Edinburgh to Cheriton Bishop

In the last week there has been two meetings, in two countries with two totally different sets of views on farming and land use.
The 2010 Nuffield Farming Conference held in Edinburgh at a nice hotel, where the great and good of agriculture listened to the 2009 scholars presentations of their findings. Mostly these were very interesting, some were outstanding presentations by inspiring individuals. There was some controversy, mostly from the south west which seems to embrace alternative ideas, and plenty of discussion. I felt a little disappointed with the food chain talks, where we have heard it before about getting closer to the consumer and telling the story. My feeling are the supermarkets are even telling producers stories now, so what is next? The inspiring stuff is on the green energy, peak oil and alternative crops like algae and grain maize. These were scholars that had looked outside the box and were acting on what they saw with conviction, exciting times! Reports on the talks are available from the Nuffield website or if they not there get hold of Mr Stones, they are worth reading.
Of course I was there not just to enjoy but to find out what will be required of me next year and I'm certainly have some work to do.
Cheriton Bishop village hall with no heating and 16 people was the venue of the second meeting to watch the screening of Winstanley a 1975 film about the digger movement in 1649. Winstanley was a dreamer that tried to make his vision a reality by growing crops and living on St Georges hill which was common land. It was a vision that came from poverty and great injustices. the generally theme is that all land should be free and should be there for all to share. After a lot of hardship and pretty bad behaviour of both the local landowners and local peasants they were finally dispersed. Although they had a rough time with crops being damaged, they nearly starved as their crops were not sufficient alone and they did not want to trade to make sure they had enough food for the winter.
The discussion afterwards was a mixed group, not many humble peasants but plenty of anti farmer feeling. Ideas discussed was how the single farm payment has made land too expensive and farmers to rich, how anyone should be allowed to build on land if they were low impact living, how you could live on very few acres, that we are born with the skills to farm or if not we should be teaching sustainable living. I did try and put in a good word for council farms especially Devon, but I felt a little outnumbered. To close the evening we sang The World Turned Upside Down my favourite verse being:

We come in Peace, they said, to dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common and make the waste ground grow
This earth divided we will make whole
So it may be a common treasury for all

Strong stuff, but if peak oil chaos that is predicted does occur, are we going to be in such times that radical solutions will be required?
Part from my Sister in law (and Jakki won't mind me saying that!) must people have an interest and affinity with the land and nature. They are finding out where there food is from and many dream of moving to the country and having animals. Most see capital and availability of land as the biggest barrier. Many lack courage to live in a yurt, but here in the South West we have many rich peasants buying up the small farms to live their dream.
Farming has two options; to see this as a threat, or as an opportunity to harness those dreamers and help them to farm.
Maybe in the next year I can come up with a talk that keeps up the South West's alternative reputation.
16 + the amiss 7 + Michael Blanche NfSch = nearly a revolution. Any one like to join (no need to be a peasant)

Beautiful Devon and lunching with landlords

A visit by Michael a Scottish Nuffield scholar has made me realise that I need to speed up this blog writing. Michael has visited Australia and New Zealand trying to mend the farming ladder and because he has not yet found the answers he was looking for, he decided to come to Devon. Now this is obvious to all of those that live in Devon as we all know that there are plenty of exciting new entrants doing amazing things down here. Some are food centred businesses, a lot are based on organic and many include direct selling. After realising that Michael wrote everything down (swotty or what) we made sure that his whistle stop tour didn't give him a chance to pick up his pen. We visited Poultry abattoirs, chicken farmers in temporary houses and chicken farmers that had built mini mansions (although still surrounded by caravans). Lot of figures for adding up but the message which I think we have to deliver in Devon is small can be big. Intensive farming in the form of adding value and being innovative means that you can live of 50 acres. It was a shame we didn't have longer so I could have shown him robot milkers so the farmer could bottle the milk, Fancy chicken breeder selling to smallholders and so many other businesses I admire. These are all genuine new entrants that haven't loads of money to start off. Then of course we have lots of new entrants down here that have had other careers, the ones we think aren't real farmers but bring other skills like marketing and media skills that we can learn from.
Just so Michael could write about somewhere really exotic we also went to a meeting in Cornwall with a group of land agents discussing 'the farming ladder'. Michael got very excited as he finally understood the county council farms system and he has written a great blog on it. As usual the best bit was the lunch and conversation. It seems that feeling was that under 250 acres was not a viable unit and should be taken back in hand. The priority was maintaining the estate value, especially the tidiness and that although the big estates understood that farming tenants needed help to retire and bring new blood in, they just didn't feel that it was for them to help. A tiny glimmer of hope when a National Trust agent admitted that on a Bodmin estate they had made a change and let land to young couple because the other large farmer tenants that had rented bare land used large machinery and farmed too efficiently to fit how the general public expected the land to be farmed.
Maybe one way of mending the ladder would be making some of the landowners realise the benefits of new innovative tenants and opening their minds to something beyond just profit. Could be a big job, but as Michael didn't seem to fancy chicken farming perhaps he's the guy to do it!