Counteracting globalization with localization
Prince Charles Helps Preserve Small Family Farms and the Countryside
Prince Charles Helps Preserve Small Family Farms and the Countryside
Prince Charles developed an interest in farming when he was child tending a "small patch" of
tomatoes at Buckingham Palace.
Today he has a 1,100-acre, all-organic demonstration farm called Home Farm.
Explaining why he farms organically, he quoted Wendell Berry: "If nature does not thrive, farming cannot thrive."
He and his staff raise free-range cows, sheep, pigs and chickens as well as vegetables grown from heirloom seeds, which he sells through a box scheme to approximately 140 families. In America, we call this "community supported agriculture."
He uses no hormones to increase the milk production of his dairy cows and speaks out publically on this issue.
In a speech to the British Soil Association, he said: "They horrify us, when we can bear to listen, by telling us that dairy cows -- with a natural life expectancy of 20 years or more -- are now quite literally milking themselves to death by the time they are six or seven, worn out by producing more than their own body
weight in milk every month, and suffering from a lethal combination of distended udders, lameness, chronic mastitis or infertility."
He uses compost and natural fertilizers brewed from comfrey and sea weed to fertilize his fields.
"Farmers from far and wide who come on our tours just don't believe our yields, and every year the levels increase," said Prince Charles.
Since the vegetable and flower gardens at his farm at Highgrove are organic, they are wildlife habitat, with birds, butterflies and bees that help keep down the number of slugs and other garden pests.
One of his gardens is a wildflower meadow that provides habitat for endangered native plants and pollinators.
The prince said he even "dreams about his gardens."
Gardens should "delight the eye" and "warm the heart," he said, while also "feeding the soul." Gardening is "part of an act of worship of God," he said.
In a documentary on the environment that he wrote and presented on the BBC in 1990
called "The Earth in Balance," he mentioned how the monastics in the order of Saint Benedict, the patron saint of Europe,
"believed it was their duty to cultivate the land as partners of God." He added, "Reverence for nature obliges us to accept responsibility for the creative stewardship of the earth."
One of the Prince's hobbies is the traditional English craft of building hedgerows for his fields. The hedgerows provide rich habitat for a diversity of species such as birds, butterflies and bats, which are pollinators that are rapidly declining in the U.K.
Hedgerows also help keep wind and water from eroding the soil.
The prince, who is Patron of the National Hedgelaying Society, is very interested in keeping the ancient craft alive. In 2005, he held a competition at his farm to find the best hedge layer in all of Britain.
Prince Charles of Wales is a tireless advocate for small family farms in the U.K. For instance, he gives speeches decrying how small family farmers in the U.K. are endangered by globalization and the industrialization of agriculture, which forces them to compete with mass food producers across the world.
Buying food from small farmers is "vital" in order to preserve the English countryside and
rural communities, he told BBC Radio,
adding that it would be foolish to expect to be able to import everything from somewhere else and imagine that that was going to last forever. "Small will always be beautiful," he said in a speech promoting small family farms at the Slow Food Conference called Terra Madre (mother earth) in Turin, Italy, in October 2004. He was alluding to the famous book by E.F. Schumacher called, "Small is Beautiful."
In that speech, which was given before 5,000 vegetable farmers, cheesemakers and goat ranchers, he said, "I have always believed that agriculture is not only the oldest but also the most important of humanity's productive activities. It is the engine of rural employment and the foundation stone of culture, even of civilization."
Prince Charles provided a big boost to the incomes and stability of local farmers and craftsmen in his area by founding a company in 1992 called Duchy Originals that sells hundreds of organic and natural products.
Almost all the ingredients for
the products are purchased from regional organic farms or local businesses in his area.
Duchy Originals, which is one of Britain's best-known and most successful organic and natural food and drink brands, sells bread, soup, drinks, condiments, pies, and more -- all made without artificial ingredients -- as well as milk and free-range meats from his own farm. He also sells body care products made of natural plant extracts and pure organicessential oils.
He encouraged the formation of a small organic cooperative of 26 farms in Guyana that now provides chocolate. All of the profits from Duchy Originals go to his 16 charities.
His company published a book of 100 recipes, called the Duchy Originals Cookbook, promotes a link between the consumers of the products he sales and the land. the book visits the local organic producers and farmers that either make products or grow ingredients for the 200 Duchy Original products.
In the forward to the cookbook, His Royal Highness, who is friends with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, decried the "quality of the soulless,
mass-produced food that has come to dominate the modern diet."
His company funds a project called "The Duchy Originals Garden Organic for Schools project" that has helped 1,800 schools across the U.K. set up small organic food gardens to teach children how to grow organic vegetables. In these schools, the children grow, harvest, cook and eat their own fresh, organic produce. He says when you grow what you eat that it tastes "infinately better" and helps you "connect with the soil."
Schools participating in the project receive a wealth of valuable resources, including seeds in the spring and lesson plan ideas. The teachers have access to a hotline they can call to get horticultural advice.
Prince Charles and Camilla even made a trip to Berkeley to call attention to the Edible School Yard, where 350 children ages 12 to 14 have lessons each week on how to grow vegetables, look after chickens and prepare their own food. He was greeted there by Maria Shriver, the wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.