Speciality Food Feb/March 2024

44 A s he slices into a chunk of Ivy’s Reserve, the world’s first carbon neutral cheese, Richard Clothier, managing director of Wyke Farms, can’t help but feel a sense of pride. Named for his grandmother, who had a deep love for the countryside, the cheese, and the way it is made, inmany ways sets the benchmark for how British dairy could look in the future. “My grandparents didn’t waste anything,” Richard says. “They believed if you look after nature, nature will look after you. We very much follow those guidelines.” Wyke Farms is just one of many cheesemaking businesses refusing to rest on its laurels where the environment is concerned. It was the first national food brand to use 100% sustainable energy, and the first dairy in the UK to achieve the Carbon Trust’s triple standard. Richard, who calls himself a modern practical environmentalist, hopes what they’ve achieved will inspire others. “Renewable energy, farming regeneratively, plantingmore trees, creating wildlife corridors – all these things are scalable. There are always things that can be done to make sure that every year that goes by we produce in an environmentally sensitive way. It’s like food safety, and health and safety – this just has to be a given,” he says. It’s not just ethical credentials and a strongmoral compass that have pushed the business in this direction – it’s consumers. Richard says he’s seeing rising interest – particularly from the Asianmarket - around sustainability and scope one and two @specialityfood up with other farmers who want to change for the better. For them, working in a more sustainable way became a necessity when they inherited the farm 20 years ago. “We were in an economy where every time wool, grain and soya prices changed, farming was devastated. We wanted to make ourselves into a homegrown, circular economy because it protected our staff, and us, from global fluctuations in prices.” Soil health and grass are things Catherine spends an enormous amount of time thinking about, but she says she’s not alone. “Across the industry people are recognising the threat of climate change and the benefits of regenerative farming.” The climate of Britain, she adds, is perfectly suited to growing grass, “and grassland is a very carbon sequestering system.” We need to get more fungus and bacteria back into the soil, Catherine continues. “This permanent grassland is like the forest floor. It is a hive of emissions, as has Jane Quicke at Quicke’s, who says she has certainly noticed an uptick in conversations around the topic with customers. Quicke’s is similarly committed to doing things the right way throughout the chain. “What we do is verymuch connected, and part of our story,” Jane explains, agreeing with Richard that now is the time to act in dairy, particularly with regards to managing andmonitoring soil health, which is central to the narrative in modern farming. “If you are farming over a long time –maybe 100 years,” Jane explains, “there will be an environmental cost if you’re not using sustainable practices. You can only do that for so long before you get into a situation where you have to put so much back into the soil artifically.” While there are no hard and fast regulations currently for regenerative farming, it’s certainly become a buzzword in the industry, and Quicke’s is committed to following its guidelines as closely as possible, with Jane adding that working this way is for the commercially-minded, as well as for those who care about the land. “It makes sense, especially as input costs are high for fertiliser and feed. You want to be as low input as possible on your farm, using nature in balance with your farming practice.” Working in harmony with the land is second nature for the Temple family in Norfolk, makers of Copy’s Cloud and BinhamBlue. Catherine Temple says she and her husband have invested every penny they own into measures that protect the environment, and they’re keen to link biodiversity, and grazing animals on pasture is a recognised tool in carbon sequestration and climate mitigation. Research is showing that it’s good, and people are moving to it because it is helping them to play their part.” A newway of working Moving away frommonoculture, and enriching fields with a multitude of flowers, grasses and herbs, is one of the ways farmers canmake a positive environmental contribution, says Jane. At Quicke’s, beans and oats are companion cropped, and the results speak for themselves. “The cool thing is beans, as a legume, help fix nitrogen in the soil, and they do that at the point in the growth of the oats when they need nitrogen. It means CHEESE FROMTHE GREENER SIDE OFTHE FENCE Artisan cheesemakers are increasingly transforming the way they work to minimise their impact on the environment while making a difference to the landscape around them. Speciality Food reports There are always things that can be done tomake sure that every year that goes by we produce in an environmentally sensitive way RICHARD CLOTHIER JANE QUICKE