What's the point of farming? To produce an abundance of wholesome food, writes Colin Tudge, while supporting a flourishing rural economy and a sustainable, biodiverse countryside. Yet the powers that be, determined to advance industrial agriculture at all costs, are achieving the precise opposite. It's time for a revolution in our food and farming culture, led by the people at large.
From banks that are too big to fail, to food banks for the too small to matter, the global econom systematically pumps money from the social economy and the poor up into the hands of a tiny minority of wealthy beneficiaries, writes Colin Tudge. Farmers, trapped between mountains of debt and low food prices, are among the main victims. It's time for a big rethink, starting from first principles.
Colin Tudge reports on The College of Real Farming and Food Culture; a project designed to tackle the current issues in global food production. The current system is not fit for purpose but through a holistic approach and an overhaul of current mainstream agriculture, achieving a balance between feeding the world and conserving the environment is within grasp.
In her new book The Vandana Shiva Reader, the celebrated campaigner and scientist deplores the way in which the Green Revolution forced India's poorest farmers off their land, writes Colin Tudge. Now she fears even worse outcomes in Africa where a GMO-fuelled farming revolution is under way.
Building resilience to flood and drought is all about working with farmers, writes Colin Tudge. Simple things like ploughing across slopes, not up and down them, planting trees, and caring for soils, can make a huge difference in helping rainwater to sink into the ground, not run off. And to make it happen, the government must take a lead.
Farming today is well on the way to becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the agro-chemical-biotech industry, writes Colin Tudge. Defra and the European Commission are all too keen to make it so, reflecting the interests of an agro-oligarchy obsessed with profits and growth at all costs. But there is an alternative. Join the 'real farming' agrarian renaissance ...
The New Sylva is a worthy successor to John Evelyn's original of 1644, writes Colin Tudge, with superb line drawings and a text that looks more to the future of Britain's trees, than their past. A book for ladies, gentlemen, 'meer woodsmen' and 'ordinary rusticks' alike.
Many contemporary farmers - despite a hostile economic environment - are finding new ways to make ecological farming viable. Colin Tudge and Graham Harvey have tracked down some inspiring examples ...
Sustainable, agriculture must be low-input - and this can only achieved in diverse, tightly integrated agro-ecological systems. The real future of farming lies in complex polycultures ... in short, mixed farming.
The way to a sustainable, people-centred agriculture lies in agroecology - farming based on ecological principles, taking account of the interdependence of all living things.
As thousands rely on food banks to make it through the winter and a milk price crash threatens the survival of Britain's independent dairy farmers, Colin Tudge - co-founder of this week's Oxford Real Farming Conference - examines the growing need for an agrarian renaissance to tackle the increasingly obvious failings of neoliberal agriculture.
The claims made for GM agriculture are a transparent fraud. The real purpose of GM foods is to give giant corporations legally-enforceable monopoly powers over the entire global food chain.
The Oxford Real Farming Conference 2014 begins on Monday. Graham Harvey and Colin Tudge set out its mission: farming systems producing healthy, affordable food in harmony with environment and wildlife.
With the present state of research we will never find out what we should and should not eat – but, says Colin Tudge, it is hard to improve on ancient wisdom and common sense.
The article, 'Have we got it right on meat and greenhouse gas emissions?' misses an important point made at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, which is that properly managed pasture is a net carbon sink
