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About
Hodmedod imagines a better food system of connected and resilient communities spanning good farming, fair trading and enjoyable wholesome eating.
Since 2012 we’ve built a network of amazing farmers, food producers and customers who care about their food's provenance and impact. We now produce over 100 minimally processed wholefoods – all from diverse crops, grown in ways that are better for soil, climate and communities.
We came a long way in our first ten years and we're still working to support more agroecological farming and provide more good wholefoods with provenance into our second decade...
We publish a second volume of Sheaf to mark Harvest 2022, following Sheaf: Writers in the Field, Summer 2021 - our collection of regenerative stories, photographs and illustrations about grains and the farmers that grow them, inspired by the writers' and artists' visits to farms.
Wrinkled peas are varieties grown to be harvested for freezing when they're immature and at their sweetest. But if the narrow harvest window is missed they're wasted, either ploughed back into the field or at best used or animal feed. But they're delicious and research has found they offer valuable nutritional benefits from especially high levels of resistant starch. We rescue a bypassed harvest for food.
For over a decade we've worked to raise the profile of the revolutionary and genetically diverse YQ wheat population developed by Professor Martin Wolfe at Wakelyns Agroforestry. Now UK Grain Lab, a network of advocates for localised and diverse grain we've helped to build, persuades Defra to legislate to allow limited trade in cereal seed that is otherwise prohibited under seed marketing regulations that favour monoculture and genetic uniformity.
From East Anglia to the Amazon trade can be exploitative and modern supply chains often externalise negative ecological, health and social impacts. In 2023 we team up with the Roddick Foundation and Landworkers' Alliance to forge a direct relationship with the Kayapó in Brazil to support their protection of their Amazonian forest territory by trading in solidarity the wild Brazil nuts they harvest from it.
In our first decade we grew the farms and crops we work with by selling direct and into independent retailers and caterers. In 2023 we launch a range of pulses and grains from British farms as part of Holland & Barrett's transformation of their food range, a fantastic opportunity to make our wholefoods with provenance available more widely and to support more diverse farming.
Not-for-profit sister organisation Barleybird launches, with a mission is to build on Hodmedod's work and purpose: to collaborate with farmers, growers, businesses and communities to achieve systemic changes to the way food is grown, distributed and eaten. And to effect changes that are good for our health and wellbeing and good for the planet.
Growing beans other than fava is difficult in the UK. Over the years we've worked with small growers to offer occasional small quantities of different Phaseolus bean varieties. But they sell out fast and we've left many bean lovers disappointed. So we forge a direct relationship with organic Ferme des Trois Rois to offer a wider range of bean varieties from across the Channel, less of a journey than our Scottish organic fava have to travel!
Henrietta Inman opens heart bakery at Hodmedod's Bake House, baking small batches of 100% wholemeal sourdough bread right next to our Mill House where the YQ wheat and rye grain for her loaves is freshly stone-milled for maximum flavour and nutrition.
Back in 2012 there were no British farmers growing organic pulses for food (only for animal feed) and almost no one in the UK had heard of fava beans or carlin peas. Pulses were worthy foods all too often gathering dust on shop shelves and in cupboards, and unprofitable undersung crops on farms. Food businesses working directly and transparently with farmer groups growing arable crops were vanishingly rare.
We’ve been instrumental in getting a national conversation going about pulses as a lever for change in diets and farm systems. We’ve inspired and supported start-ups, influenced far bigger businesses and worked with academics. We've told our story on TV, radio and in print, as well at 100s of speaking engagements, and helped shape government policy.
We’ve grown from a radical idea for practical action in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss and poor health to a team of over 20 in a multi-million turnover business that works with tens of farmers in the UK, an Indigenous community in Brazil and a farming family in France to bring delicious foods with powerful stories into kitchens and on to plates.
But there's still a lot to do… Please let us know if you'd like to help by completing our brief survey:
