The beat goes on
News that ethical consumerism in the UK had soared to a new high of £24.7bn by the beginning of this year must have been particularly welcome to Bill Jordan, a man who has made it his mission to convince fellow manufacturers that there is money to be made in wearing your principles on your sleeve ... or, in his case, on 25m boxes of breakfast foods.
For the past 20 years, the one-time professional drummer who, having rocked all over the world, returned to Britain to give cereals some soul, has promoted Conservation Grade -- a concept of farming that appeals to consumers' emotional attachment to the British countryside, albeit founded on some pretty hard-headed protocols.
All 90 of Jordans' cereals suppliers, producing 25,000t of grain a year for the Bedfordshire-based manufacturer, subscribe to the Guild of Conservation Food Producers, an organisation co-founded by Jordan in the 1980s to encourage wildlife friendly farming. Now being rolled out to sectors similarly concerned with provenance and environmental stewardship -- with brewers and bakers top of its hit list -- Conservation Grade recently raised its game to stay ahead of changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the strengthening of some sector assurance schemes.
What sets it apart (and makes it appealing to processors looking for a marketing niche) is a requirement for farmers to take 10% of their land out of production and put it into wildlife management -- in effect, creating hundreds of mini nature reserves throughout the UK. In return, producers are promised a 10% premium on their produce while manufacturers can apply to license their food as Conservation Grade.
"Commercial farming has got to get back to establishing a relationship with people who are going to give them a premium for their product, as we have always done," says Jordan, a keen environmentalist who became the first in five generations of his family to return to the land last year when he bought a 650-acre arable enterprise in the Brecklands. Up until then, he says, he hadn't appreciated what "bloody hard work" farming was, but it just served to convince him that it is only by forming credible alliances with agricultural producers that food manufacturing will have a future in the UK.
"The 20 big ambient food companies producing 50% of the food are all being pushed on margin; that's the only way they can show a return to the shareholder. The companies that are based here, farming and processing in the UK, all have higher costs and they have got to get the consumer on side."
The alternative, says Jordan, is to export food manufacturing to low cost regions, such as eastern Europe. "But we have got to look after our own countryside -- who cares about Hungary?"
He credits Conservation Grade, which is shamelessly targeted at the six million paid up members of wildlife and heritage groups, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust, with helping build Jordans into a £60m turnover brand.
"We are the only breakfast company that has grown consistently over the past 10 years at 8% per annum -- that's not a coincidence," says the man who teamed up with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust this year to promote the company's 150th anniversary.
While both Assured Food Standards, which administers the Red Tractor scheme, and industry think-tank IGD continue to argue that countryside management scarcely enters the radar of most consumers, the Co-operative Bank's Ethical Purchasing Index, which takes shoppers' moral temperature, would suggest that the mercury is indeed rising for environmentally aware manufacturers like Jordans who shared in a 9.8% increase in sales over 12 months.
Ruth Russelson of the research and pressure group Ethical Consumer says there is a growing awareness of the impact of food manufacture on the environment and it's not confined to high-spending empty nesters.
"Ethical shoppers are a mixture of the 'deep greens' who know all the arguments and are very aware of the impact their purchases have on the environment and a group of people who have a gut feeling and partial understanding and just want to be doing the right thing." For them, she says, labelling, and particularly those labels endorsed by well-known organisations working in the area of wildlife conservation, is key.
Jonathan Curtoys, a Yorkshire-based consultant with The Farmed Environment Company which helps manage Conservation Grade, says the scheme is particularly suited to small and medium sized firms wanting to invest morals as well as money in their brands.
"There is a passion which flows from the farmer, through the processor to the consumer," is how he puts it. But that passion is far from blind. Independent research has already demonstrated a five-fold increase in some species on Conservation Grade farms and ongoing studies, funded by Unilever and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, should bolster the scheme's credentials further.
Put simply, Conservation Grade is attempting to rebuild the food chain, starting with pollen-rich meadows -- an iconoclastic image of the British countryside, which makes an emotional connection with most consumers.
"Putting flowers back is incredibly important in underpinning the food chain," says Curtoys. "We believe there is a sound economic basis for doing what we are doing as well as addressing the damage farmers were encouraged to commit under the old Common Agricultural Policy."
Reform of the subsidy regime has given the scheme a window to expand, says Bill Jordan, who believes Conservation Grade offers a half-way house for both producers and processors who like the idea of organic, but cannot justify the costs.
"For a long time processors have imagined that organic is the answer to the maiden's prayer, but it's not easy. We have worked with it for 30 years. You have to pass on quite a premium -- it has been as high as 100% -- and from a processing point of view, you have a more variable ingredient."
He is happy to let organic supply its own niche and he is equally comfortable with the rise of the independent Linking Environment And Farming marque which gives shoppers the ability to trace environmentally friendly food products from shelf to farm. "It doesn't give them a market and a premium -- we give them both," he says.
Above all, it is his passion for keeping British food British that drives him on.
"We believe the British food processing industry could work much more tightly with agriculture, as it has done in the past.
"The story of provenance and supply of ingredients is a terribly important one. At the end of the day, we have got to go beyond food safety." FM
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