On Wednesday I will be leaving Essex on a week long podcast road trip to the Cotswolds/Welsh borders and then north Wales to record around a dozen new episodes for Meet the Farmers. I am really looking forward to speaking to all of the farmers along the way, including Rob Havard in Worcestershire, Ally Hunter Blair in Herefordshire, Emlyn Roberts and Will Evans in north Wales and many others.
We live in troubling times. In Britain our political conversation seems to be anchored in the distraction that is Brexit, at a time when we should critically be focusing on climate change mitigation practices and strategies, making our transport fit for the future, our energy greener, fighting against biodiversity loss across the world and holding leaders to account that don’t toe the line. Reform of agriculture also needs to be on this agenda and Brexit seems to have smothered this conversation as well. I certainly intend to raise the ‘climate card’ with each of my guests along the way over the next week or so, to see how they think we can work towards more sustainable agricultural practice.
A couple of weeks ago I went along to A Focus on Nature’s Now for Nature conference bringing together young people from across the UK with an interest in the natural world. There the message was clear. Action is needed and it is needed now. The global youth strike movement is gathering momentum. The calls for action from politicians is palpable. However, we all still need to look at our own impact and see what we can do on a personal or business level (if we run a business). I hold my hands up and say that there is a huge amount of progress that I still need to make on this front. Day to day life can run away with you easily and it’s important to take a step back and think about what you can do. I am going to up my effort, although things like recently booking a flight to Thailand isn’t exactly helping the matter. We’ll be planting lots of new trees on the farm this year but I’m not sure whether in my mind this mitigates the impact of my ‘negative climate decisions’ sufficiently. It’s a hard one. I hope you can come along with me and I hope lots of farmers will come along as well.
On another note, please can you contact me if you regularly listen to Meet the Farmers through iTunes and are unable to access episodes…
thinkingcountry.com 