Consumers need a leg up with farming knowledge, survey suggests

Results from a new survey reveal that the vast majority (93 per cent) of people in Great Britain don’t know the best time of year to enjoy eating British lamb.

Only seven per cent of respondents correctly identified Autumn as the time for tucking into one of Britain’s favourites, with half (49 per cent) choosing Spring as the best time to serve lamb - the time of year when most lambs are born.

The research marks six months of the National Trust’s mass on-line MyFarm http://www.my-farm.org.uk experiment at its 1,200 acre organic farm at Wimpole in Cambridgeshire.

The innovative project aims to involve people in farming and where their food comes from by enabling them to make decisions on a real working farm.

An online straw poll of the MyFarm community revealed that 19 per cent knew the best time of year to enjoy lamb - more than double the outcome of the wider non-subscriber survey - suggesting the experiment is making useful progress.

Richard Morris, the National Trust’s Farm Manager at Wimpole, said: "Eating lamb when it’s in season ensures consumers can enjoy the meat at its best.

"Lambs born in the spring feed outside on grass throughout the summer resulting in really flavoursome and tender meat.

"The lamb we see on our supermarket shelves in the Spring is either shipped in from abroad, or has been barn-reared out of season without the benefit of maturing and developing naturally on grass."

Other results highlighted consumer confusion over hogget (a mature lamb between one and two years old) with only 16 per cent of respondents aware that hogget is meat from sheep.

It also revealed only 40 per cent of Britons buy British lamb with 21 per cent buying its New Zealand relation and 16 per cent just indiscriminately selecting whatever is on the supermarket shelves.

By contrast, 51 per cent of MyFarm subscribers could identify hogget - three times as many as the wider survey - and 63 per cent brought British lamb.

Richard Morris added: "These results demonstrate how the MyFarm experiment is already proving beneficial in raising farming knowledge among members. It embraces technology to make learning fun, so people enjoy themselves, with improved knowledge the handy by-product.

"By engaging them in a real, live working farm we are presenting everyday problems and decisions that British farmers have to make and giving them the power to decide what happens.

"MyFarm is a case of ’real decisions - real consequences’ as the farm needs to operate profitably.

"The National Trust is the country’s biggest farmer - more than 80 per cent of the 250,000 hectares of land under our care is farmed in some way and we see it as our role to re-connect people with farming and to encourage them to care more about where their food comes from.

"We can do this via experiments such as MyFarm which lift the lid on the realities of farming in the 21st Century."

Brian Turner, the National Trust’s National Food Specialist, is passionate about British lamb, hogget and mutton. Commenting on the results for the lamb cuts people buy most he said: "Unsurprisingly the leg and the lamb chop are still the most popular (both at 22 per cent), followed by the shoulder (12 per cent) and shank (5 per cent).

"Lamb in all its guises is such a versatile meat and there is so much you can do with it including stews, meatballs, soups and pies. Consumers should feel confident about trying out different things."