richard benson - Food & Farming: An Urban Perspective

Food & Farming: An Urban Perspective

Introduction by Ian Bell

THE PHOTOGRAPHS HERE were taken by London-based fashion photographer Kevin Foord in various rural locations in Britain between 2005 and 2007. They were taken as part of a project that began as an attempt to record images of contemporary British agriculture, but evolved into something more idiosyncratic.

Foord began the project as a spare-time activity with his friend, the author Richard Benson. The two men have contrasting views of the countryside. Having spent most of his life in or near London, Foord considers himself a thorough urbanite. Benson lives in London himself, but grew up on a family farm in Yorkshire. As the pair began to travel around the country together, Benson became interested in the ways in which Foord saw things. The photographer took an interest in objects and locations that the writer took for granted, and asked questions he had never asked himself. As Benson began to scribble these observations and questions down in a notebook, the project developed into a record of an individual urban perspective on farming in Britain today.

Neither Foord nor Benson set out with plans to show the pictures, but a chance conversation between Benson and myself in a pub – origin of all the best ideas, of course – made me wonder; could a selection of these images, with some explanatory text, help the Addington Fund in its attempts to foster understanding between farming and urban communities? I felt the answer was “yes”, and so after some discussion Foord and Benson set to work, picking out pictures that told stories about farming, about the way urban people see farming and, indeed, about the experiences of the photographer and author.

I was interested to learn that although the two men had anticipated wariness, farmers had in fact been welcoming and had actually encouraged them. For various reasons, many people in agriculture are becoming aware of the need to improve communications with the public, just as some non-farmers are taking more interest in where their food is produced. The words and pictures here surely belong to this process, and I hope people on both sides enjoy it as much as I have done.

Ian Bell, Director
The ARC-Addington Fund, August 2007
The Bull

THIS YOUNG BULL had been rather unfortunately splattered, but he didn’t seem too bothered as he ambled across his market pen for a look at us. Bulls and cows like to come up and have a look at you, and at first Kevin was suprised (unnerved might be a better word) at how friendly they seemed to be. This animal, of the Limousin breed, was about 20 months old. I guessed that he was being sold as a “store” - an animal sold to someone who will fatten and sell it for slaughter If he was to be eaten as beef, this would need to happen before he was 30 months old. Post-BSE regulations state that as only cattle over 30 months can contract the disease, only those younger can enter the food chain. Not visible here was his large yellow ear tag, on which were recorded the numbers of his herd and his passport. All British cattle now have their own individual passports and paper work, stored on a national database, to make them traceable•
The Bales

THE BIG, ROUND wrapped packages that populate stubble fields in the summer have a curious hold on the imaginations of some artists. David Hockney paints them, and Marina Lewycka mentions them in her novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. Kevin can’t get enough; he says they are like abstract sculptures in the fields. They contain hay (cut grass used for feed in winter), silage (wet grass used for the same) or straw made from the stems of barley, wheat or oats. Straw is used for animal bedding or feed, or for insulating vegetables against frost in the winter. Fashions in shapes come and go. Big square ones are common now, and there are many different colours and kinds of wrap. Black wrap is losing favour because of crows; when the sun shines, crows see their reflection in the polythene and attack it, pecking holes that let in the water that rots the contents. Some people have resorted to painting patterns on them to break up the reflections•
The Cowpat

EXCREMENT WAS ONE of two things guaranteed to captivate kids who visited my parents’ farm. They might have been bored by the technological miracles of the modern world, but show them a pig pooing and they would be gleefully grateful all day. I explained all this as I persuaded Kevin to take this picture of a fragrant, fly-pocked cowpat in north Devon. “You want me to take a picture of dung?” he said. “Imagine the jokes.” “Come on,” I replied. “They’re an important part of the environment.” This is true. Just a few miles from where this photo was taken, in Holsworthy, Devon, is Britain’s first biogas power station. Like others in Europe, it uses cowpats just like this one to produce green electricity, and may be a harbinger of farming’s future role as an energy source. The other thing that fascinated kids, by the way, was the size of boars’ testicles. Kevin shot some, but testicles and excrement together seemed a bit much•
The Lovers

A WAY OF LIFE: Kevin wanted to show how farming becomes an inescapable, seductive-yet-difficult lifestyle. Urban people wanted reassurance this was still true, he said, because it implied that farmers were dedicated to producing good food for them to eat. What does it mean in practise, though, this “way of life”? Well, it partly means that the whole family is involved. Farmers wives and girlfriends do not get the recognition their partners do, but they are just as devoted to the farm – and they’re also usually the ones keeping the family going too. This photograph of haylage-turning in Devon reminded me how farm women not only work hard, but also sustain relationships by going out with the men to support them and keep them company. This is not to say they’re martyrs – most farming women would say they just love being outdoors. The ability to enjoy working countryside for its own sake is another part of the way of life thing•
The Gate

YOU SEE THIS stuff everywhere on farms – I mean the orange twine used for tying up small bales of straw and hay. “Farmer’s Friend” it is sometimes called, because after being cut from its bale it will be used to fix anything and everything across yard, field and home. Half a dozen lengths will be bound together to affix a piece of fencing to a post; a couple can suspend a feed trough; a single piece might be used to fasten gates; or, more often than you might imagine, serve as a substitute belt. The twine is extremely strong, and began to be used as an alternative to sisal in the 1960s. Non-biodegradable, it can now be recycled like household plastic - although I’d say that in a practical way, it was being recycled on farms before most people had heard of the word. Lengths are used again and again until the filaments loosen and fray, as they have on this unique gate-fastener in Cornwall. And there you were thinking it was just a piece of string•
The Scales

BATHROOM SCALES FOR cows – sort of. Towards the end of a day’s selling at a livestock market in Holsworthy, Devon, the cattle-weigh used for weighing the cattle stands idle, still showing the weight of the last lot to be sold that afternoon. Fewer and fewer finished animals are sold in markets nowadays, while more and more are sold directly to big meat companies who then sell them on to supermarkets and food manufacturers. Many markets survive, though, and for many farming people, the market is a place to bump into friends and hear news. If you want to find out anything about farming, visiting a market is a good starting point. They’re open to anyone, and less intimidating than you might think. Kevin and I met a dairy farmer as we hovered about the scales, and we learned more from him in 10 minutes than we would have from any book. We also found that the market cafe does an excellent bacon sandwich•
The Road

“HOW LONG HAVE we been following him for now?” I asked irritably, as I trailed yet another tractor along yet another busy A-road. This is probably the most common view most people get of farmers, and given that it tends to involve angry minutes being added to the leisure-time journeys, it does not represent a good public relations exercise for agriculture. That the bloke on the trundling tractor seems blissfully oblivious to the hold-up does not help, but I can assure non-tractor drivers that he may well be as exasperated as everyone else. I’ve driven tractors on summer roads, and I know that no one relishes the job. The truth is that huge queues behind you can be a bit embarrassing, reckless overtakers cause accidents, and sometimes groups of young men in a car will flag you down and try to pick fist fights. Tractor-driver reactions vary – some pull in when they can, others turn up the radio and ignore the problem. All they want to do is get there, the same as you•
The Ponies

WE WERE DRIVING across Dartmoor, passing the sheep, cattle, horses and ponies that graze there. “Who owns those animals?” asked Kevin. I had to admit I had no idea. As we parked up so that Kevin could photograph this mother and her foal, it struck me that although the roaming animals in wild upland areas of Britain are effectively tourist attractions, few of us ever think about how they got there. The next day we asked around at a local livestock market and found a farmer who explained that the ponies and other four-legged Dartmoor residents belonged to farms up there. The sheep flocks were “hefted” – hefting being a complex process by which a farmer trains a flock to stay in their own area. The ponies, unless they were the pure Dartmoor breed, did not generate income, but we mostly kept as a hobby. In some ways their presence is like that of hedgerows – a sign of agriculture we tend to see without thinking about farming•
The Polytunnel

I SUSPECT THAT when most British people think of a farm, they think of brick sheds and barns, muddy tracks leading into the fields, cows, animals scuttling about and a tweedy bloke chewing straw. This would all be set amid rolling hills in the countryside, with perhaps a few sheep and cows dotted about in the fields. Those idylls can still be found, but the truth is that to produce the variety of food people eat now, we need more than one kind of farmer, and more than one kind of farm. Kevin, in his enthusiasm for finding out about how food was grown, grasped this better than I did; I was still protesting that we should find prettier places while he was bounding towards this polythene building on an urban outskirt. “It has vegetables growing in it, doesn’t it?” he said, and quite right he was too. The vegetables in question were leafy varieties bound, perhaps, for kebab and sandwich stuffing somewhere down the road•
The Hedgerow

THERE WAS ONE thing Kevin always said on our trips. Usually it was when we were walking through some still, wide-open countryside like this in the Brecon Beacons. He would seem momentarily lost in a daydream, and then say, “It’s funny isn’t it? When you’re in a city you forget places like this even exist. Do you know what I mean?” Yes, I would say, I do know. It is strange to think that with all today’s technology and fast travel, rural and urban dwellers can live in such different worlds. Strange too that farmers and non-farmers know so little about each other’s worlds, when they are so co-dependent. There has been a bit of mutual suspicion in recent years, but working with Kevin had made realise that among urban dwellers there is also a lot of friendly curiosity about farmers. As we drove home from the Brecon Beacons, I found myself wishing they could get to meet each other more. I honestly think they’d get on rather well•
The Hedgerows

THE MOST TAKEN-FOR-GRANTED element of our landscape must be the hedgerow; how many of us look at classic British scenery such as this and really notice the miles of hedges dividing up the fields into the familiar patchwork patterns we know and love? And yet they are worthy of attention, being havens for wildlife, and differing in vegetation and style from region to region. The benefits of them to farmers are that they renew themselves naturally- although they also have to be trimmed - and that they are pretty effective when it comes to ensuring animals stay in their fields. Farmers, encouraged by governments since the Second World War, have pulled up many hedges to make bigger fields. However, new laws and grants are helping to change that, with farmers now being paid to plant new ones. If you look out as you drive around the British countryside, you will see many gaps in hedges that have been replanted with young shrubs•
The Bath

“ARE FARMERS OBSESSED by old baths?” asked Kevin when we came across this fine old disused specimen in a farmyard on the North York Moors. To be fair we had seen several in the past few weeks; old white bowls worn matt by the weather and left beside sheds or animal pens. At first glance they could look like rubbish, but of course they were kept for a reason. Disused baths make excellent spare drinking troughs, saving a few quid and adding an oddly picturesque element to farmyards. This one seemed to have been retired from trough duty but retained as a gathering place for chickens. I was trying to explain the practicalities of recycling to Kevin as he photographed this bath, but he was interested only in the fact that the chickens looked happy. “That's the main thing I worry about with farms,” he said. “Are the animals miserable? You don’t like to think they are. If old baths make chickens happy, I say use more old baths.”•
The Prizewinner

THESE IMPRESSIVE SUGARBEET specimens were runners up at the annual Bishop Wilton village show in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Kevin was slightly surprised that people really did enter their vegetables in competitions. I said I thought there was something communal and celebratory about it; a group of local people coming together to say, this is what we grew this year, look -. As I was saying this, a wily-looking lady next to us grinned, and then, catching my eye, said, "You wouldn't say that if you knew the cheating and scheming that goes on. There was uproar in one village last year because someone said they saw a winner buying his cauliflower at Tesco"•
The Cows and the City

KEVIN THE PHOTOGRAPHER was born near London, and has lived in the city for most of his adult life. I, on the other hand, am from a rural background. When we decided to photograph farms and the countryside together, I also decided to record what he, as a dedicated urbanite, noticed about them. The country can seem very distant when you’re in a city, the growing of crops and raising of animals activities from another world. However, as we set off from London, we realised how close they can be. These beef cattle, the first farm animals we passed, were just 26 miles from Big Ben; they may well end up being eaten by people at the other end of that motorway. In nearby fields were milk cows, hay, vegetables and working farmers. With the farmer’s permission, we shot from inside the field to show what human life looks like to cattle. Funny how it’s farm animals that get all the credit for making weird smells and noises•
The Tea Ladies

THE BEST FOOD that Kevin and I have eaten on our travels has been the tea at the annual Farndale Suckler Sale in North Yorkshire.On the third Saturday of October every year, a group of weather beaten North York Moors hill farmers gather around a set of temporary stalls and show ring to in this beautiful dale. They bring the young cattle they have raised in the warm months, in order to sell them to their counterparts in the warmer lowlands, because the winter months are too cold for cattle on the moors. It is a salutary and humbling sight for outsiders, many of whom may believe that British agriculture is now only an intensive business carried out by people with little real bond with the land and their animals; here are men and women, old and young, for whom this has always been nothing less than a way of life. The food element also involves the sort of generosity and spirit - and cooking - that characterises communities such as this, and lies across across the road from the sale pens, in a small stone outbuilding. Local people make a spectacular array of cakes, pies and sandwiches that are laid out, sweet and savory together as per the Yorkshire tradition, and that still include examples of traditional north-country girdle cakes and scones. We made a donation to a local charity, and then take a selection, washing it all down with tea served up by these beaming ladies from great brown teapots. Then we made another donation, and - well, you get the idea •
The Machine

LIKE A GIANT insect on wheels, this self-propelled crop sprayer was being brought back into a yard after a morning in some East Yorkshire fields when we spotted it. The driver was a wily, friendly old Yorkshireman who had the air of someone who had been working the land for years and years. As Kevin often remarked, farm machinery can be very technologically advanced – new sprayers are fully equipped with computers and GPS systems – but the people using it tend to retain a distinctly wry, reticent rural character. That contrast makes modern farming a fantastically interesting business sometimes. Given the debate about organic food and pesticides, some people would see this as a controversial machine, and the nostalgically inclined might see it as overly industrial and modern. Its driver, however, had done the back-breaking work that it removed the need for, and saw it as the technological marvel it undoubtedly is•
The Night

THE SCENT ALERTED us first; a tangy, sweet smell in the warm summer-evening air through the car air ducts as we sped along a Lincolnshire lane one night in early August. Then we saw the lights, dozens of creamy white dots sending shadows criss-crossing a field ahead of us. There was no mistaking the operation - it was pea-harvesting time. “Come on,” I said to a bemused Kevin, who thought we were looking for a pub. “This’ll be good.” Pea vining is one of the most dramatic farming activities. Peas must be harvested and delivered to the processing plant within hours of ripening, and so teams of harvesting machines, tractors and trailers, and mechanics’ trucks travel around like circuses, working all day and night to ensure deadlines are met. As we watched men and machines swarm in the field, I remembered watching pea harvests when I was a boy. “Don’t you find it an exciting sight?” I asked Kevin. “Steady on,” he said•
The Model

JUST LIKE A SUPERMODEL, this goat from Derbyshire struck a knowing pose and held it. Kevin, who spends most of his time shooting fashion models, was grateful, as he liked goats. “You never think of there being such a thing as a goat farm,” he mused, as this handsome Saanen-breed billy cocked his head. I supposed he was right, although the popularity of goat’s milk and cheese means Britain now has more goat farms than ever before. My favourite goat-characteristic is their apparent willingness to eat anything. An uncle who used to keep one on his farm, once took it to his village church for a harvest festival, and it tucked into some unguarded hymn books. When the local paper came to the farm to do a story about him, he ate the journalist’s notebook. I think farming folk develop a tolerance for this kind of chaos – but so do fashion photographers, apparently. On a bad day, says Kevin, supermodels can be just as troublesome as goats•
The Pigs

LIKE STARS moving centre stage, these pigs sidled into a spotlight of sunshine, as Kevin fired the shutter. “Those pigs,” he declared triumphantly, ”could go places!” The pigs are Berkshire sows – mothers who were due to have some piglets in a few months. When their piglets grow, they will live on the farm for a while, and eventually be killed for bacon. Their mother will have more pigs after them, so she sticks around – it tends to be the breeding stock like this that the farmer and family may give a name to. The straw she has as bedding is from barley harvested in the summer. Other materials that can be used for bedding include wood shavings and shredded paper from offices. Note that despite pigs’ reputation for dirtiness, they keep a clear distinction between the mucky and the clean bits; she will sleep only on the clean, and maybe use the muck for wallowing in in hot weather. We hear that they continues to resist the lure of showbusiness•