In the Know: Helen Browning, CEO of The Soil Association

What do you do?
My role as chief executive of the Soil Assocation is a bit of everything: helping trustees set the strategy for the organisation, finding and motivating the best people, managing relationships, being a key advocate externally, trouble shooting, establishing the organisation’s culture and behaviours, helping people work together well, ensuring that we have the finances and financial disciplines in place to do our job as well as we can.

The chair role at FEC has to fit in around my SA responsibilities, though the organisation is very dear to me too; as chair, I feel the best I can do is find and support a great director, because it’s the executives that really carry the can, even if the ultimate responsibility lies with trustees and the chair.

What are your main philosophies when it comes to Britain’s food industry?
We will never compete on global markets on price alone; our land and labour is too expensive, and we, quite rightly, have got tougher regulations than much of the rest of the world. So we should concentrate on being the best, producing fantastic quality foods, with provenance, care, health, fairness and welfare as key values.

What changes are you aiming to put into place?
We champion organic principles, such as caring for soil (sounds mundane, but human survival depends on it), reducing the use of non-renewable resources, avoiding potential nasties, whether pesticides or food additives, giving animals a good life, and putting people and their wellbeing centre-stage. We aim to help all farming, food and forestry work to these principles, and to support businesses who are aiming for this too.

How does your work affect independent food retailers?
We are doing an increasing amount to support independent retailers who are stocking great organic products, by providing marketing materials and promoting them and their stories, and we hope, once we have sorted our rather archaic website, to be able to do this even better through helping customers find their nearest source of good food. We have recently finished Organic September which gives fantastic opportunity for independent outlets to shine.

We are also developing a targeted strategy to help independent shops with in-store promotions, training and marketing of organic, and we are working with the wholesalers to implement this. We recently held a workshop with some independents (large and small) to understand what it is they need to support them.

We run an annual organic awards, where the best tasting, most authentic foods have every advantage. This year we had consumer voting for the first time, which went down very well.

How can independent retailers help?
We would love them to get involved in helping customers understand more about organic food, and why it’s the best choice if you care about people, animals and nature. And we would be even more delighted if they would help promote membership of the Soil Association; the more members we have, the more opportunity we have to promote better food and farming.

What improvements need to be made to the food industry?
Where to start?! There’s lots of wise words about what needs to change, but I am not sure that the key problem, which is the huge price pressure that the food industry is under, is fully acknowledged. You can test everything, set up food police, regulate like mad, but if you don’t change our food culture, the fraudsters will still find a way. We need to shorten supply chains, so that people know where their food is coming from. Global chains are ripe pickings for fraud.

Have any innovative ideas caught your eye recently?
We held our Duchy Originals Future Farming Innovation awards recently at our conference, where contenders have to pitch, Dragon Den style, to the delegates. A couple of them stand out, in particular a fantastic business growing and selling wonderful edible flowers, and a service delivering organic produce by bike in city centres; great to get away from all those white vans while still getting all the benefits of home delivery. Could work really well for independent stores. There are always opportunities for new ideas, or often, just recycling old ones!

Where do you shop?
The shops I like to go to have a comprehensive selection of real foods, not just a few jars and olives. My favourite place to shop is Abbey Home Farm near Cirencester; in a smallish store, they have everything I need, so much of it made from farm produce, on the premises, as well as all the mundane stuff like eco laundry liquids too. Their organic, made-on-site dairy and meat, great herbs and veg, all the staples I need, and a great café too. It makes it worth going all the way there, as I don’t need to go anywhere else. As you can tell, I’m a lazy shopper!

What’s the future for the UK’s fine food industry?
In an affluent society, lovely food will always be sought after. Everyone wants to eat delicious food.