In an impassioned speech to the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC), the Prince said the only way to protect Britain's rural landscape is to support the farmers responsible for maintaining fields, buildings and businesses - especially small family farms struggling to survive. “It is the people and what they do that creates the beating heart of our countryside – the vitality that comes from the busy village shop and pub, a thriving school, from the Church and W.I," he said. "This is why everything must be focused on making sure that farmers are able to keep on farming in a way that provides them with a decent living, and that they do it while working with nature and not against her.” The Prince agreed farmers need to take more account of wildlife and the environment when producing food. “For too long in the West, I am afraid, we have enjoyed something of a consumer's holiday. Food above all else has been seen as a cheap commodity to which little value is attached," he said.
Source: Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9778669/Prince-of-Wales-coun…
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'If that is the future, count me out'
In his most outspoken intervention on the issue of GM food, the Prince said that multi-national companies were conducting an experiment with nature which had gone "seriously wrong". Relying on "gigantic corporations" for food, he said, would result in "absolute disaster". Small farmers, in particular, would be the victims of "gigantic corporations" taking over the mass production of food. "If they think this is the way to go....we [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness."
Source: Daily Telegraph, 12 August 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3349308/Prince-Charles-warns…
The Prince on environmental protection
The Prince of Wales has said he does not want to hand on an "increasingly dysfunctional" environmental situation to his grandchild, due in the summer.
Princes Charles told ITV1's This Morning programme he did not want the child to wonder why past generations did not act to protect the environment.
He said he did not want to leave a "total poisoned chalice" to future children.
The prince has long been an outspoken campaigner on environmental issues.
Sources:
BBC News, 6 January 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20927521
The Guardian, 6 January 2013
http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/06/prince-charles-grandfather-green…
The "Green revolution" caused massive loss of biodiversity
The so-called “Green Revolution” which began in agriculture during the Sixties and quickly enabled global food production to expand and keep pace with the accelerating growth in population has also, among other things, caused the dangerous depletion of fresh water around the world, made a huge contribution to climate change, caused a massive loss of biodiversity and damaged soils worldwide.
Biodiversity is absolutely crucial. You cannot simplify Nature’s system and expect it to carry on operating in the way it did before. There is nothing in Nature’s elaborate system which is not necessary, so to take one participant out of the dance leads to the dance breaking down and, sooner or later, this will have a serious impact on the state of human health.
This is why these costs have to be taken into account if we are to see what we do in its proper context, and then an approach to food production that avoids these disastrous side effects has to take its place, otherwise we are lost.
It is far too easy to believe what we see at first glance – that is, that there are huge economic benefits if we use modern farming techniques and that no alternative which does not have efficiency and profit as its priorities can possibly replace it.
But if we stand back, the picture quickly looks a lot less positive. In fact, it looks frighteningly bleak because the predominant approach is effectively cannibalising its own future by degrading the natural systems it absolutely depends upon.
HRH The Prince of Wales in The Telegraph, 12 January 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-charles/9790318/Prince-Ch…