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The Seeds Of Change—with Mark Byford · UK Column Radio

0:07
Hello. I'm Charles Mannett with a UK Column interview for which there will be
0:12
notes and links posted at ukcolumn dot org. I have with me today Mark
0:19
Byford, the bowler hat farmer. Mark farm's in Suffolk and he's been very
0:25
outspoken on where our food comes from and how it's produced. Mark. I'm
0:30
very pleased to welcome you to UK Column. Thank you for joining me.
0:35
I think for the audience, let's start with a broadbrush picture, so please
0:39
tell me why it is that you're in farming and exactly what you are doing
0:45
in relation to your farming operations. Charles, good morning, and thank you
0:50
very much for having me on the show to talk about this. And what
0:53
I'm going to class is a desperate situation. This goes back to when I
0:59
was twenty one, I got shown the twenty thirty Agender and didn't at that
1:03
point, Charles really didn't appreciate how farmers would ever be to the point they
1:10
wouldn't want to produce any kind of food supplements or anything. And obviously now
1:17
we're starting to see farmers being pushed more and more and more towards not producing
1:21
food and being paid up to three hundred pounds an acre. For farming pretty
1:26
flowers that don't feed anybody. Now, I see how the agenda comes together.
1:30
But for me down in Suffolk, down in East Anglia, we are
1:34
pretty well all arable, heavily contained by either grain or sugar beet where we
1:41
are. I think that's going to have to change considerably over the forthcoming and
1:46
I do mean considerably. The ground has been raped of any goodness at all.
1:53
The farming practice, as I have to say, are out a date
1:56
now what we're using, and that we need to look to be more sustainable
2:01
and definitely need to be in the position now of bringing the new concepts,
2:07
the new ideas, and the younger generation through this as well, Charles,
2:10
because what's happened is the older farmers are the ones who want to come out
2:15
of farming, are being paid up to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to
2:20
retire. Now with that they can take a one off payment of one hundred
2:23
and one hundred and twenty thousand pounds and they can then sell the farm,
2:28
which predominantly ends up in the hands of either a banking organization or black Rock
2:32
or Vandergarde. You know that the normal vultures. What's set on the sidelines.
2:39
So we're losing a lot of the older farmers out of the system.
2:44
That I have to say, I don't think is a bad idea because they
2:46
don't want to make the change what's necessary for us to be in a position
2:52
of moving things forward for us where we are. We have now started to
2:59
put in some vegetables on the farm, actually start to look at producing real
3:05
food. We've launched the shop on the farm so that people can buy local
3:09
produce locally and pull the food supply chain to bits, because it's all going
3:15
to crash rounder is anyway in the forthcoming. So we've decided to get ahead
3:20
of the game and make sure that the people that we live with and love
3:23
are supported by what we can do ourselves. You know, on what we
3:29
can grow on the farm from the field to the farm shop is one hundred
3:32
meters, and I think we need to get a lot more farmers to understand
3:36
that's where the the system needs to go. It needs to be more localized,
3:40
not globalized. So yeah, that's I think we're kind of where we're
3:45
coming from at the moment. I think I'm played to a clear picture,
3:47
but what I'd like to dip into before we get onto the sort of practical
3:53
delivery of what you talk about is the you refer to, in effect,
3:57
the destruction of the landscape through poor farm in practices. Many of the audience
4:01
will have an idea of the concept of that, but possibly not the detail.
4:06
Will you just talk us through how that's come about and why, what
4:11
exactly is it you mean by these sorts of practices, and how is it
4:15
that they do affect first of all the environment and the landscape, but then
4:18
of course the food that's produced from such an environment. Where we stand at
4:24
the moment is that for the last basically the last fifty years, we've been
4:29
in the position that we do two main things in farming. We use glycopate
4:35
to kill the weeds. We use nitrogen to make things grow. So we
4:40
had a guy come out the other day to soil to do soil samples and
4:46
test the land. And the conclusion was that after fifty years of the practices
4:50
that have been used on the farm, and not just our farm locally,
4:54
I have to say several were tested, the sap that the soil is completely
4:59
dead, has no nutrigen in it at all. So we've got to get
5:03
back to putting organic matter on the ground. We've got to use a lot
5:06
less glycopates. The thing is, Charles, that the practices now so old,
5:14
you know, fifty years ago when they came up with roundup and they
5:19
gmoed the seeds to not be affected by the roundup that they were spraying it
5:27
on. But obviously what we have come to realize now is that the glycer
5:32
fates that have been used are cast of biogenic. They build up in the
5:36
soil, they build up in the in the grain or the vegetable, whichever
5:41
it is you're putting it on, and you end up with a real toxic,
5:45
poisoned food by the time you get it to the table. And you
5:48
know, that's certainly not what I want for my family, certainly not what
5:51
I want my grandchildren and my great grandchildren as they come along. You know,
5:57
we need to be looking at better pices. We've seen a lot of
6:01
farmers this year put land down to set aside in massive amounts. I kind
6:09
of two heads on this, Charles, to be honest, because on one
6:12
head you're looking at it. From the point of it. It's great to
6:15
rest land and it puts natural nitrogen back into the ground. But on the
6:18
other side, you're looking at it thinking, well, this doesn't feed anybody,
6:21
and we have to look at the sustainable longevity of this. And where
6:30
I get frustrated is the fact that we've got people growing fields of flowers and
6:34
we know we've got an incoming food shortage, and you know, with what's
6:39
going on overseas and what's going on in the UK, we are going to
6:42
have food shortage just pending the next three to six months are going to get
6:46
real critical. Food prices are going to go through the roof. So I
6:48
think people have got to start looking now at these practices and how we can
6:54
better do things in the future. Food George is food Goerty will come on
6:58
to I think we're going too that in some good depth. But just and
7:01
I appreciate exactly what you're saying. I think you've absolutely hit the nail on
7:04
the head with the balance between allowing soil land to recover but also recognizing that
7:12
it puts the area out of food production for that period. This might be
7:17
a difficult one to answer, but in terms of time, how long does
7:23
soil take to recover that's been treated in the way that you describe, say,
7:26
it's had fifty years of being chemically induced, you know, having the
7:29
routine of being killed off completely and then expecting things to grow up in effect
7:33
under artificial conditions. What period of time, or if it's possible to put
7:39
a figure on it, it does it take to recover this sort of land.
7:44
There's two answers to this. So if you can imagine that the soil
7:49
which we farm, let's say the top twelve inches every year we come along
7:55
when we plow that, so we turn the whole soil upside down. So
8:01
everything what was on the top what should be on the top, and everything
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what should be on the bottom is on the bottom, all the worms and
8:05
things, and you turn it upside down, and when you see cloud fields,
8:07
you see all the birds diving in a pinch and all the worms,
8:11
and people go, are that's lovely? No, it's not, because those
8:13
worms are desperately needed. So what we need to get farmers to understand is
8:18
to not till that land. That's a big, big thing, is to
8:20
just tickle the surface rather than turning it upside down and killing every because it
8:24
takes twelve months for it to regenerate. The worms and the natural bugs in
8:28
the soil what we need. So what do we do in twelve months time
8:31
plow it again and turn it upside down again? And it's just ridiculous.
8:35
So in answer to the main question, we've got two scenarios here. One
8:39
is the fact that you can use silicon treatments and different treatments putting a lot
8:46
more organic matter into the soil, which will take three to five years to
8:50
recover the soil to one hundred percent if you do it just via organic matter.
8:56
I had a farm previously where we were, and that it took eight
9:00
years for us to get the soil there broken down. It was heavy clay
9:05
land. It was riped of any goodness at all. It had just been
9:07
used for potatoes and onions. And the farmer who farmed it said to me,
9:13
oh, we don't grow potatoes, We mind potatoes. And I think
9:16
to me that kind of said it all about how much they took care of
9:20
the land. So I think, you know, we are looking at the
9:24
quickest three years, the longest eight years, and that's a long time to
9:28
be without any food. It certainly is. You spoke about the age of
9:35
a lot of farmers and people being paid to in effect sort of retire from
9:39
the system. But of course, like you quite rightly identify, people of
9:43
that generation as a rule are resistant to change the type of sort of light
9:50
till or new till farming. You're talking about, how big a shift in
9:54
let's say, ideology would that be for people to adopt at scale? How
10:00
would you effectively go about selling that practice to farmers. There's one hundred dollars
10:07
question, isn't it. I don't think personally, Charls, that farmers are
10:11
ready for what needs to come. I think what we are seeing is I
10:15
work as a coordinator with the Land Workers Alliance, and that's a collaboration of
10:20
all small independent growers across the UK and worldwide. I have to say,
10:26
and with that, Charles, it's all based on free to twenty acres.
10:31
It's not based on the thousands of acres that farmers are used to commercially farming.
10:35
The problem is that the commercial farming side of things is done, it
10:39
doesn't earn any money. With the interest rates going up as high as they
10:43
have in the last year, the contractors can't afford to pay the payments on
10:46
the equipment that they would traditionally use to farm that style of farming. So
10:52
everything is against the farmer at present. The contractors. The seed's gone up,
10:56
the fertilizer's gone up, so they need to come away from that style
11:01
of farming. And what I see happening is that a lot of farms I
11:05
believe that are in hands of sort of five hundred acres and above. We'll
11:11
end up getting separated into a lot smaller, bite sized farms, and we'll
11:16
actually end up going backwards to small, mixed diverse farms. See, if
11:22
you have a mixed farm, Charles, you're in the position where you have
11:26
the rotation of a four to five year cycle where the animals come on they
11:31
obviously you can graze them off the ground. They'll then obviously leave natural fertilizers
11:37
on the ground. You can then just till that lightly in the next year.
11:41
You can put a crop on their, say a vegetable for instance,
11:43
for the next two years. Then you put it back to a grass layer
11:46
or a cover crop, which for instance might be turnips or something what the
11:52
sheep could graze on over the winter, and then you'd start the cycle again.
11:56
And we don't have enough of this going on. We just have this
12:00
Bob Barry approach where chuck the fertilizer on. The stuff will grow, and
12:05
when it's finished growing, take it out of the ground. And then what
12:07
we'll do is we'll just blitz it with weed killer again. And it doesn't
12:13
matter what the outcome, you know, to people's health is, We'll just
12:16
quite happily, just boulder on regardlessly. It sounds like a crazy system.
12:20
But the way you articulate it well, I'm sure, and make many of
12:24
the audience, well, the answer is so obvious. Stop doing it,
12:28
look for local markets and start again. Describe to us, please the pressures
12:35
as a farmer that you feel from government, from industry, from other areas,
12:43
particularly in sort of financial context. What is it that stops farmers from
12:46
making changes that would seem to be so appealing in so many regards. I
12:52
think what's going to have to happen is so obviously under the new ledgers that
13:01
death are putting into place, they're making it harder and harder to farm anyway.
13:05
We're seeing this new I can't think what the terminology is, but what
13:09
the banking sector and everybody's making all these esg schools or whatever it is,
13:13
they're making them. Farmers now comply with that, and that leaves them in
13:20
an awkward position because if they're going to progress down the road they've been going
13:26
down, then it's going to be taxed a lot heavier, it's going to
13:30
be in the position of a lot more investment. And that's why I say
13:33
I see us coming away from that and coming back to smaller farms a lot
13:37
more principal lead scenarios, to be honest, Charles, because we've been pushed
13:43
from the commercial side. Let's say that's a mill for instance, or the
13:48
sugar beet factory, whatever that is, depending on what crop's grown on the
13:52
farm. We've been pushed by them now and the price has been pushed down
13:56
and down and down. So if you take friends and sugar beat Charles.
14:01
Is a classic example. When my grandfather was alive, they would traditionally when
14:05
sugar beach season was on, they'd have one hundred men working on a field
14:11
and they would have everybody out hoing. They never used weed killer. Everyone
14:15
was out hoeing. They would lift them all by hand. Now I'm not
14:18
saying that's the ideal scenario, don't get me wrong. But somewhere in between
14:22
that scenario and the scenario we have now with dosing everything with weed killer is
14:26
the answer. So I think what we've got to look at now is what
14:33
that answer is. And the answer might not yet be out there, but
14:37
I think that we should be looking for those answers now the time is right.
14:41
A lot of the younger generation are taking over the family farms, a
14:45
lot of the farmers that I go out to. I also run a fruit
14:48
and vegetable wholesale company, Charles, and we're finding it extremely difficult to find
14:54
farmers that grow vegetables. Now are the most bizarre thing, you know,
14:56
in the middle of East Anglia. But I think what's coming about is what's
15:01
happened is Granddad had the farm. Dad was told not to go to the
15:07
farm. He was told to go to be a banker, Soliza, whatever
15:09
that may have been. And I think what we're now see in is the
15:13
younger generation. The grandchildren are excited about getting back on the land. And
15:16
there's the grandchildren what are taking over the family farms, and they're the ones
15:20
what bring the passion for the change. So that change is going to be
15:24
driven by the younger generation, not the older generation. Yeah, the perspective
15:31
of the youth, and indeed in effect the outsider. Well, let's come
15:33
back to that. What I'd like to look at a bit further now is
15:37
is food security. The idea of food security. You've just been talking about
15:41
how things were in the past, and people out there whose I think there's
15:43
a great tendency. It's very easy to put on the roost into spectacles and
15:46
imagine that things were better or in a good you know, in a good
15:52
way. Do you, first of all perceive that food security is manageable in
16:00
the United Kingdom and that we could provide enough food of the right quality,
16:04
the right nutrient density for our population under the right conditions. Yes. One.
16:12
I think what we've got to see is a lot of for instance,
16:15
a farm where I am we've now put we've got polytunnels now coming on,
16:21
We've put a new vegetable gardens in, or so huge areas for vegetables which
16:26
are all fenced in to keep the deer off. Now, what I am
16:32
seeing on a lot of farms I'm going out to now is that polytunnels and
16:36
glasshouses are becoming a thing, which is, you know, becoming more and
16:40
more and more of We need farmers to understand that, Charles. One thing
16:47
I'll just mention this because one of the things which farmers have got used to
16:51
doing over the years is let's say we grow a field full of wheat and
16:56
we can return four and a half to five ton and acre, and the
17:00
wheat is worth this year, we've been off for two hundred and five pounds
17:03
a ton, So let's say we can get a thousand ton an acre off
17:07
of it. It's a nice easy crop. You drill it, you spray
17:11
it, you harvest it. You you know, just carry on with a
17:15
perpetual meal. But if farmers go back to growing ritwi likee or real dense
17:23
nutritious food things like spinach, broccolis, kales, you know, good quality
17:30
vegetables, what you can do then is you can crop up to twenty ton
17:33
an acre. So what farmers have got are understand is that whilst it's been
17:38
very cozy for them, whilst they've been living on and I hate to say
17:41
this, living on subsidies, because most farmers do not want subsidies. What
17:45
they actually want is a fair price for the food they produce. And that's
17:51
something coming back to the earlier question about the commercial side of things. We've
17:55
been forced down all the time on what value of food is. If farmers
18:00
grew more vegetables that they could sell up the gates, sell locally to let's
18:04
say, local care homes, local shops, local market traders, that would
18:08
change completely because then they would be controlled in the price and not the big
18:12
boys who have forced the price down to the farmer and up to the consumer.
18:18
I think that's absolutely right food security. They just just a little bit
18:22
further on that. What is it that you see as the chief pressures you
18:26
you speak with certainty about the food scarcity that's coming. We know that DEFRA
18:34
has made a raft of changes to the what they're calling the sort of nature
18:38
recovery policy, shall we say, from the start of this year, and
18:42
of course there are many other influencers at play as well, and we're consistently
18:47
hearing about prices affected by Russia and fertilizer and all this sort of thing.
18:52
How do you view the true case for food scarcity? Start of the pandemic,
19:02
foods that we grew in the UK was at sixty percent. We're now
19:07
four years on and that's a forty percent that will be down to thirty two
19:12
percent of the food which we need in the country. Produced in the country
19:18
by the end of this year. Now. I don't know about you,
19:22
Charles, but they say that people are three meals a day. That's one
19:27
thousand meals per year per person who lives in your home. If we've taken
19:34
the food from eighty percent to sixty percent forty percent, and we're now going
19:41
to take it down to thirty two percent, that basically means what we've achieved
19:45
is getting on meals what we can produce in the country down to one day.
19:49
Now. I don't know about you, but if the boats don't turn
19:53
up and that the planes don't come in, which we're allegedly told under the
19:57
twenty thirty agenda is like to happen, then where's the food going to come
20:02
from. The problem is that, you know, there's people like Bill Gates
20:07
have all these wonderful ideas of how we're going to produce food in factories,
20:12
in containers, you know, and I've seen this with so many options we've
20:17
looked at for the farm. The problem is there's no nutritional value in that
20:22
food unless you add it to it. But when you start looking at where
20:26
all the vitamins and minerals that need to go into the liquid filter through the
20:33
hydroponic system to feed the plants comes from It's all got to be flown into
20:37
the country. So if the food doesn't come, the nutritional value won't come,
20:42
and then we'll just be stuck in this perpetual cycle going around and running
20:45
circles of just eating trash. For me, that isn't what I'm about.
20:49
I certainly want my family to be in a better position than that, and
20:52
the people I love and care for, and I think a lot more farmers
20:56
are starting to step up and to understand that's what this needs. So I
21:00
think what we're going to see on the security side is some massive challenges and
21:04
that now, just to give you an idea on this, Charles, we've
21:08
had rain practically every day for the last nine months. I genuinely believe it's,
21:12
you know, manipulated by man. I don't believe that this is natural
21:15
at all. What I would say on that is that I drove the other
21:21
day to the carrot farm, which is the main carrot farm that supplies into
21:25
Sainsbury's. They we going into their plants to buy carrots for the wholesale side,
21:32
and they've got tractors buried in the fields up to their bonnets. What
21:37
costs you know, eight hundred thousand pounds of time with the harvest equipment.
21:41
What are on the back of them? They can't get them out of the
21:44
fields that they're just so entrenched in the mud. There's two of them I
21:48
saw in one field. You know, So someone's got one point six million
21:51
pounds worth of kit tied up in a field that they can't get out.
21:55
You then think they haven't got on the field to clear last year's crop.
21:59
So we've had a sortage of carrots coming out of the season. They haven't
22:03
then got onto the fields to plant next year's crop. So the crop we
22:07
should be starting in a few weeks time isn't likely to be available until September
22:11
October time. And just to give you an idea on that choles of how
22:15
bad the situation is on a basic commodity that I believe is one of the
22:21
given things British farmers have always been good at. Yesterday I had to buy
22:26
imported carrots from China because I could not buy any carrots at all from anywhere
22:32
else in the world. And that to me speaks trouble, yeah, with
22:37
which I would wholeheartedly agree. In terms of getting out of this situation.
22:44
I know you have some very well considered and comprehensive views. One thing you
22:51
have talked about is the youth and as you say, people coming in with
22:55
fresh eyes and new ideas. I suppose, set in the context of the
23:00
intense media and government propaganda that the youth received, particularly on climate change,
23:08
how do you see getting the message across to the youth you talk about,
23:15
and how is that going to affect the way in which they do want to
23:18
farm. That's an interesting one. They have been completely hoodwinked into this green
23:23
agenda. I have to say it's interesting. I won't say the guy's name,
23:29
but I was at my cousin's farm on the weekend. He was running
23:32
an open day and he's got a very sustainable farm he's recently taken on,
23:37
but it's a council farm and the guy who was there from the council made
23:40
the point of saying that they are the largest holder of land in the whole
23:45
of Suffolk. Suffolk County Council are and they still hold a large summer of
23:49
land in council farms. And one thing I've noticed with a lot of the
23:56
farms locally you know, we've got a few care farms popped up over the
24:02
past few years. They're great for getting kids involved in farming. And I
24:07
think what we need to do is for they And if I may use this
24:12
as an example, please don't take me out of context here, Charles,
24:15
But just prior to the Second World War, Hitler started the Hitler Youth and
24:22
it got all the kids singing on the same song sheet and they got the
24:25
kids completely on board with what they wanted to achieve. And that's kind of
24:29
where we need to get to with farming again. So what we've unfortunately fifty
24:33
years ago, we had that when I started at school, we had a
24:37
school garden. We grew the vegetables. They ended up in the kitchen.
24:40
The kitchen then fed us dinner, and we had this cycle. We understood
24:45
where the vegetables came from, we understood where they went to. We understood
24:48
that we got them back to dinner. That cycle's broken. People have no
24:52
idea. Now we get children come to the farm here and you can take
24:55
them on a tour of the farm, and were saying, this is wheat,
24:57
and from wheat, you know, we get bread, and you know
25:00
from bali we can make Daddy's beer, and from sugar beet, we can
25:03
make sugar. And we get to the end of the talk and we got
25:07
the teacher saying, wow, it's absolutely fantastic where you've told us today.
25:11
I didn't know half of that. And you think to yourself, crying out
25:14
laud you're supposed to be educating these children. That's worrying. We need to
25:18
get back to kids absolutely knowing where food comes from. They need to be
25:22
involved in the production of food, whether that's at home, whether that's you
25:26
know, in a flower pot on a window sill, whether that's on the
25:30
patio, on a garden, on an allotment, on a small farm,
25:33
on a big farm. Get kids out there, getting back to knowing what
25:37
nature's about and getting them to understand that, you know, Charles classic example.
25:42
When I was a kid, I never ever was at home. I
25:45
went out in the morning before Mum got out of bed. I never got
25:48
home before the street lights come on at night. That was that was the
25:52
key. The street light came on, it was time to go home for
25:55
me. We'd be out all day. We didn't take anything to eat,
25:56
we didn't take anything to drink. We knew what we could eat what was
26:00
about on the bushes, simple as that, we knew where the river was
26:03
to drink from, and we looked after ourselves. And that now is a
26:07
very different place to where the youth of today are. You know, unless
26:10
someone hands them a bottle of water now, they wouldn't even know how to
26:11
fill it out of a tap. It's a sad situation. We've got to
26:15
get back to. The younger generation is where the power of all this change
26:22
has to come from. It's got to be consumer led. If the consumers
26:26
are the children telling Mum, I don't want to eat that stuff anymore because
26:29
of this, Mum goes to the supermarket and passes that onto the supermarket.
26:33
The supermarket or she stops using the supermarket in my preference, and Mum then
26:38
goes to the farmers market, the farm shop, to the local market,
26:42
provisions market and things and buys really good quality food, something the kids want
26:48
to eat. The problem is, Charles, we've ended up for situation where
26:52
kids like to eat chicken nuggets because they've got some taste, they've got some
26:56
flavor. You're gonna you hand someone a tomato these days and it tastes like
26:59
water or what the hel would kids want to rate it? That's what we've
27:02
got to change. We've got to change that perception. So I mean,
27:04
kids, try a face of fruit and ages. Ago, Wow, that's
27:07
what I want to be eating. During the Great Internment of twenty twenty and
27:14
twenty twenty one, it seemed to be a very deliberate policy to isolate people,
27:18
and in particular children, who therefore learned nothing about the world around them.
27:23
And as we record this interview now we are seeing the looming of a
27:29
general election and one of the things that's been tossed out recently is the idea
27:33
of a national service, whether in a military or a civic capacity. Do
27:38
you think, although it hasn't obviously been mentioned, but do you think that
27:42
were that to go ahead, that there might be a place for agriculture within
27:48
that sort of concept that idea? Absolutely one hundred percent. That is exactly
27:56
what we need to get back. So we run different schemes locally. I
28:00
run a see I see as well, which is about involving children, not
28:04
just children to adults in farming, food production, food stability, getting them
28:12
to understand they can grow food at home. And I think Charles, that
28:17
would be one of the best things. What could happen? I mean,
28:18
you know, I ran a charity for eight years, and within the eight
28:22
years, the biggest thing we realized that while we ran that was the fact
28:26
that most of the youth we concentrated on sixteen to twenty five year olds.
28:30
Most of the youth of today are lost. They need some guidance, and
28:36
nobody better to give them that experience. I don't think the people with the
28:38
knowledge, and when people start to realize that food shortages are real and not
28:45
just something that you know, some guy in a mad cronky had what his
28:48
great granddad gave him came up with, I think they're going to start to
28:52
realize that the necessity to get on with this learning about agriculture or haughty cold
29:00
to whichever you want to class it as. They're going to need to know
29:03
rather quickly how to get that going. I would say, if anybody at
29:08
home today, you know, is sitting in the position and they're worried about
29:11
food stability, two things they can do, Charles, if I may.
29:15
One would be that they need to go and invest. And I do say
29:21
invest, because this isn't for you know, you to just play about.
29:26
If this is your future. Your absolute point of survival on this planet potentially
29:30
is to invest in some heritage seeds. Go and look for heritage seeds,
29:37
not F one. Do not buy anything what's got F one on it,
29:41
because it means it's been manipulated, messed about in this GMO. Don't buy
29:45
that trash. The other thing would be start stocking up with some food,
29:51
because the food when the shortage comes. Charles, we all know the toilet
29:56
paper scenario. While we all laughed about it, it was very The fortunate
30:03
thing was of the toilet paper, there was still a little bit of food
30:04
on the shelves. Just on a side note to that that, I've got
30:08
a friend who's very high up in Tescos, and Tescos as a named one
30:14
here, because I know that to be the case, now hold sixty two
30:17
percent or less stock in their system than they did four years ago. Now
30:22
when you look at that four years ago, the stock on the shelves lasted
30:26
three days. If we've got sixty two percent left less in the system,
30:32
that says to me that it's going to run out really quickly, really quickly.
30:37
So do not be in the position that when this challenge happens that you
30:41
need to be in the stores with all the other people who are desperate to
30:45
feed their children too. Make sure you've got some provisions at home. Really
30:51
good practical advice, Mark. I think it's exactly what people are desperately wanting
30:55
to hear. What can they actually do? Now, let's just just go
30:57
back one your point about heritage seeds and F one GMOs. Would you just
31:06
go into more detail about that and explain exactly what it is in terms of
31:11
the growing capabilities, but also the harvesting and being able to reuse seed and
31:17
effectively the sort of financial control that's implemented by the sale of F one seeds,
31:22
and why heritage seeds are so important. I mean, I'd be interested
31:26
to know how much of a problem you perceived this as being in the UK.
31:30
It's become a very big problem in Africa already, but it just can
31:33
you just flesh that out, because think it's one of those things again that's
31:36
talked about but often in a sort of rather vague way, and people don't
31:40
really understand what it means. Okay, So heritage seeds are seeds that have
31:45
not been manipulated by anybody. These are just seeds that have come from the
31:49
plants. I'll give you a great example of this. As I said earlier,
31:53
I was at my cousin's farm on sun over the Bank, Holy Week
31:56
in Sunday and Manday, and I took him a hub full of magic beans.
32:00
Now the reason they're magic beans because when I was five years old,
32:05
my granddad gave me some beans and he said to me, if you look
32:09
after these, they'll always feed you. I said, okay, So he
32:15
took me to the vegetable bed and we planted those seeds. And at the
32:19
end of the harvest, we've picked all the beans, what you know,
32:22
we wanted throughout the season, and I went to pick the last ones off
32:25
the bushes and he said, well, don't touch them. They're your seeds
32:30
for next year. So I was okay. So each year I've picked them
32:36
and I've left the seed and kept that seed for myself to replant next year.
32:40
And I've gradually built that up and up and up. So there were
32:44
I deems heritage seeds, seeds that have been handed down from generation to generation.
32:50
Now you can buy these. There's lots of companies out there sell heritage
32:53
seeds. However, and I do say, however, because a certain and
33:00
mister Gates has been buying up a lot of seed companies, heritage seed companies
33:06
especially, and the only thing they're doing with them is closing them down.
33:09
They do not want you to have heritage seeds because heritage seeds offer you freedom
33:15
and independence. So you get a really good crop off a heritage seed.
33:22
They're very resistant to bacterious funguses, pests. They don't generally have those problems
33:30
because they've dealt with that over hundreds and hundreds of years of growing. Now,
33:35
spin that coin to the next one, which is F one. So
33:38
F one you can take. For instance, you can take a pumpkin seed
33:45
and you can change its DNA to make it come back next year as a
33:50
buttonut squash. Okay, the seed looks the same. You can sew that
33:55
it will come up this year out of the packet with F one on it.
33:58
It will come up from the soil as a buttonnut squash, because that's
34:02
what it says on the label. Now, where I kept my seed year
34:07
after year after year, and I got from mine, I got runner beans
34:10
from runner beans, from runner beans from runner beans, fifty five years worth
34:14
of runner beans. The problem with the f one is when you come to
34:17
plant the seed you've saved, it will go back to whatever it was originally.
34:23
So when you see these packets of beautiful purple tomatoes and you know,
34:29
bright blue tomatoes and black tomatoes and things, when you actually grow them,
34:32
they will come up out like that. But that's GMO. That's terrible stuff.
34:37
Now, what you'll end up with next year is either red or yellow
34:40
tomatoes if you save that seed, if they grow at all. And that's
34:44
the other side of this, Charles. A lot of this stuff is bread,
34:47
not to reproduce, and that's what's happened in Africa. My partner is
34:52
Nigerian and some of the things what she tells me about things, what I've
34:57
gone on out there for the last few years with seed products and seed manipulation,
35:01
how they've changed things. You know, from our side now, Charles
35:07
were one hundred years ago and great granddad had one of the farms. We
35:10
would cut the corn, save the grain and next year we reduce part of
35:15
that grain to sow the seed again. Now that doesn't happen. Now.
35:21
What we do is we send all of the grain we produce out and then
35:25
we have seed delivered back in, which is treated, which is gmode,
35:30
which is messed about with, and then we set that even if we kept
35:34
the seed, it wouldn't do any damn good. It's been so played with,
35:37
so manipulated, and you know all of these things. What they do
35:42
to change this seed, to twist this seed is plaining about his DNA.
35:45
One of the reasons now that people are so allergic to wheat, and people
35:49
say, oh, I'm gluten free and I'm gluten intolerant, you're not.
35:52
What you're actually allergic to ninety nine percent of the time is the fact that
35:58
the protein in the wheat has it's been changed because it's DNA has been changed,
36:02
So the protein spikes a lot higher, so your body can't deal with
36:07
the amount of protein in the wheat. Therefore it gives you the reaction,
36:10
and the reaction is very similar to glute. And that's why doctors say,
36:15
oh, you're gluten intolerant. No you're not. I guarantee you if you
36:19
as to eat a really good grain that makes a really good flower, that
36:22
makes a really good loaf of bread, you will not be intolerant. Very
36:25
well articulated, Mark, thank you very much for that I think it's exactly
36:29
the detail that people require on this, and it needs to be laid alongside
36:32
the fact that if you walk into a supermarket, that is what you will
36:36
be walking out with, those sorts of foods, and I think that that
36:38
is a message that cannot be overstated. I think it's also worth noting that
36:44
this government, of course brought in the Precision Breeding Act with the assistance,
36:47
the declared assistance of the National Farmers' Union, so that gives a very communication
36:52
as to the sort of support in effect that farmers are getting. Now,
36:57
I don't want to send everybody into sort of pits of despair because you have
37:04
alluded to the fact that you have a farm shop that you're bringing on your
37:07
horticultural side of things, and you are in a growing minority of people who
37:13
have a solution of practical delivery involving the community. Now, please talk us
37:20
through how that works, how people can can get hold of this and start
37:23
to do it for themselves, engaging with people that are in sort of small
37:28
parcels of land. Well, I'm going to go on to Charles from this
37:31
is. I work very heavily and very closely with Catherine McBean from the People's
37:37
Food and Farming Alliance. I'm one of the advisors for them. We've been
37:45
looking at the best way which we could deliver this across the UK and I
37:49
put up a video on social media about a month ago which went out to
37:53
one point two million people and then promptly got banned about three days later when
37:58
I think it got a bit too much coverage and it was just talking about
38:02
food hubs and food stability. Now. I don't know if you're familiar with
38:07
the food hub scenario, Charles. The principle is that let's say we have
38:12
a barn on the farm which hasn't been used, and we grow some vegetables
38:15
on the farm. We encourage other farmers like I've been doing locally to grow
38:21
vegetables, local producers of things, local manufacturers of food, small manufacturers,
38:29
people who still care what's in it. And I'll give you an example of
38:31
this. I've been looking for bread to put in the farm shop and I
38:36
came across a lovely couple what baked bread? And I said, I wonder
38:38
if you could just talk me through the ingredients label because it's only got four
38:43
things in it, and she said that's all it should have in it,
38:45
Darling. It should only have water, ye eat, salt and flour.
38:51
It doesn't need anything else. But when I go to Tesco's and I pick
38:53
a loaf of bread up, it has like forty seven ingredients, and that's
38:58
the bit we need to do away with because that's the people don't need the
39:00
forty seven ingredients. So the food hub scenario is we get local producers,
39:07
whether that be the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, to all
39:09
send the stuff to the hub. The hub advertisers on a thing called the
39:14
Open Food Network. The Open Food Network is an open source system where the
39:20
general public can buy direct from a farmer or a hub and it ends up
39:25
at their door. It's a brilliant, brilliant system. Now Katherine and I
39:30
from the PFFA have been working quite closely with Nick from the Open Food Network.
39:36
I put the post up about the food hubs, we had dozens and
39:40
I mean dozens of inquiries all across the UK about how to set one up.
39:45
Katherine and I are in the process of putting a blueprint together for that.
39:49
We're also in the process of putting a map together for the People's Food
39:53
and Farming Alliance website where people who have a parcel of land that is being
40:00
used at the moment can advertise that land for availability, and people who are
40:06
looking for a piece of land to grow food on can advertise on there saying
40:10
that they're looking for a piece of land to grow on. So this is
40:14
about putting the two people together. This is something what when this is finished,
40:19
is going to change the way food is grown in the UK for a
40:22
positive way. Excellent. And to add on to that, I've heard you
40:25
talk about community supported agriculture for people. I think I'm saying people who want
40:30
to get more involved physically. We're all very much aware and conscious of the
40:36
demands of life that keep people indoors and people's you know, desire to get
40:40
outside into the fresh air and do stuff. Is that something that's part of
40:46
this absolutely one hundred percent. So when we talk about community support today agriculture,
40:53
that comes in two different forms. So one that could be just basic
40:57
volunteering and they go into like where we're now setting up the vegetable areas on
41:00
the farm, people can come in. We've got people already wanting to come
41:04
and help on that purely so they can get a discount on the food that
41:07
they want to buy. They want to buy a nutritional, good quality food.
41:10
They want to buy that a discount so they can see that they can
41:14
barter their time against the money which they need. That's a cracking system.
41:20
Now there's also the full blown community supported agriculture. Say my cousin Mike,
41:24
who I was saying, I was at his farm at the weekend. He
41:28
runs a scheme which is under the Community supported Agricultural banner where they might get
41:37
fifty volunteers who all grow the food. So where we might look for five
41:43
or six volunteers to help on the farm, they're looking for the people to
41:46
physically come on the farm and grow their own food. They then pay a
41:51
monthly fee. They work on a twenty six week a year road up where
41:57
they will aim to fill a vegebox each week for twenty six weeks at let's
42:00
say a value of twenty five to thirty pounds, and you commit to coming
42:05
on the farm two to three hours a week to assist in making sure that
42:09
that food is there not only for yourself but all the other members of the
42:15
farm and the group that works brilliantly. I've seen it in different parts of
42:19
the UK work. It's massive across America. That's something that I could see
42:23
could easily sweep across the UK within twelve months. That could change the way
42:30
that farming is done. Really does sound like it can, and that's you
42:34
know, beholding on all of us to get that message out. We'll deal
42:37
with links to that towards the end of the interview, so I won't get
42:40
sort of bogged down in that now. On the one hand, you know,
42:45
of course we talk about being outside and getting in amongst this, and
42:46
then on the other hand we see what seemed to be very determined efforts by
42:52
the government either to control what they're calling our access to nature or indeed suggesting
42:58
that it's hazardous to go to these places due to biosecurity and of course no
43:04
in particular the looming specter of bird flu. What's your take on that and
43:09
the biosecurity agenda. H Charles, I love this one. I'll tell you
43:19
what I honestly think. I think it's all blowney. I'm not saying that
43:23
biosecurity isn't an issue. Please don't think I'm not that naive. What I
43:28
do believe is that you'll know that recently they brought out the policy where every
43:34
household has to register their chickens to be on the system. Now, I'll
43:37
just to give you an idea. I'm on the def alert system to tell
43:44
us if there's an outbreak of any disease. Okay, a little while ago,
43:50
they were having a cull in on all the cows and you know badgers,
43:52
these terrible things that were spreading TV across the country from one farm to
43:58
another. Allegedly, what happens is the government comes up with a system what
44:06
they believe that people will full for, and people do. So what happened
44:09
with the chicken scenario, and I just go through this one in depth,
44:13
because if a farm has fifty thousand birds on it and they put a ten
44:20
mile exclusion zone around it and there isn't another farm for twenty miles, what
44:25
they really really need is an outbreak at the other farm, because that's what
44:30
builds the fear and the price. Bear that in mind, the price of
44:37
what big farmers going to produce a chicken for or the eggspore. So what
44:44
they need to do is keep culling these birds to force the price up and
44:47
up and up. So if we can get a chicken up to be worth
44:51
an extra pound when it goes to slaughter. Can you imagine when you've got
44:54
fifty thousand in a house what difference that makes? Who's your herd? You're
45:02
insured providing death as the one who comes in and kills it. Okay,
45:07
Now, as I say the ten mile exclusion zone, So what you need
45:13
to do is you need to get the pathogen from one farm to another.
45:17
So now what you do is you get every household to register their chickens in
45:22
between. So what you then end up doing is you say, well,
45:27
it must have spread from this farm to this farm via these houses, and
45:31
that's where they're going. And that's where you know. We've got badgers.
45:36
Our badges have spread TV all over the country. Badges don't go about two
45:39
hundred yards from a set. It's complete nonsense. They say, oh,
45:43
you know these badges. No, we've got badges here on the farm.
45:46
We had them TB tested. That that's something you can do. You can
45:50
TV test badges. You know, not all badges have TB. If you've
45:55
got badges on the farm, haven't got TB. Leave them there. If
46:00
they haven't got TB, they'll fend off other badgers trying to get into their
46:02
territory. It's an easy way for you to keep the animals safe. So
46:07
you've got to look at this stuff logically, methodically, and most of all
46:14
believably, because that's the problem. What we've ended up with with all of
46:17
this is that you know, one hundred and five thousand people are registered on
46:22
the system for the alerts from DEFRA, and I think there's about two million
46:28
people in homes have chickens. So if they can get all them to register,
46:31
can you imagine the fear they can produce overnight by saying there's been an
46:36
outbreak, and then within two days it'll be gone right across the country and
46:39
they'll have to cut everybody's chickens, and the price and meat goes through the
46:43
roof, price and eggs goes through the roof, and they've achieved their objective
46:46
of getting us to eat you know, cockroaches and slugs and whatever it is
46:51
they reckon we're going to eat. Yeah, I think you put the nail
46:53
on the head there. I mean, that is exactly the way that it
46:57
certainly appears at the UK Comlament of things as to how things will play out
47:01
now going on to a sort of government actions. What do you see as
47:07
coming in the pipeline. You know, we've talked about the positive side of
47:10
it, what you can do, what individuals can do. Of course,
47:13
we're really only talking about a minority of people who will sort of change their
47:16
behavior for the good that the masses presumably can be expected to carry on on
47:21
permanent receive and not really pay heed to what could be done. So what
47:25
do you see as the sort of incoming and continued threats from government and outside
47:30
of government. I guess we've got two major issues pending, Charles. One
47:37
is what's going to happen on the Ukrainian border. People are led to believe
47:43
that Ukrainian grain situation is falsing the price up in the UK. That's total
47:49
CODs. No Ukrainian grain actually comes into the UK. Most of that went
47:53
off to Africa to be the Africans. They're the ones who are paying more
47:58
now for their grain prices Ukraine and grain doesn't come this way. If we
48:04
go to war, that's going to force the price of food through the roof.
48:08
And that's the decision what's only going to be made by the British government
48:12
because I don't know about you, Charles, but they definitely haven't written to
48:14
me and asked me my opinion. I definitely won't be agreen to go,
48:17
that's for sure. So that's one of the biggest I think the biggest single
48:23
threat we have at this point. M h. If there's a change of
48:28
government, will it really make any difference if we go from blue to red
48:31
or green or yellow or ink with green spots. I don't think it will
48:35
make a damnse for difference. I think that they're not They're not in control
48:37
of the government anymore anyway. I would say that's under the World Economic Forum.
48:42
Fully, it doesn't really matter what colors in. Do I see change
48:46
coming, Yes, I think we're going to have to see some changes in
48:51
between the government and death Raah and the farmers. Otherwise, I think a
48:54
lot of farmers are going to start stepping outside the system. To be honest.
48:59
Where that leave people, I think it's only going to create more food
49:01
shortages. I think people as we come away from farmers producing a lot of
49:07
grain and a lot of sugar beet and a lot of potatoes, things what
49:13
they've been able to do on mass but really relatively easily with very few amount
49:20
of staff. That's all going to change, and the government needs to lead
49:27
that way. They're either going to do one of two things. They're either
49:30
going to allow us to starve or change policy. I know which I think
49:36
they're going to do. I have to say, and I don't think changing
49:38
policies in there. I think that this is part of a deeper agenda.
49:43
I think that's going to be a very very hard five to ten years,
49:49
the next ten years, I really do. I think that the general public
49:52
needs to stand up against this now, and one of the ways they can
49:57
do that is to start make sure that you know, I remember years ago
50:00
when we set up a charity, Charles and one of my friends said to
50:04
me, but how are you going to feed yourself? If you know,
50:06
if you can't feed yourself, you can't feed others. Excuse me, because
50:09
we were saying that we were going to you know, we didn't want to
50:12
take a wage and see, and I only said, but if you don't
50:13
feed yourself, you can't feed others. And that's true. That stands for
50:16
the farming community as well. Farmers are starting to understand that if they don't
50:21
grow food, there is no food, and that is crucial. The minute
50:28
that happens and the farmers start to wake up, they'll wake up on mass.
50:30
Now, the problem is that comes back to what I said earlier about
50:34
seed and seed manipulation. Unless farmers are quick, they're not going to get
50:38
in to get any seed. You know, we've been putting seed, heritage
50:42
seeds away for years. We've you know, we've been building and building,
50:45
building massive reserves deliberately. Have we got enough to fill the whole farm?
50:50
No, of course we haven't. Yes, hundreds of acres here, but
50:53
what we have got enough to do is certainly to feed ourselves and feed the
50:57
local area, and to make a big impact in the amount of food what
51:00
will not be available through the food supply chain if it continues the way it
51:06
is. Yeah, I think you make a very good point, added to
51:07
which, of course, we know that supermarkets are running much leaner on stock,
51:12
like you've just been talking about, and not just that, but they
51:15
operate at very very small margins on the individual product. So in actual fact,
51:20
although they do have an awful amount of control, they are also at
51:22
the same time very vulnerable and therefore, you know, moving away from them,
51:28
even if it's only incremental at the start could and should make a significant
51:31
difference, which leads me into the next question, which is, I've heard
51:36
you talk about your five a day, but yours is slightly different and is
51:40
essentially to do with sort of, you know, strengthening your own position in
51:45
moving away from the control system. Just talk us through that, absolutely,
51:51
strife for five. So strife for five is not about having your five day
51:55
vegetables. That can be one of them, don't get me wrong. This
51:59
is about doing five things a day that take you away from the system and
52:04
away from the power that control the system has over you. So we've been
52:09
looking at different things that we could do. So we've now banned ourselves going
52:14
from supermarkets, and I talk about this from the fruit and edge wholesale side.
52:20
We used to spend two thousand pounds a month on fuel from Tescos and
52:23
instead now we go to an independent retailer. Now, don't get me wrong,
52:28
I still understand that the corporations and the systems in the background, but
52:31
the profit is in the hands of a small independent people now who own the
52:36
petrol stations. It's an Indian family. They're tenpence of eater cheaper than Tescos.
52:42
I will say, and I don't just pick on Tescos that I use
52:45
that as a pure example. They're tenpence a liter cheap, but is saving
52:50
us money and that money's not going into that corporation which sits with black Rock
52:53
and Vanderguard and everybody else. Look at five things a day. Where do
52:59
you shop? How do you pay? If you pay for things on a
53:04
credit card or you pay for things you know on a card. The problem
53:08
is we don't have a We don't have any card facilities our in our farm
53:14
shop because we worked out on every one hundred pounds it was going to cost
53:17
a two pounds fifty to take the money, so on every thousand pound we'd
53:22
lose twenty five quid. Well, that's fortune. We can't afford to do
53:24
that, so let's not do it. So we just put signs up and
53:28
put it all out on social media. Cash only. There's a tin in
53:30
there. It's all locked up. You can drop your notes in there.
53:34
That's great, thank you very much. That's where we need to get back
53:37
to. We pay all our supplies with cash, so that removes them having
53:40
to pay the two and a half percent three percent as well. Pay by
53:45
cash. Look at where you're spending your money. There's dozens of these things.
53:49
Chills in the corse of a week you can start to address. You
53:52
know, this might be you know, for instance, myself, I have
53:57
to say I've been blessed all of my life never to have to overly cook
54:00
for myself. I've always had partners that could more than capably look after me,
54:05
and I thank each and every one of them for that. Not that
54:07
there's been a lot I do listen to add but you know, I put
54:10
that there that you know, they've all been all been very good at that.
54:15
But for me myself, I've started taking up a bit of cooking and
54:19
so I can understand the basics of how to make food, because again,
54:23
this is one of the things that over the course of that fifty years I
54:27
speak about that people have come away from. It's convenient when you get home
54:30
just to Chucks and chicken dippers and some fries in the other you know,
54:35
fifteen minutes is done. There, you go, kids as your dinner.
54:37
There's no goodness in it. Stop it. You know, look at one
54:40
of you. Five a day could be just addressing your nutritional value what you
54:45
actually take in. You know, look at your feel well, you know,
54:49
look at your where you spend your money, look at how you spend
54:52
your money. There's dozens upon dozens of these things. Look at five things
54:55
every day that take you away from the system. You know. It might
54:59
be that I know there's a lot of people don't hold with paying for utilities,
55:04
for instance, because they say that utilities are free, or that they
55:07
shouldn't pay counsel tax because that money's going to the government, and the government's
55:09
going to war, and it states in the law that we're not allowed to
55:14
subsidize terrorists. Well, people are arguing about paying all sorts of bills at
55:20
present. Whether you agree or don't agree on that, you know, as
55:22
far as the public's concerned, what I do think is there is changes we
55:27
can all make and those five things a day? Can you just and I
55:31
just go through this Chiles. You imagine if if everybody just did one a
55:35
day, and we could get the whole country not to shop their food shop
55:37
in Tesco's, Saintury's, Audi Little whoever it might be, whichever one of
55:42
the big ones it is, if we could just take away that and just
55:46
take that away, the fuel, take it away, put it back in
55:50
the hand of independent traders, that to me would be gold. Yeah,
55:54
which I think everybody listening would absolutely wholeheartedly agree with. And I think I
56:02
was just going to add to that, of course that I think there's you
56:06
know, there is a great misconception about the relative values of food in that
56:10
people are naturally drawn towards food that's cheaper because it's perceived to be better value.
56:15
But of course what you're saying in terms of the nutrient density and the
56:20
you know what it will give your system in actual fact, that food that
56:24
appears to have a higher price, in fact you get what you pay for.
56:29
And I think that's something that people need to sort of have a bit
56:31
of a recalibration on now, Mark, I think from what you've said,
56:38
and you know, the direction you've given, I can imagine a lot of
56:42
people who would have been watching and listening who will be thinking, well,
56:45
i'm within range of east Anger. I want to see this man and what
56:50
he's doing and how he's how he's farming. Do you sort of accept visitors
56:54
to the farm and what people around and show them what you're up to.
56:59
Yes, we'd love to definitely. I think that we need to be in
57:01
the position that we need to do a lot more of that as well,
57:04
Charles, to be honest. People can contact the sever via the Facebook page
57:07
or the YouTube channel contact us LUs know we're going to be running some open
57:14
days on the farm this year. Wi swill advertise on social media. We
57:19
have been running some barbecues and things on the farm for local people to come
57:22
and see what we're up to and for them to witness the physical growing of
57:29
the food, because I think that's key. It's all going to well opening
57:31
the shop and telling people when we're growing it over there on the field,
57:35
but when they actually come and they go, so, what's that and you
57:37
go, well, that's the broad beans, and why are those ones smaller?
57:40
Because that's the next crop, and why are those ones? And that's
57:44
the next crop, and that's s French beans, and that's runner beans,
57:46
and that's tomatoes. And we've got sixteen different varieties of tomatoes, and we've
57:51
got strawberry plot, and we've got this, and we've got so I think
57:53
as people start to see the vegetables growing, the different stages of its growth,
58:00
then people are going to start to understand that actually I can I can
58:06
feel it, see it, touch it, It's tangible, you know,
58:10
Charles. One of the things which we've got a problem with at present in
58:14
the UK especially is that people's knowledge of fruit and veg is that it's stacked
58:20
in green crates on a shelf in a supermarket. And that is a problem
58:25
because you know when you say the kids or we haven't come around the farm
58:29
and you say to him, you know, or where do you get chicken
58:31
from the sall Tescos or you know or whatever suit market they shop in.
58:37
You can tell I used to be a Tesco's customer, can't you. You
58:38
can tell that. So, but you know, the kids when they go
58:45
to school, they're not talking to stuff again. And you know, parents
58:47
now because of the convenience of food, you know, the kids walk around.
58:52
You know, most parents wouldn't know what to do behalf the fruit and
58:55
vege on the shelf. Anyway, That's that's one of the big that's probably
59:00
becoming worse and worse moth. I don't know if you saw the paper from
59:06
Sainsbury's did a paper about twenty thirty and how we will change the face of
59:12
farming. Sainsbury's have basically said we do not need any farmers. By twenty
59:17
thirty, everything will be grown in factories in hydroponics. The meat will be
59:25
either lab grown or based on a jellyfish which can be manipulated and changed to
59:32
look like meat. Or we're going to be blessed by the fact they're going
59:37
to allow us to even grow meat at home. I mean, can you
59:40
just get excited about that? Imagine opening your birthday comes and you open a
59:47
present, and it's a big lump of steak. Well it's not, but
59:51
you know, if you drop some water on it, it will turn into
59:53
a big steak over the course of a couple of weeks. Not for me,
59:57
thank you. And I think anyone is into this interview will be leaping
1:00:00
up out of their chair ready to go out and make some sort of advancement
1:00:05
into their own circumstances, are improving their own circumstances. So we'll just we'll
1:00:12
wind up now, But before we do, let's just go through a bit
1:00:15
of a recap as to where people can go to look at the open open
1:00:22
food network and the community supported agriculture. Where should people actually go to start
1:00:30
looking at this? Charles, I've got to be honest, I don't know
1:00:32
none of the website links the top of my head. What I will say
1:00:37
is if they google any of these or whatever you know, a search engine
1:00:42
they use, the Open Food Network is always top of the list. Community
1:00:46
Supported Agriculture, the Land Workers Alliance, they all give different options, and
1:00:52
as well the PFFA, the People's Food and Farming Alliance, that's a big
1:00:57
one what I'm getting involved more and more heavily with. I'll just say that
1:01:01
if people want to support the work we're doing that, there is a donation
1:01:07
button on the People's Food and Farming Alliance page. So what I see people
1:01:12
needing to do is go to those sites, particularly find me on social media
1:01:16
under the Bowler Hat Farmer or the art project on Facebook. That's the actual
1:01:22
project themselves. We've got a sixteen acre site we're now starting to develop as
1:01:25
well, which is a site which has been gifted to us to use on
1:01:34
a long term basis. We're going to turn that into a sustainable farm where
1:01:37
we're going to keep some animals as well. I'm excited about that one because
1:01:40
that's going to give us I'm hoping we're going to be able to have some
1:01:45
cows on that site so we can have our own dairy as well. That
1:01:47
will be exciting excellent Mark, Yes, indeed, a very exciting future,
1:01:52
not just for you and your projects, but also I think for everybody who's
1:01:55
been listening in so much food for thought, if you will. But it's
1:02:00
been a pleasure to have you on, and i'd just like to say at
1:02:02
this point that on the UK Column front, if you are in a position
1:02:07
to support us financially, which is only a five pound a month membership or
1:02:10
indeed donation, then it does help us to bring interviews like this to you,
1:02:15
So please do consider that if you're not already doing so. As I
1:02:19
said at the beginning, there'll be notes and links to Mark's insights at the
1:02:23
posted with this interview at UK column dot org. So it just remains for
1:02:29
me to say to you, Mark, thank you very much indeed for coming
1:02:32
on and giving an amazing sense of positivity and really very well considered insight into
1:02:40
your life, your philosophy and your farming practices. Please keep in touch.
1:02:45
Charles, it's been great to come on the show. Thank you so much
1:02:47
for having me on. It's nice to be able to get the message out
1:02:51
there to the public. Whilst I understand that a lot of people still need
1:02:54
to bury their heads in the MSN. A lot of people are waking up
1:02:59
with I've seen vast, vast amounts of people moving to this kind of media
1:03:04
now. And just continue the good work you're doing and getting the message out,
1:03:07
and thank you for having us on