Farm Urban on Countryfile
One of the few programmes that we go out of our way to watch is BBC’s Countryfile, so we were thrilled when one of their producers contacted us to ask us if we’d like to feature in a special episode about cities in 2017.
We arranged for Countryfile producer Nick to come and see us and spent the day with him showing him our systems and talking about what we did. Nick was reassuringly relaxed, friendly and funny, explaining that Countryfile was largely a labour of love for everyone involved in it, as it had a fraction of the budget of similarly-rated TV shows – and so felt very different to work on. This really comes across, as you can feel the passion and interest that everyone has in the topics they’re covering.
Nick called back to arrange shooting a couple of weeks later – and our excitement turned to sheer terror when we discovered that Countryfile has higher ratings than the X factor. Yes, a BBC programme frequently filmed in the rain and featuring sheep, cows, pigs, chickens and (occasionally) grumpy farmers, manages to beat ITV’s slick, massively expensive and highly promoted flagship programme.
We’re not sure what this says about British people, but we think we like it.
The filming took place on a sunny Friday in July, when we met Nick, presenter James Wong and the rest of the crew. James was really personable and approachable and proved not to be just ‘some bloke off the telly’, but a respected ethnobotanist – someone who studies the relationships between people and plants, and whose research tackles socio-ecological issues like biodiversity loss and cultural knowledge – who had been discovered working at Kew Gardens.
We talked to James about how we used rooftops and disused spaces to grow fresh vegetables – and how this can provide a model for growing food in cities and reducing food miles. As cities become bigger and bigger, we think it’s vital to connect citizens and communities back to the food that they eat, helping them understand how food is produced, and they can make better food choices. James seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing, and proved his scientific credentials by being refreshingly sceptical and open-minded, asking us some really insightful and probing questions. He also proved really knowledgable about how to store and handle plants after they’d been harvested, something that we’re really interested in as a way to reduce food waste.
The filming took place in our vertical farm, nestled in the basement of Liverpool Life Sciences UTC, on the roof at the University of Liverpool’s Guild of Students and at Alder Hey children’s hospital, where we built an aquaponics system to entertain and educate patients. You can see Nick’s final edit on the Countryfile Cities programme, at 20:00 minutes in.
We’d like to thank Nick, James and the rest of the Countryfile crew for their incredibly warm and sympathetic coverage of what we’re doing, and for taking the time to talk to us and understand the what and the why of what we’re trying to do at Farm Urban.
