Food & Drink
Celebrating women
Two inspiring women from Yeo Valley Organic share advice for International Women’s Day.
8 March 2023
This article first appeared in our International Women’s Day issue of My Green Pod Magazine, published 04 March. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: Sophie Holt, Pigment Organic Dyes
This International Women’s Day we want to shine a light on some of the pioneering women making a change – from the ground up! – in the world of farming and growing.
These women work across all farming sectors but always in harmony with nature, following organic and agroecological principles and as part of a team. What a journey it has been.
Adele Jarrett-Kerr is co-founder and social impact director at Soul Farm in Truro, Cornwall.
The farm’s name is inspired by Caribbean soul food, which feeds the soul as well as the body. The goal is for food to be nourishing and comforting while at the same time connecting people to what they are eating – and the land it is grown on.
This sums up the ethos at Soul Farm perfectly. Adele, a native of Trinidad, and her husband Laurence want to make good food accessible to all, and restore local people’s relationship with the land.
The farm grows vegetables by following agroecological principles and no-dig methods.
Soul Food is centred around food justice, and is now run as a Community Benefit Society.
Its Solidarity Fundraiser aims to get more vegetables into the hands of those who can’t afford them through donations, match funding and subsidies for veg boxes for low-income households.
The fundraiser’s current goal is to gift 30 food boxes a week to local, low-income houses. Produce from Soul Farm is also donated to local food banks.
Alongside running the farm’s social impact, Adele is also a freelance writer and the communications and events manager for Community Supported Agriculture’s UK network.
After working with adults with additional needs across Devon and Shropshire, Sophie set up Pigment Organic Dyes, a social enterprise under the Baddaford Farm Collective run by Riverford’s Geetie and Guy Singh Watson.
Sophie aims to provide not only a therapeutic environment, but also an employment opportunity for those who are often excluded from work.
The high-quality dyes, dye kits and dyed fabric produced by Pigment are supplied to artists, dyers and the wider textiles industry.
‘What I love the most about farming is getting muddy. I like feeling like I’m playing at work, in fact playing at life, which is what farming feels like. Nature balances me out, making the rest of life a lot easier. Being an organic farmer in particular sits nicely within my own values. Trust the process. Work with natural processes, not against them.’
SOPHIE HOLT
Pigment Organic Dyes
All the plants from which the dyes are extracted are grown organically, proving it is possible to celebrate neurodiversity and help all adults reach their full potential while regenerating and protecting our natural resources.
The Baddaford Farm Collective’s aim is to make a small part of the world more like the world we want to live in, and Pigment is paving the way for more inclusive organic and regenerative practices.
Sophie does note that female farmers are ‘constantly being required to prove their knowledge and ability’ in relation to their male counterparts, which requires a lot of energy – on top of the energy they are already investing in farming and growing.
Judith began her organic journey following the BSE scare in the 1990s, as she felt producing food organically, with no artificial pesticides or herbicides, was the only way to ensure a safer future for food and farming.
Judith’s passion for farming is in her blood; she began working with her father and his dairy herd on Perridge Farm in the late the late ‘90s, and eventually took over.
Today, Judith’s Guernsey cows are all direct descendants of the original herd put together by her father in 1957.
A fellow foodie, Judith’s husband Clive was brought in on the operation, and Brown Cow Organics expanded into an award-winning 480-acre site with its own yoghurt processor, organic butchery and offices.
Some 30 years later, Judith sees the amazing benefits of organic farming daily.
The farm’s soil is rich in worm and microbial activity and the fields are alive with the activity of foxes, badgers and rare bats, the humming of bees and butterflies and a diverse array of bird life including finches, herons, woodpeckers and kingfishers at their stream.
The cows feast mostly on the abundant fresh grass in the Mendips and the dairy products are rich in omega 3, selenium and zinc, demonstrating how nutrition is built from the ground up.
History is repeating itself as Judith’s youngest daughter, Naomi, has decided to return to the fold and get involved in running the farm.
For its third generation, the farm will again be taken on by a brilliant and pioneering woman.
Two inspiring women from Yeo Valley Organic share advice for International Women’s Day.
Yeo Valley Organic co-founder Mary Mead OBE reflects on her role in the journey of Britain’s largest organic brand.
Soil Association’s Helen Browning explores how diversity in farming can support solutions for climate, nature and health.
EARTHDAY.ORG’s Kathleen Rogers is proof that women can change the world.
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