only to persuade them of the merits of venison as a tasty, protein-rich meat to serve, but also in doing so they can raise a £1 levy on each venison dish which will then go towards the charity’s push to provide more ready meals, all the meat for which is culled with lead-free ammunition.
Mike’s Deer Box business comes in here too, with people given the option to round up when they order a selection of venison online, the excess money channelled to fund food for those struggling.
The WVP hopes to involve around 30,000 chefs across the country and (as we go to press) will shortly be writing a letter asking them to engage with the project, as well as enhance their culinary reputation. To this end, there will be a social media campaign and the launch of a website, which will act as a portal to help chefs source their venison from reputable suppliers. In addition, Mike says this will help create a market for the country’s deerstalkers who, he believes, are the “best in the business”.
Both Tim and Mike have confirmed that “a group of well-known chefs” are backing the project, some of whom you might have seen on TV or read books by. Also, says Mike, in his experience, chefs who are new to venison, or start to use it more regularly, convert with an almost religious fervour.
Food poverty
But what about the people at the sharp end of food poverty in this country? The CFT has a symbiotic relationship with other food poverty charities it supplies with ready meals. One such is the Felix Trust in London, which, unsurprisingly, has the highest number of cases of food poverty in the country.
It supplies people in need in the capital with food from one of its four depots and its kitchen in Poplar, east London.
Richard Smith, the charity’s supply manager, who has a background in supermarkets, says the need is growing, and at a notable rate. The coronavirus pandemic has seen it escalate its service from serving six million meals a year in 2019 to more than 21 million meals this year.
The ready meals provided by the CFT are an invaluable resource in a quest where the need is always greater than the numbers available to service it. The WVP may go a little way to helping in this regard, but as Richard and Tim say, success for them would be their organisations not having to exist. That, it would seem, is unlikely to happen anytime soon, but in the meantime, they and the WVP are doing their bit, and every little helps.