Let's talk about... fake farms

Supermarkets marketing an idyllic vision that hides a distasteful truth.

“Pick up a pack of tomatoes in Tesco from Nightingale Farms or chicken from Aldi’s Ashfield Farm and you assume they are farm-fresh products direct from select producers with traceable provenance. Think again. These are ‘fake farm’ brands whose sole aim is to give the impression that they come from English smallholdings, when this couldn’t be further from the truth, with devastating consequences.”

So begins a piece on the Riverford blog, Wicked Leeks, by Nick Easen, about the practice of mis-marketing food with cheery Union Jacks intimating British provenance, when if you actually look at the Country of Origin label on the produce itself, the truth is somewhat different. Or consider idyllic scenes on wrappers of tractors, or animals grazing on bucolic fields that conjure images of farm-fresh, healthy, wholesome food, when it turns out that the chicken might be intensively reared, factory-farmed and polluting British rivers.

I’ve written about the darkside of supermarkets before, see below, but this seems like a whole new legion of low, deliberately designed to manipulate consumer desire to buy local, and choose healthily. Tesco ‘farms’ Suntrail and Woodside do not exist!

“For the last six years, a number of big supermarkets have sold fake farm brands despite threats of legal action, consumer campaigns and angry farmer groups rightfully raging about deceit, but to no avail,” continues Easen. “Back in 2016 there was a media frenzy, as the race to the bottom of the grocery market saw fake farm labels proliferate. At the time, Tesco’s former chief executive, Dave Lewis, told The Independent: “Our new fresh food brands are performing very well, with over two-thirds of our customers having bought products from the new range.” 

At a time when the poorest fifth of the UK population need to spend 70 per cent of their disposable income on food in order to afford a healthy diet, according to The Food Foundation. When only 12% of children aged 11 to 18 eat five fruit and vegetables a day. And over seven million people, or 11 per cent of the population, are in food insecure households, such manipulation seems even more disgusting.

The British food system hasn't been working for a while. We produce less than a fifth of the fruit consumed domestically, and just over half of our vegetables. Then there is the rise and rise of Ultra Processed ‘foods’, and on the other side the might of the top ten food retailers, a monopoly who sell 95% of our food while squeezing the lifeblood out of the people who actually grow, or rear, it. Not to forget the mega farms. According to Compassion in World Farming, 85% of all farmed animals in the UK are factory farmed. to put this into context, according to the Soil Association, intensive chicken farming alone has been growing at the rate of one million birds per month since 2014, with one billion birds reared for consumption every year.

No wonder the supermarkets lie. The choices and decisions we make are shaped by their marketing and advertising. And far from being champions of British farming, they are knowingly contributing to animal cruelty, and getting us to pay for it.

Spotted a fake farm brand on the shelf? Share and tag me @michelleogundehin and @riverford on Instagram, or email a pic to wickedleeks@riverford.co.uk

And if you want to support real farms and real farmers with mud on their boots while eating some of the tastiest organic fruit, veg and meat around, order a Riverford food box using this referral code and get £15 off your first order. Full disclosure, I’m completely biased as a longterm devotee. It does cost more than the supermarket, but I see it as a contribution I’m happy to make for the type of world I want to live in. Supporting those who support others; part of the solution, not the problem. I’d rather forgo something else.