In his article Prince Charles wrote: “On a sufficient scale the purchasing decisions of individuals can and do change markets.”

He said buying British food meant customers were “more likely to be getting fresh, high quality produce from a known and trusted source, offering good value for money”.

He added: “It seems to me that the key is to make it as easy as possible for people to know when they are buying British – and why that is a good choice.”

The prince suggested many people were perhaps overlooking the importance of farmers to the UK.

“The rural economy is largely invisible to many people,” he said. “So, it is perhaps worth spelling out, especially to those who – whether by choice or necessity – live largely urban lifestyles, that we rely on farmers to make a huge contribution to our nation’s food security, environment and prosperity.

A cheddar cheese producer in Somerset has said it will cease production because of “challenging times” in the dairy industry.

Cricketer Farm in Nether Stowey near Bridgwater has made cheese since the 1940s and employs almost 70 people.

A spokesman said the firm had suffered “significant financial losses” over the past financial year and production would stop over the next six months.

He said it had also lost a contract to supply to a “major customer”.

A spokesman said it was not viable for the company to continue due to of a “period of uncertainty in the UK dairy market”.

“Watford Gap, Watford Gap, plate of grease and a load of ……”

In these more discerning times its great to see the growth of a development like the Gloucestershire Services. The article, starting at the CCB headquarters tells us:

The building was originally built in the 1790s and is believed to be the first prison to separate men, women and children prisoners.

Over the years, it has also served as a police station and a petty sessional court before being bought by Friends of the Cotswolds who are hoping to develop it into a key tourist attraction.

Later Charles officially opened Gloucester Services on the M5, a welcome stop for drivers which is dedicated to local food, farming and the surrounding community.

Instead of fast food outlets, drivers have a traditional farm shop stocked with locally produced food, a butchery featuring Gloucestershire’s finest meat, and even a fishmonger’s – believed to be a first at a motorway services.

It is also home to bees and the prince was presented with the first jar of M5 honey to celebrate the visit.

Charles even put the final flourish to a honey mural commissioned to commemorate the occasion, by painting yellow stripes on a bee.

To mark the day Gloucester Services announced an initiative with one of the prince’s rural organisations, the Prince’s Countryside Fund.

Ten pence from every Prince’s Countryside Fund sandwich – handmade with wild boar, single Gloucester cheese, tomato and red pepper – will be donated to the Fund.

Once upon a time, honey was honey. It was the generic yellow gloop you found hidden below the shelves of jam and Marmite in the supermarket, and occasionally spread on your toast. In 2015 however, honey is not only big business…it’s a sought-after ingredient too. Health bloggers like Delicious Ella and the Hemsley sisters extol the virtues of raw honey, we happily pay double digits for a jar of Manuka, and now even the Duchess of Cornwall has got in on the act with a new line of limited edition honey selling for £20 a jar at Fortnum & Mason. So how did honey go from Pooh Bear’s favourite sweet fix to status symbol?

Honey sales have been soaring for the past few years. In 2014 honey overtook jam for the first time, with Brits drizzling and slathering our way through 20.3 million kg of the stuff. Honey sales are now worth £109.8m according to a January 2015 report by The Grocer. There are several reasons for this. Honey sales have risen in tandem with those of oats as a topping for porridge. The market leader, Rowse, has also spent the past few years promoting honey’s “versatility” – as toast and porridge topper, natural cold-symptom reliever and ingredient. It now has a range of Cook’s Honeys from around the world with different flavour profiles, designed to be added to everything from marinades to stir-fries.

I do also wonder if there are not more really interesting schemes like Health Boxes which might bring a new and different approach to supplement the crucial support these services provide. http://healthyboxes.co.uk

This article tells us;

The Trussell Trust said three days’ food was given out 1,084,604 times in the 2014-15 financial year, though it is not clear how many people got help because some visited more than once.

It is a rise of 19% on the previous 12 months.

The Trussell Trust said more than a third of the aid given out by its 445 food banks across the UK went to children.

It describes itself as “a charity founded on Christian principles”, and runs its network of food banks in partnership with churches and communities.

Care professionals such as doctors, health visitors, social workers, the Citizens Advice Bureau and the police identify people in need and issue them with a food bank voucher.

The Trussell Trust’s figures do not include food banks run by other charities and churches.

Jamie Oliver said today he found it hard to talk about modern day poverty.

He said: “The fascinating thing for me is that seven times out of 10, the poorest families in this country choose the most expensive way to hydrate and feed their families. The ready meals, the convenience foods.”

The celebrity chef is prone to controversial opinions. Here’s a round up of Jamie Oliver’s soapbox:

On British kids

In February 2011, the celebrity chef said that British children are “wet” compared to the Eastern Europeans he employs in his restaurants.

Britain’s culture

He has also portrayed England as a wealthy country where materialists spend money on lavish TVs.

Drinking alcohol

Alcohol has already come under attack from Oliver. When an interviewer suggested that the English can’t food because they drink too much, he said: “It’s true. Historically we’ve never produced wine. We have a culture of alcohol and we’re more beer orientated: the only people who drink more than us are the Irish and the Scottish.”

On school dinners

The original campaign will always remain close to Jamie Oliver’s heart.

He said: “School food has come a long way since my original campaign, but more needs to be done to improve standards and teach kids about food. We can’t underestimate the importance of investing in our children’s health and productivity at school.”

On packed lunches

Although he said we shouldn’t monitor packed lunches, Oliver has criticised unhealthy packed meals parents give children. “I’d say some are close to child abuse”, he said.

On academy school meal standards

Oliver attacked Michael Gove over plas to allow academy schools to opt out of national school food rules.

On the health secretary

When then-health secretary Andrew Lansley said that there had been a drop in the number of children eating school dinners following the healthy eating drive, Jamie Oliver hit back.

He said: ”To say School Dinners hasn’t worked is not just inaccurate but is also an insult to the hard work of hundreds of thousands of dinner ladies, teachers, headteachers and parent helpers who strive to feed schoolkids a nutritious, hot meal for 190 days of the year.”

On farmed chickens

In one episode of Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, male chicks with no use for egg production were put in a container and deprived oxygen.

He said: “I don’t think it is sensational to show people the reality of how chickens live and die at the moment. It may be upsetting for some people, but that’s how things are.”

Here at Pig Row, our cottage small hamlet on top of the Pennines, we are recreating a wartime garden. Carol, Little D (our toddler) and I are turning back the clock to 1943 to the crops our great grandparents sowed. The food we’ll harvest and eat will follow Second World War recipes and hark back to an age when empty jam jars were saved to be filled.

As a child I remember finding my way into the larder of my great aunt’s kitchen and seeing shelf after shelf of pickled beetroot and beans; a harvest festival in a terrace. For the first time in 70 years there will be ‘Fat Lazy Blondes’ on our kitchen table; this lettuce variety won’t be found in the supermarket. The ‘Manchester Turnip’ is going to be in our first woolton pie.

Still leaves me pondering are allotments the answer to global poverty? But then even if they and the sort of gardening profiled here arent, I dont see that they do much harm!!

The ‘horseburger scandal’ continues apace, with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) once again setting up citizens panel to find out what level of horse DNA in meat is ‘achievable, detectable and acceptable’ to the public – during 2010, the FSA organised a series of ‘citizens forums’ with the public to ask for their views on current and future meat hygiene controls and supermarkets reporting that consumers are buying more vegetarian meals in the wake of the scandal.  

Now Ikea, known for its flat pack furniture, has withdrawn chocolate almond cake from its stores in 23 countries after testing found faecal coliforms – bacteria normally found in human and animal waste. According to this media report, thousands of Twitter users have expressed outrage (both humorous and genuine): “Gross – I ate that cake last month” and “Wow! Horsemeat doesn’t seem so bad now does it”.

The first story is about who pays to clean up the horsemeat crisis.

Hard-pressed farmers have warned that they could be driven out of business if they are forced to pay for tighter regulation and testing as a result of the horsemeat scandal.

“Profit margins on beef are wafer thin and not sufficient to bear additional costs,” said Charles Sercombe, chairman of the National Farmers Union’s (NFU) livestock board, at the union’s annual conference in Birmingham.

He spoke after Philip Clarke, chief executive of Tesco, told the conference that the UK’s biggest supermarket would source more meat in the UK and step up scrutiny of suppliers, including installing video cameras at their factories.

That prompted a string of farmers to warn that they could not cope with extra red tape as a result. One farmer said: “That cost cannot come back to us. We are not making any money out of the system and if it comes back to us you won’t have beef, chicken, lamb or pork producers.”

Farmers’ concerns were raised as neither retailers nor the government have made clear who might bear the cost of tougher regulation after horsemeat was found in a number of ready meals labelled as beef. In recent years farmers have been forced to pay more of the cost of regulation including bovine TB testing and stricter regimes on dead animals introduced after previous food scandals including BSE.

This article tells us –  After shifting 21 million books, appearing in countless shows and giving an unlikely boost to cranberry growers, Delia Smith is turning her back on television. But to the relief of nervous egg boilers everywhere, the 71-year-old is hanging on to her apron to reinvent herself in the increasingly competitive world of online cookery.

On YouTube and beyond, clips made by cooks with varying degrees of expertise are winning audiences that would be the envy of Nigella and Heston. Smith will challenge de facto online head chef Jamie Oliver, who last month launched his own YouTube channel, Food Tube. Dozens of videos offer recipes  as well as entertainment including a chilli chopping world record attempt. In total, the channel has 13 million views.