fair trade for British farmers

The plight of British farmers has been in the news quite a bit lately. I personally wasn't aware how bad it was for dairy farmers in particular until I saw something about it on the BBC last week. And then I saw Country Living magazine's campaign for fair trade the other day.

If you are interested, here is a link:

http://www.countryliving.co.uk/index.php/cat/17318

I personally will be buying my milk from their suggested places for now and I am going to look into getting milk from a local farm if I can in the near future (after all, I am in Devon!).

We're on the same wavelength, C! 

Buying locally has become my obsession lately. I've started going to our local farmer's market (which unfortunately only runs once a month) and buying local meat to freeze. Even when I go to Sainsburys or Waitrose the first thing I do when I buy veg is to check where it came from. This summer my mission is to stock up on loads of local berries and see how long I can make a frozen stash last for smoothies over the autumn!!

Our little corner shop stocks local eggs, so I'm sorted there.

Now to find a local dairy and I'll feel like I'm doing pretty much all I can.

I find that it's slightly more expensive, but I also find that I use less when the quality is high. A tiny scrape of butter on toast tastes a lot better than a load of margarine and a really high quality sausage I find more satisfying than three that are all fillers! 

I agree. There are weeks when I just can't afford to shop the way I want, but we are trying to plan better so we can stock up and then use things more conservatively.

You could ask around the farmer's market to see about a local dairy. I know Riverford will also deliver their milk with their veg boxes. We would buy a load of it and freeze the extra. It defrosted really well and tasted great. We stopped when we moved but I'm thinking about starting up again if I can't find something else.

I try and buy locally, too, but it's not always easy.