Changing Course for Life

Congratulations to Michael Schmidt - the Ontario farmer who’s due in a Newmarket court today for the verdict on charges he violated the provincial Milk Act by selling unpasteurized milk - for standing up to the anti-raw-milk lobbyists. I am very aware of what he and his supporters are up against, having founded the Association for Unpasteurised Milk Producers and Consumers in the United Kingdom back in 1989 to prevent the British government’s proposed ban of unpasteurized milk - and again in 1997. We won our battle on both occasions, maybe because of the “and Consumers” factor and much press support.

I ran a doorstep delivery service of our own Guernsey organic raw milk and cream, and this inspired me to write a leaflet with a tear-off strip briefly proclaiming the positive case for raw milk. The purchasers then signed the statement and sent the slip back to AUMPC. This was reproduced amongst 150 raw milk producers and their customers. We collected 15,000 signatures and delivered them personally to the Minister of Agriculture. (more…)

“Changing Course for Life – Local Solutions to Global Problems” Julian Rose

Excerpt:

“It is said that a civilisation that is loosing its seeds and destroying its soil is a dying civilisation: and we are. Today, over eighty percent of mankind’s diet is provided by the seeds of less than a dozen plant species - and most of these are ‘owned’ by just two or three transnational corporations. Ninety eight percent of vegetable varieties have disappeared from the diet of the western world over the past hundred years. Unless this catastrophic loss of biodiversity is reversed, our gene pool - upon which all life depends - will run dry within the span of this century.” (more…)

January 2008

The small peasant farms of Poland form the bedrock of traditional farming practices in this highly diverse and relatively unspoiled Country. I say ‘relatively’, because over the past decade Poland has been subjected to a full frontal corporate and EU attack upon it’s indigenous resources  - industrial as well as agricultural.

However, inspite of a big post Communist sell off of national industries and a predictable fascination in capitalist ‘free market’ carrots, Poland retains a certain solidity and is not yet wedded to the urban inspired life style that so strongly influences UK socio-economic patterns. (more…)

July 2007

During the 20^th century, the word ‘Horsepower’ has been adapted to describe the power output of the internal combustion engine.  However, the early road hauling and agricultural steam engines were quite literally described as being three, four or five ‘Horse power’, thus one could equate the strength of the horses to that of the steam engines of this new era. These steel beasts lead the charge of the all-conquering industrial revolution, followed by the dominance of the internal combustion engine and the almost total dependence on oil for the great majority of agricultural and transport needs. (more…)

Sir Julian Rose, President, International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside

Introduction:

The Polish Countryside is the single greatest resource base of the Nation.

The nurturing of it’s health and welfare therefore needs to be given the highest priority.

There is a great need (and opportunity) at this moment in history, to initiate a bold plan to unite the key social, environmental and economic elements of country life and thus prevent it continuing to suffer a slow death.

European/World Agriculture in Crisis:

Because of the rapid changes that have taken place during the past three decades, many traditional countryside values are now under threat. Some have already reached breaking point. (more…)

Resistance comes in three shades: passive, occasionally active and active.
The corporate and political powers who aim to take a controlling influence over the food chain count on the majority of civil resistance being of a passive ‘dumbed down’ nature. They can tolerate a certain amount of ‘occasionally active’ interference in their master plan, but they do not tolerate genuinely active resistance. So those of us who hammer continuously on genetically modified corporate doors are monitored, harassed and generally marginalised by the prevailing ’status quo’ and its media poodles.We should have little doubt that the prevailing corporate backed government agenda is financed by the big agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations, who turn-in annual combined profits in double figure billions and who do, indeed, aim to wrest total control over the human food chain. “Control oil and you control the State. Control food and you control the people” said Richard Nixon’s ex secretary of state Henry Kissinger. (more…)

Agriculture As Though the Earth Mattered

Julian Rose, June 2007

Almost everything that has gone wrong with food, farming and our environment over the past three or four decades, has done so because of an unswerving allegiance to market forces and what is described as ‘The Free Market’.

Agriculture, as the origin of the word conveys, is ‘a culture of the field’ and is not an industry and therefore should never have been subjected to the competitive and often aggressive cut and thrust of commerce. Once under the influence of the market economy, it became transformed into an industry in which ever greater productivity at ever lower costs became the all pervading mantra. (more…)