Why Is Africa Feeding Us?

November 21, 2025·42 min·3 clips

A Senegalese picker asked the farm CEO for a raise mid-interview — and was told she was about to get one, with the national minimum wage rising 30%.

1. The Food Programme investigates how northern Senegal — near-desert land on the border with Mauritania — became a major supplier of fresh vegetables to British supermarkets. 2. Host Sheila Dillon and reporter Jack Thompson, based in Dakar, frame the episode as a supply chain investigation examining who benefits from this trade and what risks it poses. 3. The core question is whether this arrangement — British supermarket investment in African farmland, employing African workers at low wages to supply the UK winter market — is a sustainable and equitable model. 4. Two major operations are profiled: SCL, a joint venture between Barfoots and French agribusiness Michel Laurent, growing sweet corn, green beans, and chilies over 1,500 hectares on the Senegal River and employing nearly 7,000 people; and West Africa Farms, run by G's Fresh, growing spring onions, radishes, and beans over 500 hectares beside Lac de Guiers. 5. In February, these farms collectively supply 60% of UK radishes, 50% of UK green beans, and 30% of UK corn on the cob — making northern Senegal one of the UK's most strategically important food-growing zones. 6. Michel Laurent, founder of SCL, chose the location two decades ago after identifying it as an agricultural Goldilocks zone: 10 kilometres from the sea for microclimate, proximity to a major road and the port at Dakar, abundant river water, and a large available workforce. 7. The majority of the 7,000 workers are daily labourers earning approximately 2,500 SEFA a day — around three pounds — providing for entire families in a region where no other employment previously existed. 8. In a striking exchange, corn picker Michele asked CEO Michel Laurent directly for a raise during Jack's visit; Laurent disclosed in English that a 30% government-mandated national minimum wage increase would raise her monthly pay from 60 to 82 pounds. 9. Local government representative Ardo Sau, formerly a land rights campaigner, acknowledges the economic gains but describes the arrival of multiple foreign farming companies — from France, Italy, the US, Saudi Arabia, India — as 'the new way of colonisation,' even as he notes improvements in community negotiation practices. 10. The Senegalese government retains land ownership; businesses lease it and buy licensed access to water overseen by local management committees, a structure both Laurent and G's Fresh managing director Derek Wilkinson cite as a stability factor. 11. G's Fresh's arrangement with the Pula community includes growing 20 hectares of millet annually for local cattle fodder and establishing 250 hectares of new irrigated farmland for local farmers to supply the domestic Senegalese market. 12. Henry Dimbleby, author of the previous UK government's National Food Strategy and a visitor to the Senegal farms, warns that climate shocks in West Africa — pointing to the 2023 collapse of cocoa and coffee crops — make the UK's growing dependence on this supply chain strategically precarious. 13. Dimbleby argues directly that if Senegal faces a food crisis, 'I cannot imagine a world in which the Senegalese government doesn't take over that land and use it to feed its own people.' 14. Senegal's population is projected to grow more than 60% by 2025, adding over 10 million people to feed; community advisor Ardo Sau says food sovereignty is now an explicit objective of the new Senegalese government. 15. The cost of growing spring onions in Senegal and shipping them to the UK has already reached parity with UK domestic production during the summer season, with G's Fresh already sourcing approximately 15% of its summer supply from Senegal. 16. Barfoots' packing facility near Bognor Regis processes the sweet corn after its six-day sea voyage; Julian Marks notes the UK market for sweet corn has grown from 25 million to 150-160 million pieces annually over 20 years. 17. A shipping disruption — caused by the Senegalese government temporarily blocking banana imports to protect local harvests, compounded by Antwerp port strikes — briefly left spring onion fields rotting in Senegal, illustrating the supply chain's operational fragility. 18. Food systems academic Tim Lang warns of the systematic decline of small British horticulture businesses squeezed out by supermarket procurement favouring large-scale, year-round international suppliers. 19. The episode presents multiple perspectives across the supply chain — Senegalese workers, farm CEOs, UK processors, food systems experts, and development analysts — without reaching a definitive editorial conclusion. 20. Listeners interested in global food systems, supply chain geopolitics, development economics, or the future of British farming will find this episode deeply reported and substantive.

As heard by us

A grounded journey from Senegal's desert to Britain's winter produce, where water, trade and climate risk meet.

The Food Programme traces a food route into northern Senegal, where desert and sand give way to a river, a 40-kilometre lake and canals feeding farms linked to UK winter produce.

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Your February veg has a supply-chain question, somewhere between northern Senegal, Dakar and a container ship.

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