A major British supermarket has dropped Prince Charles as a vegetable suppliers because it says his produce did not meet the right standards. They also dropped fresh produce from Patrick Holden’s farm, the Director of the Soil Association, the UK’s main organic food and farming organization.
The move has prompted Patrick Holden to accuse leading supermarkets of being so centralized and industrialized that they cannot deliver the local organic food their customers want.
Mr Holden said he believes that he and Prince Charles have become victims of the supermarket system’s industrial processes and imposed food miles. They were sacked as suppliers of carrots to Sainsbury’s at the end of January, 2007.
He and the Prince had been forced to truck their vegetables hundreds of miles from their farms to a centralized packing house in East Anglia before they were sent back to be sold in Sainsbury’s stores local to their area.
Mr Holden believes his vegetables