The day will operate as follows:
- 10.00 am - Coach to leave Jesus College Cambridge
- 11.00 am - Arrive at the EMG headquarters (Park Farm Thorney)
- Coffee and refreshments, view machinery and meet EMG staff
- 12.00 pm - Lunch, a traditional British winter hot lunch cooked on site with an alternative vegetarian option
- 1.00 pm – Farm tour for 90 minutes on trailers that are covered so will not be an issue if the weather is very cold and wet
- 2.30 pm – Return to the headquarters, hot and cold drinks, further opportunity to discuss the farm and the EMG company as well as visit machinery.
- 3.30 pm - Coach to return to Jesus College Cambridge
The Farm and EMG:
The farm is 1750 hectares and grows a range of traditional crops to suit the soil types some of which are organic. Traditionally it receives some 570 mm of rain and grows a range of cereal crops both winter and spring, Sugar beet, pulses, grassland for sheep and mustard.
The farm also has:
- 10 Hectares of managed woodland
- 158 Miles of open “land drains” (ditches filled with water)
- 23.5 Hectares of managed “Environmentally Dedicated Areas”
- 400 Skylark Plots
There are two types of mustard seed grown, White mustard seed (Sinapsis alba) and Brown mustard seed (Brassica juncea). The seeds of white mustard contribute pungency, and the seeds of brown mustard add heat.
In the early 2000’s, yields of the white mustard variety Gedney had been dropping and the future of the crop looked very uncertain, a lack of investment and an abandonment of the plant breeding and agronomy programme by the parent company before selling to Unilever had contributed to falling yields.
With the aim to protecting and reviving the crop, the English Mustard Growers Cooperative was formed in 2009 by a group of 11 growers, many of whose families had been growing for the Colemans brand for generations. The group invested the help of the John Innes Centre who discovered that there were unintended consequences of sieving the largest seed to sow the following year. White mustard is "self-incompatible", meaning that an individual plant cannot pollinate itself. Instead, it needs to receive pollen from a different family of mustard seed which needed to be grown in the same crop, these pollinator plants were the ones that had been sieved out. Further work with DNA profiling on some old jars of seed samples found in the factory identified the original seed mix and with the help of Elsoms, seed stocks were grown on and the variety was reinvigorated.
The English Mustard Growers were aware Colman’s existing facilities in Norwich were aging and with the local “Norfolk Mint Growers” being in a similar situation, they joined forces and created Condimentum. At the time, it looked like production would move to Germany, so a bold plan was created and Condimentum built their own state of the art factory in Norwich which is one of only three mills in the world capable of milling Double Superfine mustard flour. More recently, the mill, which is 60% owned by the growers, has opened up a wet processing line and is now fully operational processing all the mustard and mint. The English mustard growers have continued to expand and in 2024, there are 36 growers.
We hope you have a great day at the farm.
