t’s a crisp autumnal morning in North Yorkshire. Country lanes weave through a patchwork of fields – some green with crops and others recently harvested. The sun, like the shiny yolk of a just-cracked egg, slowly rises into a cloudless sky.
I’m on my way to meet David Swinbank, who grows potatoes with his brother Watson on their family farm in Richmond. His fields don’t cultivate just any old spuds, fated to become dollops of mash or Sunday lunch roasties. These are the chosen ones, destined for McDonald’s iconic red-and-yellow packets.
W Swinbank & Sons Ltd is one of more than 110 British growers working with food company McCain to supply McDonald’s with the very best crops for its world-famous fries. The Russet Burbank and Innovator varieties of potato that are harvested here are among six approved by McDonald’s as the gold standard for fries.
I
There’s more innovation behind a McDonald’s menu than you might think, from
minimal-waste potato production to considered hen welfare. And it all
starts in some of the prettiest fields in the UK, says Ella Buchan
The company’s focus on reducing impact and improving efficiency has led to initiatives such as the £1 million Sustainable MacFries Fund, launched in partnership with McCain in 2020. As part of this, potato growers were able to apply for grants towards new technology to improve soil quality and optimise water management.
Swinbank secured a grant towards a “bigger and better” tiller – equipment to help prepare the soil before planting, to ensure the right growing conditions for the potatoes. The royal-blue machine is designed to make planting more efficient, saving valuable time. It also reduces disturbance to the soil (as opposed to traditional ploughing), which means that rich nutrients remain in the soil for the potatoes, water can be accessed by the potatoes more easily, and it keeps carbon locked into the soil.
It’s a priority for McDonald’s to minimise waste and ensure all their potatoes have a home. Potatoes that don’t make the grade for fries, typically because they’re too small, are used to make other McDonald’s favourites like hash browns. Every scrap is used, including the peel. Once at the McCain factory for processing, the spuds are dropped in hot water to strip away the outer layers, which are saved for animal feed.
W Swinbank & Sons is just one of 23,000 British and Irish farms that provide fresh, sustainable and high-quality ingredients for McDonald’s menu items – from fries and milkshakes to the legendary Big Mac, made (as all McDonald’s beef burgers are) using 100 per cent British and Irish beef. The beef farmers McDonald’s works with are also connected via the Sustainable Beef Network, a knowledge-sharing group founded in 2021 as part of McDonald’s Farm Forward Programme, and intended to encourage more sustainable farming solutions across the sector by sharing learnings and best practice.
All this care and every one of these initiatives are about supporting farmers, raising animal welfare standards and making environmental improvements, and the people McDonald’s work with are key to the company meeting its commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2040. This goal is also shared by The National Farmers’ Union.
Potato king
David Swinbank has been growing tatties on his family farm in Richmond for more than 30 years
It’s just over an hour’s drive on from W Swinbank & Sons’ farm to Penrith in Cumbria, where David and Helen Brass have been supplying the eggs for McMuffins (among other breakfast favourites) for over 20 years. The Lakes Free Range Egg Company is McDonald’s longest-standing British supplier of free-range eggs.
The farm is idyllic. Surrounded by the rolling hills and mountains of the Lake District, its 450 acres are loud with the contented clucking of hens. Some scratch for bugs in the soil, while others perch in trees. There are 130,000 brown hens here – a significant growth from the 200-odd hens Helen started with. This was primarily a beef farm, with egg sales bringing in a little extra cash on the side.
Now it exclusively produces eggs, and sustainability and hen welfare rule the roost. All McDonald’s eggs – across the entire menu – are free-range, so these birds have plenty of freedom to roam. “They have different perches and areas for feeding and littering,” says David. “If they want to scratch around, they can. But, because [the hens] are prey to foxes, we do put them away to roost at night.”
Potatoes that don’t make the grade for fries are used to make other favourites like hash browns
Cream of the crop
Home grown quality ingredients from
23,000 British and Irish farms make up the
McDonald’s menu
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Photography: Kate Peters for News UK
“They’re selected for flavour and how well they make fries,” says Swinbank, whose father began growing for McCain in 1980. “Good dry matter means the fries don’t absorb a lot of oil and that gives a crisp texture. The potatoes required for this also need to be long, for those long, skinny fries.”
For most of us, skinny, perfectly golden, crisp yet fluffy McDonald’s fries are the ultimate treat. Of course, for Swinbank and his fellow MacFry growers, it’s the product of weeks of planting, and months of harvesting and storing the potatoes in the best quality environment, until they are ready to be washed, peeled, and cut into fries. Not to mention the decades of experience that goes into growing the perfect potato (Swinbank started aged 12, helping his father and grandfather with the harvest).
So, while the food is fast, the care and attention that goes into each component certainly isn’t. McDonald’s and the farmers who supply them are playing the long game.
Up with the chickens David and Helen Brass
at their farm in Cumbria.
Their hens’ eggs are used
in McMuffins
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Labour of love
The perfect golden fries
are the product of weeks
of planting, months of harvesting and careful storage until they are
ready to be washed,
peeled, cut and cooked
McDonalds’s egg suppliers are required to cover 20 per cent
of their ranges with trees
The farm might have looked very different had the couple not started working with McDonald’s in 2002. There are significantly more trees, for one thing, as a result of McDonald’s partnership with FAI Farms. Research with the agricultural body, focused on sustainability, showed how planting trees in bird ranges on farms was beneficial for bird welfare. This means McDonalds’s egg suppliers are now required to cover at least 20 per cent of their ranges with trees, providing shelter for the hens. This makes them feel safe as they feel protected from predators which, in turn, means they are more likely to roam and peck and be more active.
Helen and David planted the seed of the idea and worked with McDonald’s to make it happen. “It was a bright, sunny day with no hens outside,” says David, whose farm employs around 130 people. “One big tree had hundreds of hens sheltering underneath it. We thought, why not plant a few more? It’s made a huge difference to their welfare. Hens can also get sunburn and use melanin, which causes white shells and more breakage.”
While the current nationwide concern about avian flu means that the birds have to be housed for their safety, David and Helen are constantly striving to further improve animal welfare and sustainability, working closely with McDonald’s and FAI Farms. Together, they’ve discovered that recording hens’ different calls can help identify potential problems, and are developing tech that allows the history of each egg to be traced, from the identity of its parents, to what the mother hen ate on the day of laying.
“Work [on sustainability and welfare] never really stops,” adds David. “The question is always there: where is the next place to go? The next piece of welfare change, or the next way to improve sustainability and efficiency. I love it. And an awful lot of that is down to our partnership with McDonald’s.”
Back in Richmond, David Swinbank reckons being a MacFries grower has helped him to survive in an increasingly challenging climate. “There aren’t many potato growers in the country now. I’d say it’s down to around 10 per cent of what it was when we started in the 1970s. Without this partnership I don’t know whether we would still be growing potatoes.”
There’s one last part of his farm to explore. A small door cut into one of the outbuildings opens to a wall of hay, with staggered sandbags forming steps on the left. I emerge, at the top, on a mountain of potatoes: around 600 tonnes, stored here from the end of harvest until they’re collected by McCain. There’s more next door, packed in wooden crates and stacked vertiginously against the wall.
While in storage, samples of the potatoes are taken regularly for testing, and the stores are checked periodically for any issues.
“Storage is a huge part of what we do,” says Swinbank. “It’s just a potato at the end of the day, but what people may not realise is how much work goes into it.”
Good eggs
Planting trees in bird ranges is beneficial for
their wellbeing as the birds feel safe from predators, which means they are more likely to be active
Find out more about McDonald’s great food and its Plan for Change at mcdonalds.com
Quality food
– They’re farmin’ it
Since the Lakes Free Range Egg Company pictures were taken, all of the McDonald’s supplier’s hens have been
temporarily housed in barns in accordance with government guidelines and the national housing order introduced
for all birds across England.
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