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Food Matters Live – a great new opportunity

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Each year there are a selection of conferences and exhibitions that promote speciality foods and innovation in that industry. This year is the first “Food Matters Live” at the Excel centre in London. Three days of conference, talks, seminars and exhibitions that I think are particularly relevant to my way of thinking about sea buckthorn.

Day one, tomorrow there are so many relevant seminars that Ben and I will be going. The recent research results from Harvard relating to Flavonoids and the potential they might have in promoting healthy aging is steering interest in one session. Pharma and food convergence – a brand new era? We are entering a world where a healthier diet may come from natural foods, or formulated foods that form a quality diet. Understanding where sea buckthorn fits into this era is important. Fruit juice – its role in diet and the science behind the headlines can be taken in a number of ways. Too much natural sugar is a recent comment. It will be interesting to see how the speaker from PepsiCo covers the topic.
Assessing next generation natural ingredients and additives – I want to understand how the nutrients in sea buckthorn have a relevance. Evaluating the drivers and opportunities shaping the future of nutrition. A principle conference topic that will I hope expose the issues that British Sea buckthorn needs to take into account when selecting varieties to grow; products to develop and information to pass onto market and consumers.

This is just day one. Day two will look at Cardio vascular issues and day three cognitive health. It promises to be a fascinating week. One that may inspire new ways of looking at how the project here develops in order to make our sea buckthorn relevant to market and consumers.

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Sea buckthorn and climate change

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At the age of 58 one starts to look to the future. Times past would have said only seven years to retirement. Farming is not that sort of profession though. Another five years more sounds practical and still provides time to see the world and enjoy what life has to offer – possibly with still keeping an eye on what is happening down on the farm.

With this in mind I have a wish list of projects to complete. Sea buckthorn is of course a primary one, but I have to remember what initiated it.
Last Thursday I was on top of the sea wall looking down as a benign tide lapping up against the bottom of the wall that protects our land. It is November and winter is coming. That means storminess and the potential of surge tides. On the coast we all tend to have tide tables that indicate what the tides are throughout the year. Our local ones are produced by Harwich Harbour and therefore one takes them as accurate. Reality is though that these are only guide figures. Across the year atmospheric pressure and wind impact upon these predicted tides and create conditions which can build an extra metre or so of tide height with considerable regularity.
Last winter a tidal surge caused 65 breaches to walls along the east coast and an unlisted number of incidents where the tide came over the top of the wall flooding land behind.
Our farm along with many along this coast were ravaged by floods in 1953. Our walls were rebuilt to 5m high which has held them secure since then.
Climate change is a factor that you have to take a personal judgement on. It is easy if you are a politician sitting behind a city desk to say whether it is something you agree with or not. But when faced with the potential of sea level rise; increased storminess and more surge tides you take a more risk avert approach.
Surges are becoming more frequent; inland flooding has become a regular feature of our winters since the millennium. Ignoring the threat to the sea walls that protect your property is foolhardy.

It was with this in mind that I breached our sea wall at Devereux farm. This approach was to allow the sea to spread across some land in order to reduce the tide from building up pressure on our walls. The first result was appreciating the impact of salt water upon the land. It is a killer of all things terrestrial. It makes one appreciate the advice back from 1953 to get sea water off your land as soon as possible to prevent the sale penetrating the soil.
Breaching the wall has created a very interesting new habitat which is attractive to many breeding birds. In the long term future it may be that living with the sea we have to look to this marginal ground to grow salt marsh plants or shellfish. But I digress.

The real issue with this is one’s thought about climate change and the future. This week Mr Obama took his agreement with the Chinese premier to the G20 in Brisbane. He said that this generation has unlimited opportunities; against this he mention risks of security; disease; energy issues; climate change. Climate change that this president is prepared to commit to with three billion US dollars to help the Green Climate Fund. A commitment that is made at a time when at home his political rivals have approved the building of the pipeline across the US to take Canadian oil to Texas.
For me standing on my sea wall; just as a rice farmer in many low lying Asian countries I watch the sea encroaching. I have been fortunate to live through a life where I have not been asked to go to war, and the sea has remained outside my sea walls.
If climate change is driven by human emissions of CO2, methane etc then these agreements have a real value. When the US and China come together on a policy it is heartening, but how much faith should I have in it. Is it just a political statement that will be overridden by economic priority?

With all such lofty global issues you can only do what is in your personal power to do. Sea buckthorn I see as a crop that delivers a high quality nutrient food opportunity that is relevant in a hungry world. It is a crop that seems to be able to adapt to different environments. So in that I set part of my future. the sea walls have been there for centuries. It is up to each generation to maintain them, make them more resilient and fit for purpose. Being fit for purpose might now need to look to allowing the sea to over top the wall with the increasing risk of surge tides and building a means of dispelling the water rapidly back to sea. We live in an uncertain world but life was always about risk management.

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Thoughts about Regulation and the future.

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Trawling the net is a simple way to confusion. So it seems is the subject of food labelling. As the WHO is asking for standardisation on nutritional labelling; the EU is criticising the UK for its traffic light system; the Food Information regs(FIR) are approaching their first action in December to highlight allergen issues.
The Food Information for Consumers regs are intended to bring general and nutritional labelling together into a single regulation to simplify and consolidate existing regs. As an EU directive it then needs enforcement which is where in the UK one could become confused. According to the FSA, general food labelling is the responsibility of Defra; Nutritional labelling, is the responsibility of the department of health; unless of course you are in Scotland or northern Ireland where regs are administered by the FSA – or in Wales where nutritional labelling falls back onto the Welsh Government.
There are then accusations starting that the FIR will disadvantage artisan cheese and bread makers requiring regular analysis of raw materials with changes being altering labels. Costs of this type of action, both in analysis and labelling add pressure not value to SME’s. Will the consumer benefit if these producers are put under ever more pressure. These regulations are about protecting the consumer, transparency in the supply chain and improving consumer knowledge. But who will pay?
Organic sales in the UK are only just starting to show recovery after a five year low. Consumers are price sensitive and the economic climate is far from buoyant.
We are told that disease prevention through healthy nutrition is a priority in the political agenda. But conversely the political agenda also promotes a cheap food policy. Regulation provides benefit to consumers and demands increased quality control from business. Competition; NPD costs in economically challenging times and fast changing regulation are issues that are just facts of life. As nutrition starts to become more important in food formulation skill, knowledge, technology all become key to innovation. This may seem obvious but to new entrants to the market, developing these resources is essential to success. For new entrant SME’s acquiring these resources either takes patience; funding or can be achieved through partnership. In times past companies grew and evolved. Coco Cola, Ocean Spray are both huge concerns whose early history has comes from individuals with passion, some luck, some opportunism. In a fast moving world it is often easy to go and borrow funding to develop your good idea. But passion is not enough. I have found with growing sea buckthorn in just a few years there are many issues that emerge that need resolution. With a crop, agronomy management is the difference between profit and loss. Some problems cannot be foreseen but need to be flushed out through experience. This takes patience.
Borrowing funding is a means of providing the resource to buy in skill, technology, consultancy, but it is not the route to guaranteed success. It can accelerate opportunity but it adds cost which needs balancing against low risk income. When developing new product in a high risk market a cool head and tempering passion needs to level plans to identify risks. If risks cannot be identified, or their solutions easily delivered then patience has to return. Some would say this lacks confidence. I would reply that it is better to develop and grow than become a slave to the bank.
Partnership between SME’s can link passion. It can pair up resources for mutual benefit. If objectives require specialist resources then a cautious approach to large companies is acceptable, as long as it is a calculated means to an end.

Sea buckthorn is a nutrient resource for the food/drink and natural cosmetic industry. It has all the attributes required within the healthier food market. Multivitamins; essential fatty acids; flavonoids; carotenoids – and a complex of other polyphenols that have potential for innovative NPD. A phase I read this week – ” Holistic link between ingredient innovative product development, consumer testing and regulation” is particularly appropriate to bring sea buckthorn into the current market place. This process is not driven by passion. It is an analytical approach to bringing market and consumer need into balance with the potential that a natural ingredient can provide.
Within this same context as a grower and supplier of sea buckthorn I need to develop my resource to provide efficient production technique; be resource efficient and eco-friendly; and have a policy that secures food safety. Its authenticity is mixed in that my plants are resourced from across Europe and Russia. But these bring with them many decades of development to improve taste; yield; disease resistance; harvestability. Authenticity is a factor of evolution. It has a basis of appreciation of natural and traditional usage. Sea buckthorn is a plant; an ingredient; a nutrient source whose pedigree establishes itself as an Ice Age pioneer plant, through ages of health benefit use across Asia and Europe to becoming a centre of research to define its diverse opportunity offering.

A centre of research is no use however if it does not follow through with clinical trials that deliver definitive results that are accepted by EFSA as providing a health claim. This has been a growing concern over the past few years but it seems that across Europe there are moves to improve the status of botanicals. The French, Italian and Belgian governments are approving parts of the Belfrit list. This is a list of plants considered safe through the experiences of traditional use. Linked to the list is the available scientific evidence that conveys efficacy.
THE Belfrit list came out of a meeting of the Plantlibra project. EU funded this study looks at the levels of intakes of botanicals, their benefits and risk assessments all relative to the use of botanicals in supplements. This international project developed, validated and disseminated data on botanicals and like Belfrit helps to accumulate the evidence necessary to persuade regulators that traditional use plants have a future. The Bacchus project, again EU funded is developing tools to create evidence for use to support the relationship between consumption of bioactive peptides and polyphenols and the beneficial physiological effects relative to cardio vascular disease in humans.
All these projects are a real inspiration that gives confidence that despite the issues with health claim regulations it may well be possible to communicate traditional use of some botanicals without falling foul of regulators.

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Confused about food quality?

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Another day of rain means that ground conditions really are starting to become too soft for running on with full loads of compost.
The result is clearing office jobs and some thoughts on research papers.

Nutraingredient articles today took my interest. Yet again there are research revelations on nutrients that are relevant to sea buckthorn.
The suggestion that flanovoids may help healthy aging in women, based on a study of over 13000 women suggests that more than 1500 lived into their 70s with healthy aging. The work looked at the consumption of increased levels of flavonoids in midlife and the increased chances of better health and wellbeing in aging. The results suggest that overall health improvement may be more important to individuals rather than chronic disease incidence. The report particularly relates to the consumption of oranges, berries, onions and apples, and appears in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
It is interesting that part of the conclusion suggests that the findings could be helpful to public health recommendations regarding diet quality.
I say this because today I also saw an article from Australian researchers writing in the journal Appetite. Their findings were that regular consumption of high sugar fruit juice could be bad for blood pressure. The inference being that high blood pressure can lead to increased risk of cardio vascular disease and other issues. By high sugar juices they are talking about juices with natural sugars.
The two pieces of research put different angles on the value of fruit. Both studies offer suggested outcomes that need further studies to define conclusions, but often such studies are taken as providing definitive studies in their own right. Communication of studies is so important to convey useful messages. Juice contains many useful nutrients and it is a convenient way to consume them. Taken the wrong way – juice is high in sugar therefore it is bad for you, throws the baby out with the bathwater. Taken the positive way – juice is an important part of a balanced diet with some understanding of the word balanced maintains consumption but in moderation.
the Flavonoid report is frustrating in that again there is an indication that eating berries/fruit could provide real benefit, but the depth of knowledge; number of research projects that are followed through with conclusive clinical trials results in such bits of information only providing some suggestions and maybes.
Without investment in clinical trials true final evidence eludes us. A lack of commitment to defining health benefits from natural foods means that understanding what makes up a balanced diet is full of confusion. Poor diet choices does not provide good health outcomes, and is that fair to consumers?
Hence it is important when we reference research that the results are definitive and relevant to consumers.

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What is sea buckthorn and what does it mean?

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Sea buckthorn is a plant that produces a phenomenal nutrition profile. Regulation tells us that food cannot be a medicine. But food contained in a balanced diet is the fundamental route to health. The sea buckthorn nutritional profile is a powerhouse in which each nutrient has a capacity to combine with any other one within the berry to provide a resource that the consumer’s body can utilise. Its fatty acids and polyphenol content are made up of many compounds which are identifiable, but obscure in terms of the detail of their individual capacity to influence bodily functions. This is a problem for a promoting a plant such as sea buckthorn. It is a problem of ensuring that information is accurate; it complies with regulation; but also a problem in that one needs to articulate and communicate this to consumers so that it makes sense and is relevant.
I know I have raised this subject before, but we have a health service that is bankrupting itself through being re active not proactive with diet based diseases. Yesterday we had a new take on the subject of alcohol. People do not like being preached to nor being told what to do. Saying that alcohol is bad for you has had little effect on consumption. Tell people that alcohol has a high calorie content and this changes the perspective. A perspective not for the whole population but enough so that it starts a trend. A perspective that will not stop people drinking, but reduce excessive drinking. A change of perspective changes views on outcomes. Sadly, one cannot normally see the outcomes of excessive drinking until it is too late.
So how do we put this change of perspective into how one can promote sea buckthorn. There are many, many websites pushing multiple benefits but these do not reach the wider audience. The nutrient complexity of sea buckthorn has been subjected to research but each of these studies is specific to a specific benefit. Regulations tell us though that this is irrelevant unless one can provide clinical trials which the European Food safety Agency accept as providing the right level of cause and effect evidence to become a legal health claim. This reduces the options to promotion based on what we know and can substantiate through nutritional content. This asks the question – who is the audience.
Sea buckthorn is not widely known but has every quality to deserve to be as much a market leader as cranberry or blueberry.
A question that was posed at a marketing course was – “If you are standing outside a supermarket how many of the first one hundred people entering the store will have heard of your brand or your product?” With sea buckthorn our first need is public awareness – getting those people going into a store to have heard the name sea buckthorn. A name is not enough. With it has to come some memorable facts. So going back to who is the audience – I see it as an open page. sea buckthorn is a food that is great tasting – but it is a good that is high in vitamins. Many fruits are providers of vitamins.
Just looking at Innocent’s website FAQs and there is a statement that their products are a source of vitamin C.
So we need a point of difference. An analysis led confirmation that sea buckthorn can provide other vitamins. Vitamin A, B complex, C, E, and possibly F and K – a veritable natural multi-vitamin. This could extend to include the omegas 3,6,7,9 – but each extension requires qualification and a reason to be relevant to the consumer.
When consumers are taking multivitamin supplements routinely, for sea buckthorn to provide a natural multivitamin package sounds good. It is a simple message and a memorable one. But it is a definition not a product guarantee.

When you come back to the concept that sea buckthorn is a food, then we should not just be looking at nutritional quality. The term natural is only as good as the way that a natural food item is handled. Poor quality harvesting; storage, processing; handling and distribution can all degrade a high quality natural product. All these issues are wrapped up into how good the services are that take the raw commodity through to the end product for the consumer.
So that consumer going into a store needs to know both the facts of what sea buckthorn is, but also the branding/quality assurance that convert the facts and definition of sea buckthorn is and deliver it to the consumer.
That is the challenge – a real product with reliable quality, delivered by a trusted brand.

This challenge is what focuses each decision I make on farm. What varieties to grow; how they will adapt to my soil and local climate; how I control pests and diseases, organically; how to develop a heavy enough crop to be profitable but a crop with consistent ripening and high in the nutrients that will go through into the end product; how to harvest the crop quickly, efficiently and without damage. Consistency and reliability are essential. Understanding the point of difference and the importance that it makes to the consumer is what will deliver on this challenge.

One final point – in my last blog I added that one needed patience. It was a very practical issue. I have found that controlling weeds by regular mowing is fine, but the temptation of too much speed when cutting between the plants can very easily damage the bark at the base of the plants. Patience delivers the same job but without the damage.

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Timing always important

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Today was another composting day – load three – 13 ton loads coming every other day. Each load providing a 150mm deep layer around and between each plant, creating a 1 metre wide strip of compost for each row. The compost is 25mm grade with a high percentage of fine material that I expect will be washed into the soil over the winter. My original concept had been to use around 150/160 tons across the site, but it looks as if I will be using possibly twice as much in order to have a thick layer that will mulch out the worst of the broad leaved weeds.
On the basis of spreading at this rate I am finding that I should have started this process in early September as cumulative rainfall is now starting to soften the ground. I am currently using a 30hp tractor and twin axle car transporter trailer which will take 2 tons of compost, but I am now cutting back the amount I am carrying in order to reduce the wheelings. Even so I have possibly another 4 weeks of deliveries to come and it might be that conditions become too soft to complete the whole job.

The other job for today was to meet a Trading Standards officer. This year I need to be starting development on food products. That means understanding which regulations will apply. As a farmer, crops are grown as commodities. They are grown within standards that are required by cross compliance with EU CAP rules. As soon as we start to take a commodity into processing Food safety; HACCP; analysis; label regulations; packaging regulations; environmental health the list goes on and makes me start to appreciate why the price paid to farmers reflects so little of the end product price.
Part of this process is deciding what sea buckthorn is and what legal description one can attach to it. Sea buckthorn is a natural product so I feel that it is essential to develop products with this as a primary concept. Sounds simple but that looks to analysing what key nutrients are the one’s to promote; how to grow sea buckthorn to deliver these key nutrients; and how to maintain the nutrients at chosen concentrations through the processing system.

This clarification of the definition of sea buckthorn will also guide the development of our website, which is starting now. Why have I not developed a website until now? Principally until now there have been too many uncertainties on farm. The length of time it takes for the plants to develop is both a frustration and a drain on resources. Resourcing the development of a new crop is a matter of priorities and not a matter of deciding what I need, but a matter of what I can do without or how a problem can be solved without spending what is a tight budget. With a potential crop on the Siberian plants next year it is now important to develop a marketing plan. With a marketing plan has to come the development of a product offering which needs to be developed within the context of a quality assurance scheme.

So 2015 needs to bring all these together.

And finally, today the post delivered confirmation of British sea buckthorn Co Ltd as a member of the German Sea Buckthorn Association. This is a key part of my thoughts on developing both the company and the market. Sea buckthorn has been grown across Europe for decades. They have the expertise. If sea buckthorn is going to gain credibility against other fruits like blueberry;bilberry; cranberry then it needs to come from a united industry working in co-operation to deliver the best product at the best quality.

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Vigilance needed or just good management

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One of the principle topics for Euroworks 2014 Finland regarded the sea buckthorn fly. This little fruit fly has the capacity to reduce a crop into the realms of unprofitable enterprise. All crops have a break even point and most of those require a good crop in the first place – the profit only comes from doing the job well.

So it is important that the appearance of the fly is known, challenged and limited in its capacity to reproduce so that every year the population grows. The use of sticky fly traps was discussed, and there was some suggestion that flies can be more sensitive to different tones of yellow/orange in the type of trap. It seemed however that the trap that was brought to the conference with around 1000 flies on it was yellow and had done its job. But these traps are only there to indicate the presence of the flies and allow identification of different species. Once in the crop then the damage will be done.

It seems that most of European growers are organic and will maintain this status in order to deliver a natural product to the consumer. This means no sprays are an option in the control of fly. Some other fruit crops utilise netting for hail control which doubles as providing pest control as well. This is fine for small orchards, but in commercial terms I see mechanically harvested sea buckthorn as being larger orchards so netting becomes expensive both in capital purchase and labour. So vigilance in observation as with the arrival of caterpillar or bird attack sounds like the order of the day.

The suggestion from Germany that fleece under the trees will stop the viability of pupae also sounds an important option. Preventing the ability of one year’s generation to pass onto the following year must be critical if we are to control the fly. I have an uncomfortable feeling that the fly is present in our native environment although currently living off other hosts. It would be valuable to know if foragers have seen the tell tale signs of sea buckthorn fly damage.

It was suggested that the fly seems to like sweeter varieties , so maybe its willingness to eat some of our very sour native wild stock is less enthusiastic. Only time will tell.

So this coming week as I return to spreading compost under my plants I will be starting to consider when/how to place and secure fleece in this coming year. Of course it might be that the UK will not have the problem for a while yet, but that is no reason to be complacent. All crops have pests and sea buckthorn is clearly no different. The problem comes when one looks for natural solutions alone. But the solutions will be largely reliant upon timing, attention to detail, sharing information and a little innovation.

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Euroworks 3 – standards are necessary but a challenge

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In a world where it seems everyone works with and to standards it is not always a popular subject to suggest there should be standardisation of an industry. In the EU farmers not only work to standards but have to conform to EU Common Agricultural policy rules in order to be paid subsidies. These rules ensure conformity to environmental regulation, soil management, fertiliser use, document management, welfare rules, cropping – the list goes on and on. For business to business transactions there are product specifications which each company requires in order to buy the materials they need. There are voluntary standards set by trade associations. There are national trading standards and EU regulations set to protect consumers from poor product and practice. In fact, with the possible exception of very small businesses, probably all transactions within the EU are governed by some form of standard.

The objective of all these standards is to allow some comfort that one party in a transaction is responsible and trustworthy so that another party can deal with them with minimal risk.

Outside the EU there are more standards. China is a vast country and, like Europe, they have set standards for farming, processing, manufacturing, so that product conforms to being fit for purpose. Russia has similar standards, most of which are governed under the GOST system when it comes to food products. The issue with all these is that standards are of no use unless they are monitored or enforced.

There are good standard systems that are self regulated but they have still to be credible to the overall objective of generating responsible trustworthy trading.

Trading in itself has a purpose. It serves to supply a market and the market regulates trading in as much as it will reject poor quality by not purchasing it. It is therefore the end user or consumer who is the ultimate judge of whether products or services are of good – quality.

Standards might have a direct business to business value, but they are also a valuable tool in indicating to the consumer that a producer is making every effort to provide the consumer with great quality not just once but every time.

So the third workshop at Euroworks focused on standards. It was very clear that with all the standards that people were already working with it would be difficult to try to find a set of standards that everyone could conform to. There is an added problem in that sea buckthorn is a global industry with different perspectives. The International Sea Buckthorn Association is working on this subject as there is a need for the market to understand what is good quality sea buckthorn in all its ranges of product. Finding common ground between markets will not be easy. Standards must not conflict or add to regulation, but add value to product and give consumers confidence to buy.

It is my consideration that standards must conform to a number of simple concepts to be useful.
They must be understandable – principally by the consumer so that they build trust in the industry. The principle characteristics that differentiate sea buckthorn from other fruit needs to be highlighted so that it is clear that a sea buckthorn product can deliver what a consumer expects of it.
They must be targeted so that they pinpoint aspects that can deliver benefits to consumers and therefore will add value to end products.
They must be credible – with regular monitoring and reporting in a manner that the market and consumers can see is transparent and accessible that generates confidence in the process and all participants in the supply chain.
They must be achievable as there is no point in setting standards that only some sections of a supply chain can resource and deliver. If delivery of quality only comes from the processing part of the supply chain it follows that growers will not gain from the potential of standards delivering added value. Quality needs to achieve value from consumers and that value must be transmitted right down the supply chain so each part receives some reward that enables them to invest in securing and improving their delivery of that quality.
It follows that to be achievable standards must be affordable. If standards are set too high then smaller companies may not be able to comply. Small companies often provide innovation and need to have the opportunity to grow and support the whole supply chain. Make standards unaffordable and the process becomes selective. The sea buckthorn industry takes its raw material supply from growers, many of which are small. It is a natural product, not a manufactured product, standards should therefore reflect the whole supply chain process. If any part of the supply chain cannot conform to the standards set for it then supply will become unreliable – and markets are unforgiving.
Finally I believe standards need to be simple so that they create a message that is memorable to all.

A simple, clear, authoritative message that is believable and defines the difference between sea buckthorn and other product should be the objective for setting standards.
Those standards should reflect not just on products but also the commitment of the whole service chain that delivers them to the end user.

These are my thoughts on what standards should be.

Our discussions at Euroworks were constructive but time will tell as to what will develop in trying to deliver quality as a process thought the sea buckthorn industry.