Traduction à l'aide du logiciel de Google:
Interview exclusive du Prince Charles
Le prince de Galles a donné une interview exclusive à la BBC environnement au correspondant Sarah Mukherjee sur l'avenir de l'agriculture et de l'environnement.
Voici une transcription de l'entrevue:
Q: Je pense que je voudrais commencer par vous demander comment votre passion pour la nourriture, l'agriculture et la campagne a commencé?
Quand ma sœur et moi étions enfants, nous avions eu une sorte de petit patch, vous le savez, un peu sournoisement niché au fond de quelque part à Buckingham Palace et nous l'avons utilisé pour faire pousser des tomates et de la brousse et les choses bizarres.
Je veux dire, j'ai toujours estimé que c'est une partie importante du lien d'une personne avec la nature et le sol, et donc je suppose que cela faisait partie de celui-ci.
Mais alors quand je suis arrivé ici, je voulais juste rester coincé à l'intérieur et j'ai toujours voulu faire un peu d'agriculture - Je ne suis pas très bon mais heureusement il ya beaucoup d'autres personnes prêtes à aider.
Q: Avez-vous jamais mangé les tomates que vous avez cultivées?
Oh oui, c'était là la question. Cela a été l'une des joies - manger les choses que vous avez produites et cultivées. Ça fait quelque chose de les regarder de la graine, puis, progressivement, prendre forme. C'est un de ces grands mystères de la vie.
Q: Donc, pépinière - pour vous - est avec des tomates?
Eh bien, vous savez ce que je veux dire - c'est terriblement spécial - ils ont toujours meilleur goût. C'est comme les légumes que j'ai ici dans le jardin - ils sont infiniment mieux si vous les avez cultivés.
Donc, je pense que c'était une partie de celui-ci. Et puis j'ai eu un intérêt particulier pour essayer de faire pousser les choses le plus naturellement que possible - seulement parce que je me suis senti qu'il était intrinsèquement non durable pour continuer à être en mesure de s'attendre à des produits chimiques sans fin et d'engrais artificiels être appelé et ne pas souffrir les conséquences à la fin de la journée.
Q: Vous avez parlé de la durabilité, bien sûr dans le milieu agricole que vous êtes très bien connu pour votre soutien de petites exploitations familiales.
Pourquoi pensez-vous qu'ils sont si importants?
Eh bien, parce que je pense que si vous regardez l'ensemble de ce pays .... c'est merveilleux, c'est une sorte de tapisserie - une tapisserie complexe - de tous ces exploitations et les familles en pointillés sur, et aussi autre chose je me sens vraiment, c'est que, vous le savez, des centaines d'années, beaucoup de ces personnes ont été de passage sur l'expérience et les connaissances et la sagesse, ont été à la recherche après la campagne, mais tant de gens qui vont à elle -, mais qui vivent dans les villes - tenir pour acquis.
Aucune de ces choses - aucun des paysages merveilleux que nous avons dans ce pays - passe par magie, quelqu'un doit s'en occuper et de le gérer et l'entretenir et régler les haies et les murs et ces autres choses que tout le monde aime.
Et je pense encore que la ferme familiale est un élément essentiel de la tapisserie complexe - non seulement du paysage - mais aussi les communautés qui le composent. Je sais que beaucoup d'entre les agriculteurs et leurs épouses jouent un rôle essentiel dans ces communautés de tant de façons différentes et invisible.
Si vous supprimez tout ce qui, vous avez perdu quelque chose de terriblement important.
Si vous prenez quelque part comme Dartmoor - il peut être un environnement très inhospitalier et si vous ne faites pas attention à la manière dont la nature opère là, il te coup de pied dans les dents.
Je l'ai vu que trop souvent, les gens à venir le long de dire, ah, c'est ridicule ces agriculteurs à l'ancienne qu'ils ne savent pas ce qu'ils font - nous pouvons faire beaucoup plus productif et tout le reste - et j'ai vu des gens aller complètement ventre en l'air dans les cinq ans, en essayant de faire les choses dans une partie d'une région comme Dartmoor que la nature ne permet pas seulement.
Et le terrible problème je pense que nous devons faire face a affaire à des limites - de cette idée que nous pouvons faire quelque chose.
Mais les agriculteurs vieille famille, ils ont souvent savoir jusqu'où vous pouvez pousser - les taux de chargement et toutes ces choses.
Q: Il ya eu un changement énorme, bien sûr, dans la façon dont les agriculteurs sont payés par la politique agricole commune. Maintenant, les agriculteurs sont payés - pas nécessairement à produire de la nourriture - mais de produire environnement et du paysage.
Mais pensez-vous que ces petites exploitations familiales qui vous parlez, pensez-vous qu'ils seront en mesure de faire face?
Oui, parce que j'ai toujours estimé que ces changements sont très difficiles pour les personnes qui ont été encouragés à regarder la vie d'une manière particulière.
Et ils ont été encouragés d'ailleurs. Et vous savez il y avait beaucoup d'experts - au cours des 50 ans - qui leur ai dit tout à faire ce que l'autre et tout le monde se précipita dans arrachage de haies, couper les arbres - faire des domaines toujours plus grand et de mettre plus d'engrais et produits chimiques sur parce que c'était l'avis - les agriculteurs réalisé exactement la même chose. C'est tout à venir autour d'un cercle complet.
Mais la difficulté, je pense, c'est que maintenant à moins que les agriculteurs de la famille voir le besoin de sécurité en chiffres - en co-opération d'autres termes - qui est une chose très difficile. Il est plus facile sur le continent parce qu'ils ont eu une longue tradition de celui-ci, mais dans ce pays il n'y a pas une tradition de celui-ci et ceux qui sont le point de voir à ce sujet sont, je pense, va être dans une bien meilleure position.
Q: Si les gens sortent au supermarché pour obtenir quelque chose de spécial, c'est la bière allemande, olives espagnoles ou fromage français - ce qui est si bien dans la cuisine britannique?
Eh bien, la chose merveilleuse au sujet des aliments Colombie, c'est que c'est assez incroyable à quel point il est développé au cours des 10 dernières années, vraiment.
J'ai parlé de la fromagerie à Stow-on-the-Wold, trois ou quatre ans maintenant. Vous n'en croirez pas le nombre de merveilleux fromages britanniques qui ont été exposés là-bas.
Q: Il y aura des gens écouter ce qui va dire - ainsi, vous ne pouvez pas - sur un revenu moyen - de remplir votre chariot de supermarché avec de belles, les produits fabriqués localement. Est-ce une observation juste?
Il est parfaitement juste et c'est toujours la difficulté, n'est-ce pas, à la fin de la journée.
Mais de toute façon il doit y avoir un équilibre, il me semble.
Il est intéressant, c'est une chose étrange, n'est-ce pas, comment dans ce pays que nous dépensons beaucoup moins sur les denrées alimentaires en tant que pourcentage du revenu que sur le continent, où ils passent encore bien plus - tout dépend des priorités.
Mais tout ce que je veux dire, c'est qu'il ya un prix à payer à l'extrémité pointue - respectueux de l'environnement et partout ailleurs - pour la nourriture qui est produite d'une manière particulière.
Q: Quelle importance accordez-vous que l'éducation est? Il ya beaucoup de jeunes qui pour eux la campagne est un lieu étranger - ils n'ont jamais été ici, ils n'ont jamais visité la campagne, ils ne savent pas vraiment que beaucoup plus à ce sujet.
Et pourtant, comme vous le dites, de reconnecter les gens, l'éducation est un domaine assez essentiel n'est-il pas?
Tout à fait. Je me suis toujours senti fortement sur les écoles et les fermes-écoles.
Je suis allé à quelques exemples merveilleux de l'école où ils ont encore fermes ci-joint, qui n'ont pas été fermée par les autorités locales pour économiser de l'argent et ils sont certains des résultats vraiment remarquables accomplis, car vous pouvez lier la ferme - ils sont de plus en plus quelque chose ou à s'occuper d'un animal - à toute une gamme de sujets, qu'il s'agisse d'études de la biologie ou l'environnement ou économie ou autre ou les mathématiques, de sorte que vous le rendre pertinent.
Et je pense que beaucoup d'élèves - professeurs me disaient - brillent quand ils sont donnés l'occasion de travailler avec les animaux et les plantes et quel qu'il soit.
Et je pense encore que si les écoles avaient même des jardins potagers peu, au moins, il se connecte à des enfants comment les choses se développer.
Quand j'étais dans une école en Ecosse, l'autre jour, j'ai remarqué qu'ils avaient goudronnée sur l'ensemble de la zone autour de l'école.
Et je l'ai dit mais pourquoi tout cela tarmac - pourquoi ne pas creuser un peu et permettre aux enfants de faire pousser des légumes en elle? Il est aussi simple que cela.
Q: J'ai remarqué dans vos pensées de la protection de la campagne parce que nous avons eu un changement massif dans les derniers 3.000 à même les 200 dernières années ... nous regardons le maintenant et nous dire, eh bien cela est beau.
Alors, pourquoi devrait nécessairement être le moment de protéger la campagne?
Parce que, je pense encore une fois, vous avez pour essayer de penser à l'avance. Nous avons maintenant une capacité grâce à la technologie pour faire de tels changements énormes et les impacts sur notre environnement.
Dans le passé, le niveau d'impact n'a pas été quelque chose comme aussi grand qu'il l'est maintenant. Donc je pense que tu dois être un peu prudent, car sinon vous finirez complètement industrialisation du paysage car il est efficace.
Je pense toujours que vous devez penser de l'agriculture aussi exactement que - agri-culture - et non l'agro-industrie.
Et l'élément culturel est d'une importance énorme, car je pense que c'est fondamental à la vie elle-même.
Et vous pouvez sucer jusqu'à la dernière goutte des choses qui rendent la vie digne d'être vécue hors de lui si vous voulez, mais je ne vois pas ... alors la vie devient inintéressant parce que vous avez pris l'histoire loin de tout.
Q: Donc, il y aura des gens encore écouter dans les zones urbaines qui dira, bien que la belle, mais les mineurs, les travailleurs du secteur automobile, industrie de l'acier - tous à leur manière, ont été remplacés par les importations étrangères et pourquoi devrions-nous être inquiets au sujet des agriculteurs ?
Que dire de ces personnes qui ont dû reconstruire à partir de zéro?
Parce que je sais - c'est là le problème, du moment où vous la bouche ouverte, il ya toujours une qualification.
Mais je pense toujours qu'il ya une telle chose appelée la sécurité alimentaire et je pense que nous serions bien fous de s'attendre à ce que nous pouvons simplement tout importer d'ailleurs et d'imaginer que cela va durer pour toujours et toujours et à jamais.
Je pense que nous allons trouver, avec le changement climatique et tout le reste - les choses comme le réchauffement climatique et Dieu sait quoi d'autre et le coût du carburant pour commencer - que les choses vont devenir très compliqué.
Et je pense que nous devons penser à l'avenir et nous devons penser que parce que la campagne est si important, parce que tant de gens le visiter et de l'utiliser, quelqu'un doit le maintenir.
En fait, j'ai lutté contre l'écart il ya 20 ans et pour les 20 dernières années à essayer d'aider bon nombre des domaines où il ya eu des fermetures d'acier et des mines de charbon ont été fermées et l'industrie lourde parti, dans les années 80 et 90 et j'ai lutté afin de tenter de contribuer à certains de ces domaines et la tragédie est la disparition d'un si grand nombre de ces traditions.
Q: Vous avez mentionné les changements - certains sont provoqués par l'homme, d'autres par, bien sûr, la maladie et la fièvre aphteuse a été l'un de ces moments tragiques en Grande-Bretagne.
Il a eu un effet dévastateur sur tous les paysans pauvres vieux - d'avoir à être témoin de votre élevage abattus en face de vous - j'ai essayé de mon mieux pour trouver et aider ceux qui tentent d'encourager les autres.
C'est incroyable de voir à la fin de la journée comment les gens ont eu de retour sur leurs pieds - remarquable.
Mais il ya toujours un autre inquiétude au coin de nos jours - en raison de la façon dont on a tellement ouvert - tout le monde est le commerce et l'envoi de choses avant et en arrière, il ya un réel danger maintenant que nous introduire des maladies qui n'auraient jamais été.
La grippe aviaire étant bien sûr celui que je pense que tout le monde est très préoccupé par: Q. Avez-vous des préoccupations aussi bien?
Tout à fait. J'ai quelques poulets ici - ils Potter sur l'extérieur, de sorte que nous pouvons mettre des œufs dans les boîtes de légumes pour les habitants.
Mais oui, je me sens si profondément pour les paysans pauvres de la volaille ancienne dans ce pays.
Il ya tellement de gens qui ont lutté pour obtenir loin de leurs poulets à l'extérieur pour toutes les bonnes raisons - bien-être animal et tout le reste, plus respectueux de l'environnement - et de trouver tout à coup qu'ils pourraient avoir à fermer tous en place - il est très préoccupante. Mais nous avons juste à prier.
Q: Vous avez parlé de changement climatique plus tôt. Maintenant, la plupart des agriculteurs ne sont pas considérés comme des écologistes radicaux, mais la plupart d'entre eux diront, le changement climatique qui se passe, nous le voyons dans le changement des saisons.
Est-ce que vous pensez être un problème pour l'agriculture dans ce pays au cours des 20 prochaines années?
Changement climatique - oh oui. Nous sommes tous d'avoir à réfléchir à la manière d'y faire face.
De toute évidence, en même temps nous devrions traiter, je crois, toute la question du changement climatique et le réchauffement climatique avec un degré beaucoup plus élevé de priorité que je crois qui se passe maintenant.
Encore une fois si vous pensez à vos petits-enfants et mes, c'est ce qui m'inquiète vraiment.
Je ne veux pas qu'ils - si je suis encore en vie d'ici là - à-dire, pourquoi n'avez-vous pas faire quelque chose quand vous auriez pu faire.
Et c'est là le point, en même temps essayer de faire quelque chose pour remédier à la situation - qui devrait être le plus grand défi je pense que pour faire face à l'homme, afin d'assurer qu'il ya quelque chose de gauche à la main sur - en même temps doivent déterminer comment nous allons adapter au changement - ce que les cultures poussent, par exemple - c'est l'une des grandes difficultés.
S'il ya un message que vous souhaitez nous laisser, ce serait quoi?
En fait, le consommateur qui ne peut pas vivre à la campagne, mais qui n'a probablement pas mal de soins pour elle et visites, il peut faire une énorme différence, en fait, à la manière dont le paysage et tout se poursuit par le choix qu'ils font quand ils achètent et ils peuvent pousser les supermarchés par exemple ... les détaillants à faire des choses que peut-être qu'ils ne font pas déjà en nous l'espérons, à un moment la compréhension des liens qui existent.
Histoire de la BBC NOUVELLES:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4382264.stm
Publié le: 2005/10/27 14:19:04 GMT
© 2011 BBC
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TEXTE ORIGINALIn full: Prince Charles interview
The Prince of Wales has given an exclusive interview to BBC environment correspondent Sarah Mukherjee on the future of farming and the environment. Here is a transcript of the interview:
Q: I think I'd like to start by asking how your passion for food, farming and the countryside started?
When my sister and I were children, we had a small little sort of patch, you know, cunningly a bit tucked away at the back of somewhere at Buckingham Palace and we used to grow tomatoes and the odd bush and things.
I mean, I've always felt that's an important part of one's connection with nature and the soil, and so I suppose that was part of it.
But then when I came down here, I just wanted to get stuck in and I'd always wanted to do a bit of farming - I'm not very good at it but fortunately there are lots of other people around to help.
Q: Did you ever eat your tomatoes that you grew?
Oh yes, that was whole point. It was one of the joys - eating the things you've produced and grown. There's something about watching them from the seed and then, gradually, it takes shape. It's one of those great mysteries of life.
Q: So nursery - to you - is with tomatoes?
Well, you know what I mean - it's terribly special - they always taste better. It is like the vegetables I have here in the garden - they're infinitely better if you've grown them.
So I think that was part of it. And then I've had a particular interest in trying to grow things in as natural a way as possible - only because I just felt that it was inherently unsustainable to go on being able to expect endless chemicals and artificial fertilisers being called on and not suffer the consequences at the end of the day.
Q: You mentioned sustainability, of course in the agricultural community you're very well known for your support of small family farms.
Why do you think they are so important?
Well, because I feel that if you look at the whole of this country .... it's wonderful, it's a sort of tapestry - an intricate tapestry - of all these farms and families dotted about, and also the other thing I feel strongly about is that, you know, over hundreds of years, so many of these people have been passing on experience and knowledge and wisdom, have been looking after the countryside but so many people who go to it - but live in towns - take it for granted.
None of these things - none of the wonderful landscape we have in this country - happens by magic, somebody has to look after it and manage it and maintain it and sort out the hedges and the walls and these other things that everybody loves.
And I still think that the family farm is such a vital part of the whole intricate tapestry - not only of the landscape - but also the communities that make it up. I know that so many of the farmers and their wives play such a vital part in those communities in so many different and unseen ways.
If you remove all that, you've lost something terribly important.
If you take somewhere like Dartmoor - it can be a very inhospitable environment and if you don't pay attention to the way nature operates there, it'll kick you in the teeth.
I've seen it only too often, people coming along saying, ah, it's ridiculous these old fashioned farmers they don't know what they're doing - we can make it far more productive and everything else - and I've seen people go completely belly-up within five years, trying to do things in a part of an area like Dartmoor which nature just won't allow.
And the terrible problem I think we face is dealing with limits - this idea that we can do anything.
But the old family farmers, they often know how far you can push it - with the stocking rates and all these things.
Q: There's been a huge change, of course, in the way that farmers are paid through the Common Agricultural Policy. Now farmers are being paid - not necessarily to produce food - but to produce environment and countryside.
But do you think these small family farms that you're talking about, do you think they'll be able to cope?
Yes, because I've always felt that these changes are very difficult for people who've been encouraged to look at life in one particular way.
And they have been encouraged from elsewhere. And you know there were plenty of experts - over the 50 years - who've told them all to do this that and the other and everybody rushed around pulling up their hedges, cutting the trees down - making ever bigger fields and putting more fertilisers and chemicals on because that was the advice - the farmers achieved exactly the same thing. It's all coming around in a full circle.
But the difficulty, I think, is that now unless the family farmers see the need for safety in numbers - in other words co-operation - which is a very difficult thing. It is easier on the Continent because they've had a long tradition of it, but in this country there isn't a tradition of it and those who are seeing the point about this are, I think, going to be in a much better position.
Q: If people go out to the supermarket to get something special, it's German beer, Spanish olives or French cheese - what's so good about British food?
Well, the wonderful thing about British food is that it's quite incredible how much it's developed in the last 10 years really.
I mentioned the cheese show at Stow-on-the-Wold, three or four years ago now. You won't believe the number of wonderful British cheeses which were on show there.
Q: There will be people listening to this who will say - well, you cannot - on an average income - fill your supermarket trolley with beautiful, locally produced products. Is that a fair comment?
It's perfectly fair and this is always the difficulty, isn't it, at the end of the day.
But somehow there has to be a balance struck, it seems to me.
Interestingly, it's an odd thing, isn't it, how in this country we spend far less on food as a percentage of income than on the Continent where still they spend far more - it just depends on the priorities.
But all I'm saying is that there is a price to be paid at the sharp end - environmentally and everywhere else - for the food that is produced in a particular way.
Q: How important do you think education is? There are many young people who for them the countryside is a foreign place - they've never been out here, they've never visited the countryside, they don't really know that much about it.
And yet, as you said, to reconnect people, education is a fairly vital area isn't it?
Absolutely. I've always felt strongly about schools and the school farms.
I've been to some wonderful examples of schools where they still have farms attached, which haven't been shut down by local authorities to save money and they're some really remarkable results achieved because you could link the farm - they're growing something or looking after an animal - to a whole range of subjects, whether it's biology or environmental studies or economics or whatever or maths, so that you make it relevant.
And I think many pupils - teachers were telling me - shine when they're given an opportunity to work with animals and with plants and whatever it is.
And I still think that if schools even had little vegetable gardens, at least it connects children to how things grow.
When I was at a school in Scotland the other day, I noticed they'd tarmacked over the whole of the area around the school.
And I said but why all this tarmac - why can't you dig up some of it and allow the children to grow vegetables in it? It is as simple as that.
Q: I noticed it in your thoughts of protecting the countryside because we've had massive change in the last 3,000 to even the last 200 years... we look at it now and we say, well this is beautiful.
So why should necessarily it be now the time to protect the countryside?
Because, I think again, you've got to try and think ahead. We now have a capacity through technology to make such enormous changes and impacts on our environment.
In the past, the level of impact wasn't anything like as great as it is now. So I do think that you've got to be a bit careful because otherwise you'll end up completely industrialising the landscape because it's efficient.
I still think you have to think of agriculture as exactly that - agri-culture - not agri-industry.
And the cultural element is of enormous importance I think because it's fundamental to life itself.
And you can suck every last drop of the things that make life worth living out of it if you want to, but I just don't see... then life becomes uninteresting because you've taken the story away from everything.
Q: So there will be people again listening in urban areas who will say, well that's lovely but the miners, the car workers, steel industry - all in their own way were superseded by foreign imports and so why should we be so worried about farmers?
What about those people who had to rebuild from scratch?
Because I know - this is the problem, the moment you open mouth there's always a qualification.
But I still think there is such a thing called food security and I think we'd be very foolish to expect that we can just import everything from somewhere else and imagine that that's going to last for ever and ever and ever.
I think we're going to find, with climate change and everything else - things like global warming and goodness knows what else and the cost of fuel for a start - that things are going to become very complicated.
And I just think we have to think of the future and we have to think that because the countryside is so important, because so many people visit it and use it, somebody has to maintain it.
I actually battled away 20 years ago and for the last 20 years trying to help many of the areas where there have been steel closures and coal-mines have been shut and heavy industry gone, back in the '80s and '90s and I've battled away to try and help in some of these areas and the tragedy is the disappearance of so many of these traditions.
Q: You mention the changes - some are brought about by humans, others by, of course, disease and foot-and-mouth was one of those tragic times throughout Britain.
It had a devastating effect on all those poor old farmers - to have to witness your livestock being slaughtered in front of you - I tried my best to find those and help try to encourage others.
It's amazing at the end of the day how people have got back on their feet again - remarkable.
But there's always some other worry around the corner nowadays - because of the way in which so much has opened up - everybody is trading and sending things backwards and forwards, there is a real danger now that we introduce diseases that would never have been.
Q: Bird flu of course being the one that I think everybody is very concerned about. Do you have concerns as well?
Absolutely. I've got a few chickens here - they potter about outside, so that we can put some eggs in the vegetable boxes for the locals.
But yes, I feel so deeply for the poor old poultry farmers in this country.
There are so many people who have struggled away to get their chickens outside for all the right reasons - animal welfare and everything else, more environmentally friendly - and then to find suddenly that they might have to shut them all up - it's very worrying. But we just have to pray.
Q: You mentioned earlier climate change. Now most farmers are not considered to be radical environmentalists but most of them will say, climate change is happening, we're seeing it in the changing seasons.
Is that something you think might be an issue for farming in this country in the next 20 years or so?
Climate change - oh yes. We're all having to think about how to cope with it.
Obviously, at the same time we should be treating, I think, the whole issue of climate change and global warming with a far greater degree of priority than I think is happening now.
Again if you think about your and my grandchildren, this is what really worries me.
I don't want them - if I'm still alive by then - to say, why didn't you do something about it when you could have done.
And this is the point, at the same time trying to do something to rectify the situation - which should be the greatest challenge I think to face man, in order to ensure that there is something left to hand on - at the same time have to work out how we're going to adapt to the change - what crops to grow, for instance - this is one of the great difficulties.
If there's one message that you'd like to leave us with, what would it be?
Actually, the consumer who maybe doesn't live in the countryside but who probably does care quite a lot for it and visits it, can make a huge difference, actually, to the way in which the landscape and everything continues by the choices they make when they shop and they can push the supermarkets for instance... the retailers into doing things that perhaps they're not doing already by hopefully at some point understanding the connections that exist.
Story from BBC NEWS:Q: I think I'd like to start by asking how your passion for food, farming and the countryside started?
When my sister and I were children, we had a small little sort of patch, you know, cunningly a bit tucked away at the back of somewhere at Buckingham Palace and we used to grow tomatoes and the odd bush and things.
I mean, I've always felt that's an important part of one's connection with nature and the soil, and so I suppose that was part of it.
But then when I came down here, I just wanted to get stuck in and I'd always wanted to do a bit of farming - I'm not very good at it but fortunately there are lots of other people around to help.
Q: Did you ever eat your tomatoes that you grew?
Oh yes, that was whole point. It was one of the joys - eating the things you've produced and grown. There's something about watching them from the seed and then, gradually, it takes shape. It's one of those great mysteries of life.
Q: So nursery - to you - is with tomatoes?
Well, you know what I mean - it's terribly special - they always taste better. It is like the vegetables I have here in the garden - they're infinitely better if you've grown them.
So I think that was part of it. And then I've had a particular interest in trying to grow things in as natural a way as possible - only because I just felt that it was inherently unsustainable to go on being able to expect endless chemicals and artificial fertilisers being called on and not suffer the consequences at the end of the day.
Q: You mentioned sustainability, of course in the agricultural community you're very well known for your support of small family farms.
Why do you think they are so important?
Well, because I feel that if you look at the whole of this country .... it's wonderful, it's a sort of tapestry - an intricate tapestry - of all these farms and families dotted about, and also the other thing I feel strongly about is that, you know, over hundreds of years, so many of these people have been passing on experience and knowledge and wisdom, have been looking after the countryside but so many people who go to it - but live in towns - take it for granted.
None of these things - none of the wonderful landscape we have in this country - happens by magic, somebody has to look after it and manage it and maintain it and sort out the hedges and the walls and these other things that everybody loves.
And I still think that the family farm is such a vital part of the whole intricate tapestry - not only of the landscape - but also the communities that make it up. I know that so many of the farmers and their wives play such a vital part in those communities in so many different and unseen ways.
If you remove all that, you've lost something terribly important.
If you take somewhere like Dartmoor - it can be a very inhospitable environment and if you don't pay attention to the way nature operates there, it'll kick you in the teeth.
I've seen it only too often, people coming along saying, ah, it's ridiculous these old fashioned farmers they don't know what they're doing - we can make it far more productive and everything else - and I've seen people go completely belly-up within five years, trying to do things in a part of an area like Dartmoor which nature just won't allow.
And the terrible problem I think we face is dealing with limits - this idea that we can do anything.
But the old family farmers, they often know how far you can push it - with the stocking rates and all these things.
Q: There's been a huge change, of course, in the way that farmers are paid through the Common Agricultural Policy. Now farmers are being paid - not necessarily to produce food - but to produce environment and countryside.
But do you think these small family farms that you're talking about, do you think they'll be able to cope?
Yes, because I've always felt that these changes are very difficult for people who've been encouraged to look at life in one particular way.
And they have been encouraged from elsewhere. And you know there were plenty of experts - over the 50 years - who've told them all to do this that and the other and everybody rushed around pulling up their hedges, cutting the trees down - making ever bigger fields and putting more fertilisers and chemicals on because that was the advice - the farmers achieved exactly the same thing. It's all coming around in a full circle.
But the difficulty, I think, is that now unless the family farmers see the need for safety in numbers - in other words co-operation - which is a very difficult thing. It is easier on the Continent because they've had a long tradition of it, but in this country there isn't a tradition of it and those who are seeing the point about this are, I think, going to be in a much better position.
Q: If people go out to the supermarket to get something special, it's German beer, Spanish olives or French cheese - what's so good about British food?
Well, the wonderful thing about British food is that it's quite incredible how much it's developed in the last 10 years really.
I mentioned the cheese show at Stow-on-the-Wold, three or four years ago now. You won't believe the number of wonderful British cheeses which were on show there.
Q: There will be people listening to this who will say - well, you cannot - on an average income - fill your supermarket trolley with beautiful, locally produced products. Is that a fair comment?
It's perfectly fair and this is always the difficulty, isn't it, at the end of the day.
But somehow there has to be a balance struck, it seems to me.
Interestingly, it's an odd thing, isn't it, how in this country we spend far less on food as a percentage of income than on the Continent where still they spend far more - it just depends on the priorities.
But all I'm saying is that there is a price to be paid at the sharp end - environmentally and everywhere else - for the food that is produced in a particular way.
Q: How important do you think education is? There are many young people who for them the countryside is a foreign place - they've never been out here, they've never visited the countryside, they don't really know that much about it.
And yet, as you said, to reconnect people, education is a fairly vital area isn't it?
Absolutely. I've always felt strongly about schools and the school farms.
I've been to some wonderful examples of schools where they still have farms attached, which haven't been shut down by local authorities to save money and they're some really remarkable results achieved because you could link the farm - they're growing something or looking after an animal - to a whole range of subjects, whether it's biology or environmental studies or economics or whatever or maths, so that you make it relevant.
And I think many pupils - teachers were telling me - shine when they're given an opportunity to work with animals and with plants and whatever it is.
And I still think that if schools even had little vegetable gardens, at least it connects children to how things grow.
When I was at a school in Scotland the other day, I noticed they'd tarmacked over the whole of the area around the school.
And I said but why all this tarmac - why can't you dig up some of it and allow the children to grow vegetables in it? It is as simple as that.
Q: I noticed it in your thoughts of protecting the countryside because we've had massive change in the last 3,000 to even the last 200 years... we look at it now and we say, well this is beautiful.
So why should necessarily it be now the time to protect the countryside?
Because, I think again, you've got to try and think ahead. We now have a capacity through technology to make such enormous changes and impacts on our environment.
In the past, the level of impact wasn't anything like as great as it is now. So I do think that you've got to be a bit careful because otherwise you'll end up completely industrialising the landscape because it's efficient.
I still think you have to think of agriculture as exactly that - agri-culture - not agri-industry.
And the cultural element is of enormous importance I think because it's fundamental to life itself.
And you can suck every last drop of the things that make life worth living out of it if you want to, but I just don't see... then life becomes uninteresting because you've taken the story away from everything.
Q: So there will be people again listening in urban areas who will say, well that's lovely but the miners, the car workers, steel industry - all in their own way were superseded by foreign imports and so why should we be so worried about farmers?
What about those people who had to rebuild from scratch?
Because I know - this is the problem, the moment you open mouth there's always a qualification.
But I still think there is such a thing called food security and I think we'd be very foolish to expect that we can just import everything from somewhere else and imagine that that's going to last for ever and ever and ever.
I think we're going to find, with climate change and everything else - things like global warming and goodness knows what else and the cost of fuel for a start - that things are going to become very complicated.
And I just think we have to think of the future and we have to think that because the countryside is so important, because so many people visit it and use it, somebody has to maintain it.
I actually battled away 20 years ago and for the last 20 years trying to help many of the areas where there have been steel closures and coal-mines have been shut and heavy industry gone, back in the '80s and '90s and I've battled away to try and help in some of these areas and the tragedy is the disappearance of so many of these traditions.
Q: You mention the changes - some are brought about by humans, others by, of course, disease and foot-and-mouth was one of those tragic times throughout Britain.
It had a devastating effect on all those poor old farmers - to have to witness your livestock being slaughtered in front of you - I tried my best to find those and help try to encourage others.
It's amazing at the end of the day how people have got back on their feet again - remarkable.
But there's always some other worry around the corner nowadays - because of the way in which so much has opened up - everybody is trading and sending things backwards and forwards, there is a real danger now that we introduce diseases that would never have been.
Q: Bird flu of course being the one that I think everybody is very concerned about. Do you have concerns as well?
Absolutely. I've got a few chickens here - they potter about outside, so that we can put some eggs in the vegetable boxes for the locals.
But yes, I feel so deeply for the poor old poultry farmers in this country.
There are so many people who have struggled away to get their chickens outside for all the right reasons - animal welfare and everything else, more environmentally friendly - and then to find suddenly that they might have to shut them all up - it's very worrying. But we just have to pray.
Q: You mentioned earlier climate change. Now most farmers are not considered to be radical environmentalists but most of them will say, climate change is happening, we're seeing it in the changing seasons.
Is that something you think might be an issue for farming in this country in the next 20 years or so?
Climate change - oh yes. We're all having to think about how to cope with it.
Obviously, at the same time we should be treating, I think, the whole issue of climate change and global warming with a far greater degree of priority than I think is happening now.
Again if you think about your and my grandchildren, this is what really worries me.
I don't want them - if I'm still alive by then - to say, why didn't you do something about it when you could have done.
And this is the point, at the same time trying to do something to rectify the situation - which should be the greatest challenge I think to face man, in order to ensure that there is something left to hand on - at the same time have to work out how we're going to adapt to the change - what crops to grow, for instance - this is one of the great difficulties.
If there's one message that you'd like to leave us with, what would it be?
Actually, the consumer who maybe doesn't live in the countryside but who probably does care quite a lot for it and visits it, can make a huge difference, actually, to the way in which the landscape and everything continues by the choices they make when they shop and they can push the supermarkets for instance... the retailers into doing things that perhaps they're not doing already by hopefully at some point understanding the connections that exist.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/4382264.stm
Published: 2005/10/27 14:19:04 GMT
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