Soil Association ‘means nothing to most people’: Monty Don

The Soil Association means nothing to most people, its president Monty Don has told the organisation’s annual conference.

“Most people don’t know about us and, of those who do, most people don’t care. So, let’s not get ideas above our station,” he told delegates at the London conference yesterday (October 9). 

Don told Foodmanufacture.co.uk after the conference that the Soil Association had to be “more clearly understood, more relevant and more accessible to the public”.

Food production was not the answer to remedy food poverty in the UK, he added. “Fair distribution of food is essential,” he said. Supermarkets had a key role to play in ensuring a fair and sustainable food distribution system. Asked the scope for supermarkets to improve in this area, he said: “99%”.

Healthy nutritious food should not be solely available to the wealthy. “It should be the absolute right of everyone – particularly if they happen to be disadvantaged in any way, to be children, to be sick and to be in any kind of institution.”

Hunger was a barrier to learning

But Carmel Mconnell, from the charity Magic Breakfast, told delegates that hunger was a barrier to learning for more than 1M children in Britain today.

Helen Browning, chief executive of the Soil Association, said it was too easy for non governmental organisations, such as the Soil Association, to be type-cast as being against things. “In our case, it’s  the over use of pesticides, industrial farming, antibiotics, and concerns about GM [genetic modifcation] and the environment, animal welfare and over-processed food.

“All of these are hugely valid concerns. But, unless we can deliver positive, real-world solutions that are able to stand up to the immense challenges of today and tomorrow, we will have failed.”

It was vital that the organisation was known much more for what it supported than what it opposed, said Browning. The Soil Association’s unique selling point was its ability to work across public and environmental health and to operate at a practical as well as a policy level, she added.

‘A beacon of trust’

The product assurance provided by the organic certification had provided “a beacon of trust” to consumers – not just during the horsemeat scandal this year but all the way back to the BSE crisis of the 1990s, she said.

Browning urged delegates to remember how many disadvantaged people were cut off from good food and the skills to prepare it.

The Food for Life Partnership – a network of schools and communities across England committed to transforming food culture – had made great progress, she said. “But there is still much to do and a real urgency about moving forward.”