New campaign calls for an end to “farmwashing”

A group of British farmers, led by organic produce supplier Riverfood, has launched a stinging attack on supermarkets that use ‘fake’ farm names to brand products.

“We have to ask ourselves why it is that supermarkets are making such a fuss about supporting British agriculture in their marketing,” said Riverford founder Guy Singh-Watson, as he announced the new ‘Farmers against farmwashing’ campaign. “They know that buying food from mega-farms all over the world is not actually what British customers want.”

The group of farmers and campaigners, which also includes Jimmy Doherty, defines farmwashing as “the practice of supermarkets portraying idyllic British farms in their marketing so that customers think this is who they’re buying from”.

Examples include Tesco selling Nightingale Farms peppers and Rosedene Farms Gala apples, when neither of those ‘farms’ exist. The issue of fake farms appears to be a persistent one: in 2016 Tesco was caught out when a fresh produce revamp included vegetables, fruit and meats from a number of farms that didn’t exist.

A supermarket doesn’t only have to invent a farm to be accused of farmwashing. The big chains were also accused of some rather clever in-store and on-pack marketing: large banners in support of British produce were found looking over shelves of produce from anywhere but the UK.“On a recent trip to the supermarket, we found produce from the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Egypt and Morocco, all placed beneath ‘Best of British’ signage,” the campaigners told Wicked Leeks.

The group has also written an open letter to the CEOs of the ‘big six’ supermarket chains detailing their frustration and highlighting the current plight of British farmers (61% of who now say they’re likely to give up their farm in the next 18 months).

“[…] you’ve done some brilliant marketing [in the past 12 months],” the letter reads. “We’ve noticed the British flags on display up and down the fruit and veg aisles, the meat offering ‘higher welfare standards’, and the quaint farm imagery on labels and billboards. You’ve even publicly promised to support farmers, to the tune of billions of pounds! But in reality? Much of the produce under those British flags is imported, animal welfare claims are often cynically worded, and ‘trusted farms’ are frequently US-style mega farms. Meanwhile, the quaint farms shown in adverts are struggling to survive. This is farmwashing.”

The letter ends with the line: “Stop farmwashing. And start offering real support for real farms.” 


Some 85% of all farmed animals in the UK are now factory farmed, according to recent research published by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). The rise of ‘mega farms’ was also the subject of a recent BBC investigation this summer, which found that the number of larger-scale beef and dairy cattle farms in Britain has increased from 756 to 802 in just five years, now holding more than 915,000 cattle.

There are also persistent pollution issues related to large, intensive poultry farms.

Singh-Watson warned: “The current system assumes that we will continue to be able to buy food from around the world and import chemicals to grow what little we do produce. I think that’s changing.”