Fantastic. That's the only one word to describe the business built up by the winner of this year's Food from the Countryside award, which is sponsored by the HGCA in conjunction with The Grocer. Picking up a prize at the London Hilton this week was another feather in the cap for Roger Keen, who has successfully built his Sandridge Farm brand of high quality, farm cured bacon into a regional favourite that is regularly praised in the national newspapers.
What particularly impressed those judging entrants in the National Farmers' Union President's Awards is the fact Keen had the vision to see that he could use a curing venture to underpin the commercial viability of his 350 acre farm near Chippenham in Wiltshire.
Sales of Keen's bacon hit £750,000 last year, out of a total business turnover of £1.35m. He is quite certain that with the curing business he would have closed down years ago. But with new customers coming on board at a rate of three unsolicited enquiries a week, Keen is instead talking about why more expansion is on the cards.
"We have been curing commercially for the last 12 years, have been profitable throughout and are planning to move into new premises shortly," he says.
"The farm has been given a more secure future. Throughout the peaks and troughs of the pigmeat market we have maintained a steady price allowing both businesses to plan their expenditure and operate profitably. Few pig farming enterprises today can profitably employ four family members and fourteen members of staff."
Eight of those staff are now involved in the curing and distribution of Sandridge Farm bacon, which is sold by butchers and other local shops and by Keen through farmers' markets in the region.
Keen clearly gets a buzz out of his involvement with the latter: "We are doing a lot of the farmers' markets because it's actually a very good interface between the producer and consumers. We get a lot of information and find there's tremendous amount of goodwill for buying British foods and supporting British farmers. We are giving the public the full story. We do feel the farming industry has been badly let down by the supermarkets."
Keen has also targeted the catering sector particularly transport cafes with offcuts such as collar bacon which as he points out makes "excellent butties".
He says one of his biggest challenges is to market less attractive cuts, because a true Wiltshire cure involves the whole side of a pig and not just the most popular pieces. Keen has been able to build a market for small joints of forehock, while boiling joints have proved a successful way of selling forends. A range of farmhouse sausages made from shoulder pork, has also been developed.
Keen believes many cuts have become "unfashionable" simply because they have fat on them, which is necessary to stop the meat becoming dry, coarse and tasteless.
But he says: "The advantage of selling to butchers is that they understand this and because they talk to their customers (unlike the supermarkets) they can pass on this information along with cooking and storage advice."
As well as the "difficult" cuts, Keen's range includes Wiltshire bacon and smoked bacon sold either as full sides or ready sliced in 250g to 2kg packs. He also offers five village hams, some of which take several months to fully mature.
So what makes Sandridge Farm bacon so special? Keen says it is because he marries traditional curing processes with pigmeat reared on his farm.
"The pigs are fed a diet that contains some interesting and perhaps unexpected ingredients: surplus dairy products; beer years fromWadworths, the local brewer of 6X beer; cider yeast from Taunton Cider; bran from Spillers' bread making mill in Avonmouth; and grain grown on our arable farm. There are blended together usinga computer programme to calculate a well balanced ration."
He adds: "Living in Wiltshire, which has a long history of bacon curing, we have been able to recruit staff with a wealth of knowledge and experience. to which we have added old family recipes, resulting in a unique and flavoursome product."
Aside from the commercial benefits of getting into curing, Keen says he was shamed into starting up the commerical venture because people he met socially would often ask why they couldn't buy decent British bacon.
"We had always cured a small quantity for our own use, but could we multiply this on a larger scale and in line with the buzzwords of the day diversify and vertically integrate? Cut out the middleman and sell our product from the farm gate?"
Twelve years on, the answer to both questions is a resounding "Yes". And that's why Keen was the runaway winner of the Food from the Countryside award.
·Food from the Countryside is one of six categories in the NFU President's Awards, which were set up two years ago to recognise excellence in agriculture and horticulture in England and Wales. The winners were chosen by a panel of independent judges drawn from the food and farming sectors, which included The Grocer's deputy editor Julian Hunt. Chairman of the judges was NFU director general Richard Macdonald, who said: "The judges were hugely impressed by the quality of this year's semi-finalists. Their commitment to our industry was inspiring, as was their contribution to the environment and to the rural community."
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