celebrity organic farmers

Many celebrities like to wax lyrical about organic food. However, some don't just talk about it, they produce it too.

Michelle Obama's organic garden at the Whitehouse was perhaps the most high profile recent development in the organic celeb world.

Not since Roosevelt's victory garden of the 1940s has there been a proper garden at Pennsylvania Avenue's most famous address.

The plot has a full 55 vegetable and fruit varieties, and was part planted by local school children. Michelle Obama has apparently even enlisted her husband to do a bit of the weeding.

Planted in consultation with the Whitehouse's chefs the organic vegetable garden will provide food for the first families' meals.

However, according to the first Lady, the main function of the garden will be educational: informing children of the benefits of healthy, local fruits and veg. This is contextualised by the US's especially severe obesity and diabetes concerns.

Evergreen rock star Sting is also a high flying organic celeb. His 300-hectare estate in Tuscany currently produces extra virgin olive oil, chestnut and acacia honey, jams, fruit and vegetables. He is also about to release 30,000 bottles of his own Chianti and Toscana red wines onto the market.

Liz Hurley's organic credentials are especially well known. Her more modest but still impressive 160 hectare holding is in Gloucester.

This is a mixed holding managed by her brother, which carries traditional breeds of cattle, sheep and pigs: Gloucestershire cattle, Gloucester Old Spot pigs, Shetland and Lleyn sheep.

As well as also growing cereals and wholesaling meat direct, Hurley is launching what she is labelling �a guilt free meat snack� in Harrods next month.

This is essentially a US style Beef Jerky. Its guilt free because of the organic and traditional breeds dimensions, and because, according to farmer Liz herself �It is made from air dried strips of organic silverside and is high in protein and low in fat, making it the perfect snack for anyone following the Atkins or any other lo-carb diet� It is also free from MSG and Nitrates, and is "only 74 calories a bag."

Hurley has teamed up with perhaps the highest profile organic farmer of them all, Prince Charles, to start to develop new products.

Charles Windsor (his real name) has been farming organically since 1986, which puts him in the category of organic pioneer.

The Home Farm at Highgate is an organic demonstration farm, which carries rare breed animals such as Tamworth pigs; Irish Moiled, Gloucester, Shetland and British White cattle, as well as Hebridean and Cotswold sheep. 140 local families receive a box scheme vegetable delivery from the Royal holding.

Like Hurley, the Prince also has an own brand, Duchy Originals.

A little known fact about organics in Ireland was that former Taoiseach Charles Haughey was one of Ireland's organic pioneers. He farmed in Kinsealy organically, launched IOFGA's organic symbol, and indeed introduced the current regime of funding and state approved certification, in 1992.

What does it mean for the less famous farmer? One one level, the attention and profile can do the organic sector some good: people ape celebrities, and meida attention directed at organic products can help.

Haughey certainly aided the professionalisation of organic farming in Ireland. Also the various projects and initiatives are often very worthwhile.

However celeb endorsement can make organic seem a million miles away from reality.

It is also extremely easy for the likes of Sting and Liz Hurley to sell their products; they are products already, and their food is just another part of the global brand. Achieving publicity is hardly a problem for them.

It is also the case that the realities of the market mean nothing to multi millionaires: they are hobby farmers who distort the market, whatever about good intentions.

Those with a policy or politics dimension - Charles Windsor, Michelle Obama and the late Charles Haughey � just seem less annoying when they talk or talked about organics.

Indeed, in the main their behaviour has annoyed the conventional farming and food sectors.

All told, celebrity endorsement of organic is a peculiar sort of double edged sword -easy to spot but hard to avoid in equal measure.