FOOD AND DRINK 

While the Government backs farmers’ markets, one in West London, on Government-owned land, is under threat.

By Elizabeth Judge

The Times: June 24 2000  

[Picture of Ian Whitehead selling pork and picture of woman selling organic bread from Flour Power City, both at the Islington Farmers’ Market]  

[Caption] Farmers can meet their customers and talk about the produce they are selling  

Photograph: RICHARD CANNON

Notting Hill may lose out to market forces  

Notting Hill celebrities are again cursing “that” film. Not only have they to contend with hundreds more tourists and  spiralling rents, now the popularity of their slice of West  London is threatening to bring about the end of the farmers’  market.  

 On a former car park behind fashionable Kensington Place restaurant, the market draws  around 1,200 visitors each week in search of the fruit and vegetables so fresh they are still covered in soil, and meat, poultry, and dairy produce sold by the farmers themselves. 

Customers have included Ruth Rogers, owner of the River  Café, “real food” guru Henrietta Green and Harold and Antonia Pinter as well as Kensington Place chef, Rowley  Leigh.  

Now, however, a threatened rent rise could mean the end of the market. According to organiser Nina Planck, next week the market’s lease runs out and unless the  government agency which owns the site reviews its plans, the market will have to close.  

“Before we came along the site was empty on Saturdays,”  she says. “Now they say we aren’t paying enough.” The  rent for the site has already trebled over the last six  months since the market opened. Today, to cover the cost of £460 to run the market, of which £150 is rent, the 16  stallholders have to pay an average of £28.75 for their space. This sum may seem small to the government  agency but so are the farmers’ margins. “Even £10 can make all the difference to farmers and they are panicked about losing this market.”  

For Planck, 29, who runs five other markets in London  and one in Windsor, the injustice is compounded by the fact that the government agency in question is the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA).  

“The different departments are not singing from the same hymn sheet,” she says. “While the Department of  Agriculture is promoting these markets, the Department of  Education is making a few quid out of us and then driving  farmers out of business.”  

Like the 200 other markets up and down the country Notting Hill offers not only a slice of bucolic life but also allows the anxious buyer to quiz the stall holders on the  exact provenance of their food.  

In addition, a weekly donation of around £35 from the market proceeds is given to a local community group, the Notting Hill Gate Improvement Group.

John Scott, co-founder and project leader of the Group, says: “The market has added enormously to the ambience  here. It’s like being in the depths of the French  countryside. “It is very chummy and neighbourly and chatty. People who have not talked to each other for 60 years are doing so now; they’ll chat about how good the bread is, for example.”  

Last week, more than 600 angry customers signed a petition asking the QCA to halt the planned rent increase and for local MP, Michael Portillo, to intervene.  

Wendy Stevenson, 59, from Ladbroke Grove, a regular visitor, says: “It would be horrifying if it closes. We haven’t  got another street market that provides the produce we  really want. It’s a place to meet as well as a way to support farmers. It would be a tragedy if it goes.”

Allegra McEvedy, The Big Breakfast television cook and author, says she would be very sad if the market closed: “I love it there; it is really special to have those kind of  feelings in the city. It provides all those great things, the minute detail a supermarket can’t possibly pay attention to.”

The 16 farmers who package and label their produce before travelling to London each weekend are equally anxious.

Fruit growers David and Linda Deme were on the verge of bankruptcy after a severe late frost exacerbated their already precarious harvest. Exhibiting the determination typical of farming types, they began driving hundreds of  miles each week to sell their goods at farmers’ markets.

Just as they were beginning to get back on their feet, they now fear their efforts will have been in vain.

The QCA denies it is attempting to profit from the market:  “It’s a minimum amount they are paying and it’s not  commercial rent; we are just covering maintenance costs,”  said a spokesman.

“We do support what they are doing but we have also got to make the land viable.”

For the folk of Notting Hill then, Saturday mornings in the sunshine, dreaming of countryside bliss could soon be a  thing of the past, replaced once more by the slog to the  supermarket.