Duchy British Organic Quinoa

With harvest done and dusted for another year, the start of autumn heralded another exciting customer launch for us – this time for our organic quinoa grains. We’ve teamed up with the Waitrose Duchy Organic brand to bring our quinoa grains to the shelves of one of the leading UK supermarkets.

The 375g pack is just the right size for kitchen cupboards and can now be found in Waitrose stores up and down the country. As you may know we’ve been supplying quinoa into salads for Waitrose for some time now, but it’s great to get some of our new organic dried grains within the grocery aisles. What’s even better about this tie up is for every sale of Waitrose Duchy Organic British Quinoa, a donation is made to The Prince of Wales Charitable Foundation. This means money is put towards important causes such as The Duchy Future Farming Programme, which helps farmers to develop more sustainable practices and vital in the overall effort to reduce our footprint on the land we use to grow food. Continuing on this theme, I was recently invited to present at the Soil Association’s ‘Innovative Farmers’ event last month where I talked about how quinoa was developed as a British grown crop and how we were now expanding our organic area for 2017. After spending a day talking amongst some of the most prominent figures in organics, it’s safe to say there is no lack of innovation & developments within the organic sector right now!

Ever since we moved into the organic sector in 2015, we’ve had a continually rising level of demand which is great news for our organic growers who are always keen to grow more quinoa – as a farmer it’s a great feeling when your produce is in high demand! Interestingly, according to DEFRA statistics, the area of land-in-conversion to organic cropping rose this year for the first time in a number of years, suggesting organic produce has a loyal consumer base and has an important role to play in UK food production. With the added uncertainty surrounding the long-term use of chemical inputs in conventional agriculture, it’s not hard to see organic conversion gaining further ground over the next few years. One thing’s for sure – quinoa has found a natural home in UK organic farming rotations, adding to cropping diversity and becoming a valuable part of the farming system.

That’s it for now but look out for more launches arriving in the coming months – we’ve got some more exciting partnerships to announce as well as our own new product range, which will be available to buy very soon through the website and from a selection of UK stores!