FRUIT
EXCITING AND CHALLENGING made the new role particularly challenging, with traders, particularly those who usually supply the hospitality sector, having been forced to switch their focus impressively quickly, Sarah said. “The traders responded brilliantly to the rapidly changing situation,” she said. “They have delivered thousands of veg boxes to people’s homes and responded quickly to the new challenges. The CGMA, meanwhile, has worked hard to help tenants get through these difficult times.” Even without the Covid-19 pandemic, life at New Covent Garden is currently evolving as it undergoes a transformation that will see the iconic market rebuilt on the existing site as what its website calls “a flourishing, modern wholesale market for London alongside a new cluster of food-related businesses”. Sarah commented: “I am naturally very excited by the prospect of supporting the authority and working with the businesses at New Covent Garden at such an exciting point in its history. “The authority is working hard to see traders through the current crisis and then working with them towards the long-term vision of a new food quarter for London. There are lots of great
done, where everything is and how it works, haven’t been able to travel; instead there is an avalanche of new people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing or how hard the job is going to be and are very (very) expensive to have as part of the business. Cracks must be appearing, health must be suffering – and when that is multiplied throughout our supply chains at every level as every business is impacted by rapid, unexpected change, there are bound to be issues. The big challenge is that we need a seismic shift. Most people think that healthcare is an opportunity to deal with a specific problem, something we just do (we talk to a doctor, we take a pill and we expect the issue to be dealt with). The mental health continuum image on this page addresses the identification of issues and how we might help. In all sectors at the moment we are starting to see the impacts of stress and trauma setting us into an autonomic ‘fight or flight’ response – racially, politically or socially motivated rioting included. We need to build an acceptance societally that we all need time to rest and reflect, that we cannot work flat out all of the time just hoping that nothing breaks. It’s one thing saying that you think your family is pre-disposed to issues because of a family history; it’s completely another to suggest that your environment and adulthood are the only factors that influence your resilience to mental health issues. Dr Rob Verkerk, of the Alliance for Natural Health, argues that our biological potential in everything starts from pre-conception (our biologically given potential, or BGP). In other words, even the food our parents eat and other aspects of their environment affect our lives before we are even born. We as farmers have a role to play in ensuring that our high quality, safe and sustainable locally produced food is helping to increase someone’s potential to cope with stress and their response to it, and that a healthy diet throughout life (and it’s never too late to start) is not just about a long and physically healthy life, but also about good mental health too.
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opportunities, I am joining a great team and I am looking forward to contributing. It is exciting and challenging in equal measure.” New Covent Garden is home to nearly 200 businesses with around 2,500 employees.
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National Fruit Show chair and South East Farmer correspondent Sarah Calcutt has described her most recent appointment as “exciting and challenging in equal measure”. Sarah, a sixth-generation farmer from the Weald of Kent who has spent the past 20 years working in food and farming, has been appointed as a non-executive director of the Covent Garden Market Authority (CGMA). She is one of three new directors to have been appointed by the GCMA, joining alongside Fiona Fell and Hampshire’s David Fison, who is chairman of Humphrey Farms Ltd, a family-owned business, a governor at the University of the Arts, London and a non-executive director at London City Airport, amidst other high-profile roles. CGMA is the statutory corporation established under Acts of Parliament in 1961 to run the worldrenowned wholesale market at New Covent Garden, which has been based in Nine Elms, south London, since 1974. Members of the Board are appointed by the Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Joining during the coronavirus outbreak has
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