It pays small farmers to go up market

By Anna Browning
BBC News Online

With the UK countryside in crisis, farmers are surviving by cutting out the middlemen and selling their produce straight to foodies.

Every Saturday, in the early hours, Marian Harding packs her second-hand chiller van with drinking yoghurt and leaves her East Sussex dairy farm to head for London, to Southwark's Borough Market.

Lancashire beef and sheep farmer David Kitson is already on the road. It takes him four-and-a-half hours to get to the market, but after three years on the list waiting for a pitch, it's a journey he's more than happy to make.

Be a big cheese by selling direct

Four years ago, Mr Kitson was close to leaving farming - an industry in which few are making anything like a profit. He would either get out for good, or make things change. He opted to change.

Through the internet, over the telephone and via markets he started to sell his Highland beef himself. And he's not looked back.

Farmhousedirect.com not only gives him a proper return for his hard work, it cuts out the supermarkets and gives a lot of customers something hard to find - good quality food, that's looked after properly - it's matured by hanging for at least three weeks.

"I'm gobsmacked by the demand," he says. His farm is now expanding to keep up with the retail side of the business.

Things are also looking up for Marian Harding's yoghurt concern, Court Lodge Organics.

She has taken the raw product of her dairy organic herd, found a niche in the market to add value (drinking yoghurt), then sold it to a public, which, after years in ignorance, is slowly beginning to take notice of its what's on its plate.

REGISTERED DAIRY FARMERS 1997: 34,242 2002: 25,548 Source: NFU

Buy Court Lodge yoghurt and you don't just buy something for lunch. It's about supporting the countryside too. Marian and her husband David take their roles as trustees of the countryside extremely seriously.

Nearly half the farm is dedicated to preserving and encouraging the environment. Their acres are full of ponds, marshland, woods and even a heronry - the creatures dot the sky.

It was while visiting the Netherlands that the couple hit on the idea. Everyone was drinking yoghurt. Back home, and while their neighbours were making the more traditional, thicker yoghurt, at that time just one other firm in the UK was making yoghurt to drink. And so, Court Lodge Organics was born.

Three years on they freely admit it's this side of the business that's kept them farming. With organic milk is fetching 21p a litre (23p is the break-even price), the yoghurt is their ray of sunshine in a stormy sky.

So enter London's Borough Market - where loaves can cost up to three times more than the standard white sliced but where celebrities are two a penny.

Now a stomping ground of TV chef Jamie Oliver, a market at Borough was first mentioned in 1276, but only in the last five years has there been a fine food market - every Friday and Saturday 9am to 4pm.

Jamie Oliver might be there, but don't let that put you off

It's a honey pot for Londoners keen on good food and with the money to pay for it. It also a tourist attraction (winner of a Visit London award for most popular London experience).

It's 9am on Saturday morning and Marian's first customer, Amy, 38, a yoga instructor from nearby Herne Hill, is shopping with Gatsby - a golden retriever on a strictly organic diet.

"I love shopping here and it's nice to see the money going directly to the people who produce the food. It's much more sustainable," says Marian.

"It's not cheap, but I'd much rather spend more money here than in a supermarket. I don't like supporting big business."