Trying to crack problem of egg self-sufficiency

"We want to bring about a shift towards local food culture, moving away from culture that doesn't care," says Pam Warhurst.

"If people buy locally it's a virtuous circle in terms of jobs and the environment, but that cultural shift isn't easy."

In Todmorden they are looking to hens to deliver that change. Becoming self-sufficient in eggs by 2018 is the aim of the Incredible Edible Todmorden project founded by Pam Warhurst and Mary Clear. They reckon eggs offer a neat opportunity to practise self-sufficiency and community trade.

They conducted a survey of 140 residents which showed the town was "boringly average" when it came to egg consumption. Like most Brits, Tod folk eat an average of three eggs per week. The population is about 15,000, this makes a week's supply about 45,000 eggs, or about 6,500 eggs per day.

Every Egg Matters, IET's "big campaign", aims to encourage people to keep healthy hens or to buy local eggs. It has developed to include an egg map and a support network for people who keep, or want to keep, chickens.

Perhaps most significantly, IET aims to form a co-operative of medium-sized egg producers, which will supply Todmorden's mass egg market. It is a challenging prospect, not least because it has never been done before.

Pam Warhurst is no stranger to community organising. She chairs a regeneration company called Pennine Prospects and sits on the Natural England board. Her previous posts include chair of Calderdale NHS Trust, leader of Calderdale Council and deputy chair of the Countryside Agency.

The egg map, available online, or as a poster or leaflet, features 52 homes, smallholdings, farms and shops with eggs for sale. Most of the producers have less than 50 hens and sell direct to the public under farm gate rules. IET provides plain English advice on regulation, husbandry and animal welfare on their website and through their egg network.

Community organisations are getting on board too. Castle Hill Primary School is keeping hens in its playground and Todmorden High School, a major IET supporter, plans to keep about 50 chickens.

Pauline Mullarkey, Every Egg Matters co-ordinator, says: "It's a feeling of not only people coming together, but people realising that they can take some responsibility for their own food and actually do something about it."

She estimates that home production and farm gate sales now approach 1,000 eggs a day, almost a sixth of Todmorden's egg market. It's another breakthrough, but she recognises that this supply is limited, especially because regulation confines sales to farm gates.

"We need to scale up production if we're to meet the mass market," says Ms Mullarkey. "Eggs need to be candled (checked with a light for proper internal development], packaged, labelled and distributed, and we need to be able to assure retailers that the supply will be consistent."

Every Egg Matters has come up with a co-operative business model involving five small to medium-sized producers with about 150 hens each. The units would be moveable and belong to the co-op, offering the farmer flexibility with regards to location and commitment to the scheme.

Participating farmers would be expected to buy the chickens and look after them to a high welfare standard, and one co-op employee would visit each site twice weekly to candle and stamp the eggs using a mobile candling unit, before taking them away for distribution.

Research shows that economies of scale make this model unfeasible, at least in Todmorden. Ms Mullarkey explains: "We investigated funding and it looked entirely possible. What the farmers were unsure about was whether it was worthwhile as the profit margin was small. We're still accustomed to very cheap food and the cost of eggs produced in this model meant that the price would be pushed too high.

"We want further discussions with co-operative organisations to explore how we can enable Todmorden to become more self-sustaining in its production of eggs.

"Todmorden is a relatively small town. What we have is a model for egg production that would possibility work in a larger place. This is all a learning curve and everything we learn is valuable."

They have yet to find a business model that could supply the local Morrisons and Lidl competitively. "It hasn't been easy to engage either of the supermarkets in any discussion about eggs," says Ms Mullarkey. "However, as conversations with supermarkets about the possibilities of isles of locally produced food begin, there will be more discussions."

Ms Warhurst adds: "We recognise that we can't be a food sufficient town in 10 years unless we work with the farmers on local produce.

"Our farmers felt isolated from the community and not respected. There's not that passion about farming, and there's not that connection there used to be through the markets.

"I thought, 'how can we reach out and show them that if they produced the right product they can be part of the community again?'.

"We recognise that it's going to take years. The difficulty is that nationally there's limited support for small people to establish a food co-op. If you've got 12,000 hens and your operation is industrial there's support. But for us there's no blueprint. We need to work to make it possible for the farmers."

www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk

CW 16/10/10