Of course I think of Martin Wolfe. It was Martin who first showed me there was an alternative and successful way of working and being on the land. I remember this shifting moment, standing in one of his alleys.
Oxford Real Farming Conference 2024 was attended from my kitchen table, on line with the pleasure of Lil for good company, and over 3,000 people from around the world. Sometimes we watched different sessions, Lil in the sitting room, I in the kitchen, feeding each other cups of tea and left over hunters pie, walking the dogs (loosing Brow) and at tea collecting 3 christmas trees for Goeffs goats.
It’s in it’s 15th year. Martin must have been there right at the start. Gaina was somewhere in the audience.
1. IPSS food global challenges
Concerned with a ecological destruction, climate crisis and food poverty. What solutions and how to balance, how decisions made and who controls? We had a whistle stop tour of
1970 – ?
1980 – Neo liberalism weakening of anti trust protection and enforcement
1990 – Voluntary market based governance
Culminating in the UN summit commission with transnational corporations (FAO). A secret memorandum between the UN and FAO in which they validated a range of solutions without consultation with the affected communities.
1992 Rio – agriculture /biodiversity got in. But since them marginilised. By Montreal squeezed out in favour of sustainable intensification.
Problems with dominance of corporate engagement
How to rein in this dominant power?
Committee on World Food Security (2011) / Africa 80% involved in food production.
Market dependency far outweighs market need. Quality over quality. For example Scottish Meat – has to be grown in Scotland, who and quality immaterial.
Need for a mindset of collaboration not competition.
2. Perennial vegetables
Cardoons. Need to watch this again
3. Satish Kumar
Melodic song to the soil. Soil is real wealth, Lady Eve Balfour, founder of Soil Association, said to me when I asked her how did she create such a magnificient garden: I just take care of the soil. Source of wellbeing. I want Rishi Sunak to be a gardener. Starmer, become a gardener.
4. Rebecca Old Hall Farm, Norwich to Bungay (known to Lil)
Grew out of a series of disasters. Our pigs died of swine flu etc. Realising they were paying someone else and not receiving any joy. Watched clouds of top soil blown away. A nine day intensive Holistic Management course.
5. Scale 1 Tolhurst Farm
Set up in 1970. Grows 100 crops and vegetables organically. no esternal support. Poor soil, 20% stone. Neutral PH. Working on a 7 year rotration. Including surface tilling (parts at a time), 6inch deep, shallow. Part agroforestry in alleys. Till mid march, 3 weeks before crop eg potatoes.
No animal fertiliser. Mulch is woodchip @50 cm per hectar. Kamial woodchip. Why so successful? augmentation of fungi that grows readily on woodchip. Keep the ground covered 75% of the time. A section 2 year rest. Woodchip 12 month left before applied.
Regular monitoring of soil health. Earth worms the measure, 1-15 million per hectar. Maintained carbon, and nutrient balance. 80 tonnes of carbon per hectar.
Chicory deep rooted.
Scale 2 – ? Brewood Park Farm
I tried to farm in the heart beat of Mother Nature. Set up to sell carbon
No till, biological farming and use of cover crops (lupins, camomile, cornflowers) to promote healthy soils, enabling good yields with lower chemical inputs.
Natural Biology was biological brewing in IBCs using molasses.
Cover crop of been rye and vetch, lupins and red clover. Cut with a Crimper roller after first frost. Or Glycophosphate. Wouldn’t dream of putting it on food.
Ph monitor together with nitrate etc tests
The Commons 1
Established systems do not welcome new ideas. Problems cannot be solved by the same mindset that created them.
The challenges of food and agriculture is just another theatre.
How the commons over 1,000 years developed discourse, history to meet this challenge.
List of all that is going on around the world emerging systems of co-operation. eg Degrowth, Co-operatives, public parks, Open Access, Citizen Science, Water Commons – etc etc. Common denominator, all collaborative, independent of state power, resilient to changing weather patterns. Identified 25 patterns of practice, eg sharing risks, honour, transparency, etc. I am because we are.
It’s time they were amplified.
Language an important tool. Away from Consumer, Producer investor. Build on our own infrastructure.
Need to engage /interact with the main stream state, which also aims to serve for the public good
Legal infrastructure
Politics of belonging
Economics of sufficiency
The Commons 2 – Guy
AD529 Emperor Justinian gave us the Codex in which property divided into : Private, Public, Nobodies, Common. The basis of our common or civil law
1217 A 10 year old king signed the Magna carta and the Charter of Foresters, the latter far more subversive and ever since, monach and parliament tried to rein in its power. The Charter of the Forest of 1217 (Latin: Carta de Foresta or Charta Forestæ) is a charter that re-established for free men rights of access to the royal forest that had been eroded by King William the Conqueror and his heirs. Many of its provisions were in force for centuries afterwards.Only repealled once, in 1971 by the Conservatives. First charter to assert that everyone had a right to have rights. Even some rights of women. The Crown was the Steward, and there were gatekeepers to scrutinise.
Erosion of commons – The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin. 1968.
Eg Juliana and the Lord of Winchester
eg Juliana and Trump
National Health 1908 set up as a common, now chiped away to private business.
North Sea Oil was our common, sold off by Margaret Thatcher unlike the Norwegians who retained ownership making every Norwegian a millionaire theoretically.
Sea bed sand – sold to builders
1982 the biggest enclosure of nature, when the oceans were defined as belonging to states.
Tried to privatise forests
Kaliwood 