The past decade has seen the market for local food in the UK grow significantly and, although the sowing started late on the Isle of Wight, the harvest is coming good.
A flick through the pages of
Taste of The Wight, the magazine promoting Isle of Wight food, tells a story of an abundance of fresh, local food produced and caught by a skilled and passionate
farming and fishing community. The truth may not be quite so glossy, but there is no doubt that compared with just two years ago the market for local food on the Isle of Wight has come on in leaps and bounds.
In that time, the diversity and quality of what is being produced on the island – be it award-winning cheeses, organic flour, free-range eggs, rare breed meat or speciality salads – has increased considerably. Meanwhile, the channels to market for this produce have multiplied. New delis and farm shops promoting local produce have been springing up in every corner of the island, while the island’s farmers’ markets and supermarkets have done much in the past 18 months to promote local produce.
But this is only half the story, say those working behind the scenes. Steve Blamire who works for the Isle of Wight Council to promote local produce on the island, says stimulating demand for local produce has happened “quickly” on the island, despite being a latecomer to the table (Hampshire Fare, Taste of the Wight’s equivalent across the Solent, was established in 1991).
Mr Blamire says stimulating supply is a much longer-term project and one the Council and other local and regional stakeholders are only just beginning to tackle.
“There are no quick fixes because we are dealing with global and national agricultural policy that goes back 50 years,” he says.
There are several areas around supply that are currently being looked at, says Mr Blamire. One is provenance of meat, so that there is verifiable paper trail that the meat the customer is buying in shops or restaurants does indeed come from where it says it does. Abuse of the ‘local’ label when meat is retailed to the consumer is widespread in some parts of the UK and the island is seen as potentially vulnerable to this type of abuse because it has no abattoir on its shores.
“We are looking at how we can develop an effective system where we can approve local meat,” says Mr Blamire.
The downside of any system like this is the burden of paperwork it will put on producers and suppliers. However, one system that is already working well and could be replicated on the Isle of Wight is the ‘New Forest Marque’. In order to use the marque, producers in the New Forest have to ensure they meet stringent standards relevant to their own particular speciality.
Seafood is another Isle of Wight produce that, despite being plentiful, existing market structures hinders its local supply. Retailers such as Ventnor Haven Fishery and The Best Dressed Crab in Bembridge are certainly helping to bring more fish and shellfish to island customers, but the market is such that most of the catch from fisherman is exported off island.
Sylvette Peplowski is the sustainable fisheries development officer for the
South East Food Group Partnership. She says that even though most of the commercial fishing around the Isle of the Wight is done in small day boats – thereby guaranteeing freshness for the local market – most catches end up in London where the demand and price they command are higher.
“Bass is one fish that is in plentiful supply all around the South East coast, but it mostly ends up in London,” she points out.
Ms Peplowski says there are schemes to redress this that could be piloted on the island in the near future, however. One is a tagging scheme, already used successfully in counties such as Dorset and Cornwall, where catch is ‘tagged’ with a label displaying its origin and, in the case of line-caught fish – a sustainable form of fishing – the way in which it has been caught.
Mr Blamire says another idea being mooted to invigorate the local seafood market is the creation of an island fish market – a sort of mini-Billingsgate. “Even though we are an island surrounded by sea, we are not strongly recognised for our seafood – a fish market could help change that,” he comments.
With the need to be more sustainable and growing consumer desire to buy food they know about, the local food market on the Isle of Wight looks set to continue to grow.
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