BIGWIG BREAKFAST CELEBRATES WEST’S PASTURE TO PLATE PARTNERSHIP
With farming and food security whistling up the political agenda, a special breakfast next Thursday (28th January) will be celebrating the perfect pasture to plate partnership between two Devon colleges – Bicton and Exeter — one training food producers and the other caterers.
The National Farmhouse Breakfast week event to be staged in the restaurant at Exeter College, organised by Devon YFC and sponsored by the NFU, will feature a locally sourced menu prepared for a group of VIP guests including the chairmen of Devon County Council, Devon YFC, Devon NFU and the boards of governors of both colleges.
Richard Atkins, Principal of Exeter College, said:
“I am delighted that Exeter College is hosting this event as it gives us a chance to showcase the work of our hospitality and catering students and celebrate our close relationship with Bicton College and the farming and food producing community.
“Exeter and Bicton Colleges are planning to become a federated partnership this year and can work together to provide the education and training facilities for the food production and catering industries so vital to the economic well being of the South West in general and Devon in particular.”
New Devon NFU chairman, Roborough, near Plymouth, tenant dairy farmer, David Horton, himself an old Bictonite, said:
“The financial pressures on educational establishments are immense and Bicton was vulnerable in terms of scale, but for an agricultural powerhouse county like Devon to have been deprived of a land based skills training college would have been unthinkable which is why the NFU has campaigned so hard to keep it going and why we are so pleased that its future, in tandem with Exeter College, should be assured.”
Devon YFC chairman, Mark Davis, said:
“Farmhouse Breakfast week is a great chance to promote Devon’s produce and the dedicated people producing it. Farm structures are changing and it’s a really tough industry to get into, but there are hundreds of young people out there with the vision, motivation and, thanks to colleges like Bicton, skills who are passionate and proud about farming, food production and the future of their county and its countryside.”
The event comes in the closing stages of National Farmhouse Breakfast week, promoted by the Home Grown Cereals Authority on whose behalf children and teenagers and young adults were surveyed on food awareness.
The 3,000-response poll showed 26 per cent thought bacon came from sheep and 29 per cent that oats grow on trees.
Scientists in America have found that a chemical in pork products like bacon and in eggs can help boost the intelligence of unborn children. The micronutrient, choline, is critical to helping babies in the womb develop parts of their brain linked to memory and recall.
