Confusing communication

Winter has set in and so with it comes the dismal task of weeding. Weeding should not be necessary, as one of the golden rules of growing sea buckthorn is to control weeds. The issue will however soon be committed to the past as I am really hoping that by this spring i will have a compost spreader. It might not sound a very exciting thing to most people, but this moves my field work into the 21st century. Gone will be hand weeding 5000 plants through the wet and cold of winter. The thrower is a bespoke machine that will allow me to bury area around each plant below 6-8 inches of 25mm grade green waste compost. The fact it comes with a tractor means that my two second hand mowers will also be retiring to be replaced a larger, faster, more powerful means of keeping the grass between the plants under close control. No weeds means no competition for the sea buckthorn.

Smothering the ground will also help in the control of sea buckthorn fly if it crosses from Europe to the UK next year. The fly lay eggs in the berries. The full metamorphosis process ends up with pupae falling to the ground to over winter in the soil. Hopefully the compost will create a barrier to the soil and as it rots down the pupae will be exposed to predatory birds. Sea buckthorn fly can reduce a crop by over 50% so control is crucial.

The news of the compost thrower is not the only significant issue this month. British Sea buckthorn started trading in its own right this month. The first product being a sea buckthorn supplement for horses. The target market is performance horses – racing; eventing; dressage; show jumping. It is a classic product following the historic linkage with Hippophae as its plant name translating to Shiny Horse. Selling sea buckthorn in the UK falls under the Nutrition and Health Claim directive. This covers food/drink and human products, but for the horse industry we come under the control of the Vet and Medicines directorate. It is frustrating as we have many customers with great testamonials. They say sea buckthorn has helped their horse – but legally we are restricted from saying how the product benefits them.

I fully sympathise with the need for controls that only allow marketing to refer to benefits proven by science, but as i have said a number of times in this blog – proving how a botanical product works is very difficult.

Statements, like statistics are not always what they seem. Nutrition is a minefield as it is highly complex impacted by many variables. So when the World Health Organisation classified “all red meat as probably carcinogen to humans” the reaction has, not unsurprisingly been mixed. The media picked up this statement and all of a sudden two rashers of bacon a day are deemed to heighten the risk of bowel cancer by 18%. An article I read this weekend rationalised this statistic. In the UK we all have a risk of bowel cancer that is around 6.25%. This 18% risk, may lift this risk to 7.35%. But what of the balanced diet, what of lifestyle influences, what of genetic inheritance issues – these bold statements do little but create initial panic, followed by sane ridicule. Unfortunately if there was value in the original issue then the point is lost through poor communication.

So when we look to market our sea buckthorn should we leave the product to sell itself and allow for market growth to be by good consumer experience, or should we be looking to trying to communicate the science that comes from research papers? Science is not static, understanding processes is growing and changing all the time. But as the bacon saga suggests, it is not what you say that matters, it is how you say it that conveys the message.