Farm Shops Defy Recession

Farmers are predicting that sales at their shops – which enable small farms to bypass supermarkets – will grow by fiver percent during 2009, reversing the scepticism that the sector would slow down during the recession.

In fact, some of the UK’s 3,500-plus farm shops are reporting that business has doubled this summer compared with last year as bumper harvests lure even city dwellers into the countryside to do their weekly shop.

Figures from Farma, the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association, show that 33% of households regularly visit farm shops, with a similar number buying their groceries at one of the 800 farmers’ markets across the UK. More than half of UK households buy some produce direct from the farm, including pick-your-own and box scheme sales, the survey found.

The growing popularity of buying direct from the farm owes much to a new crop of shops, modelled more on department store food halls than what we perceive as a traditional farm outlet. This trend is largely attributed to Lady Bamford, wife of the JCB multimillionaire Sir Anthony, who opened Daylesford Organic, near Kingham in Gloucestershire, back in 2003. Another stalwart shop is that at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, home to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, which is Farma’s farm retailer of the year. It opened in 1977, initially trading out of what used to be the carriage-horse stables. It now includes a restaurant, deli and butchers.

More recently we’ve witnessed the opening of the Ludlow Food Centre and just last month, Fodder, a ground-breaking store in Yorkshire, established to support rural economies in the region. “The aim was to create a business that would provide producers with a brand new route to market and support our local community,” says Heather Parry who was instrumental is setting up the store.

Even the National Trust is tapping into the farm shop boom. It has just opened its first at Polesdown Lacey, in Surrey. A second is expected to follow at Fountains Abbey, in North Yorkshire, with another ten in the pipeline.

Farma’s research also reveals that farm shops are most popular in the South-west, where nearly one in two people have visited at least one this year. They are also popular in the East Midlands and the South-east.