Reaping the rewards of 25 years of organic farming

Martin Hesp meets a West couple who’ve cleaned up at the organic farming awards

It’s not been easy - but we do it because we believe in good food

TIM BUDDEN

Inspiration is the whole point of doing these Saturday food spreads. Sometimes it is the actual food or drink that’s inspirational, or it could be a technique or way of making something that is worthy of triggering inspiration. More often than not it is people who inspire…

Such is the case this week as we meet farmers Tim and Jo Budden who have just won two of the biggest awards in organic farming. The Devon-based husband and wife team, who picked up Best UK Organic Farmer and Best Meat Product at the Soil Association’s annual Boom Awards, have been soldiering away under the organic label at Higher Hacknell Farm for more than quarter of a century.

They set out to farm organically back when just about every other agrarian considered the idea completely mad and unworkable. They set up the world’s first organic meat-box scheme and have been operating it ever since in some guise or other. They are practitioners and crusaders - roles they apply with as much vigour today as they did 35 years ago.

I enjoyed meeting them so much, I stayed far longer at the farm than I’d intended. We ate lunch in their garden. We strolled among the South Devon cattle they’re so proud of. We climbed through their own nature reserve with its ponds and lakes to the top of a 600 foot hill where we could see that we are situated exactly halfway between Exmoor and Dartmoor - and also where their son, rather brilliantly given the altitude, grows the organic veg.

And all the time we talked about food and sustainability. A clumsy word, but sustainability will be vital in a world where the twin threats of climate change and globalisation will change just about everything.

The Buddens provide one example of how this nation could go forward, post-Brexit. They gave me a rib of their organic beef to take home and it was as delicious a piece of meat as any I’ve had in years. Prime British beef, raised organically on complex long-term natural grass leys is world beating.

If that story was replicated across our hill farms, and told and marketed properly, there is no reason why such a product

shouldn’t become a premium item in the new global market-place, providing an important and environmentally-friendly income stream for this region. Why compete with everywhere else by raising and selling conventional beef fattened on plant proteins harvested goodness knows where, when your meat has a healthy organic USP born upon old-fashioned, low-input, herb-rich, grasslands?

There will be farmers who’ll regard all this as nonsense. But as a journalist I know a good story when I see one - and its value grows when it is a win-win type story which is easy to tell. Taste some of the Budden’s beef and that story is very easy to tell. Add the fact that it is naturally full of good things like linoleic acid (a polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acid - one of two essential fatty acids for humans) and you surely are onto a winner.

In California they sell organic grass-fed beef like this in health food shops for three times the price of ‘regular’ meat.

Of the Best Of the Organic Market (BOOM) Awards, Jo said: “It helps us. We are quite small in the big scheme of things. Being on the internet, with the awards you can sell things better nationally, and we can put that sort of thing on the website.”

Tim told me something of the early years at Higher Hacknell, perched high above the central Taw valley: “We came here in 1985 and both Jo and I were pretty much driven to do something like this because, even then, we were concerned about the environment, about the food we eat. Farming seemed to be the best way to go. I’d been to Seale Hayne (agricultural college) and I took to farming like a duck to water.

“It’s not been easy - but we do it because we believe in good food, good farming, good husbandry and caring for the environment. That is why we went organic.

“We were young and very naive. At Seale Hayne I wanted to do my thesis on organic farming and I was asked to go and see the principle who said I wasn’t allowed to do it. It was considered to be a backward step and not progressive or forward thinking. So I had to change the title of my thesis. Nowadays they have courses on organic and sustainable farming.

“I was stunned. Farmers just couldn’t see how you could do it without fertilisers. We have come a long way since then, although there is still a huge reaction against organic farming, regrettably. It had a bit of a boom in the ’90s but it retracted - now it’s growing again.

“We wanted to support local breeds - we’ve always kept South Devon cattle - we chose them because it’s the largest English breed, very docile and does wonderfully off just grass. We sometimes combine that with a North Devon bull - a fantastic cross.”

Jo added: “They have done us very well. I run the butchery side of things and it is a great carcass - a great butcher’s beast.”

Building up the herd has taken years: “It does take a whole generation,” said Tim. “We keep a nucleus of about 40 females and we have all the progeny - so the calves, the yearlings and the fat bullocks. About 150 cattle. We also have sheep - a Welsh breed very

Jo and Tim Budden with their organic South Devons