Tudge - Six Steps Back to the Land

A huge number of people have contributed directly or indirectly to this book over at least four decades some of whom have disagreed vehemently with most of my ideas, but have helped to clear my own thoughts by doing so. The detractors spelled out the ideas that have brought world farming to its knees, and so helped to throw into sharper relief the ideas that really should be taken seriously.

I am far more grateful though, of course, to the many people who have contributed to the ideas in a positive way. First for me was Prof Bob Orskov, whom I met at the Rowett Research Institute in the early 1970s in my Farmers Weekly days, when the Rowett was directed by the great Sir Kenneth Blaxter. Bob, now at the James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, first showed me how the husbandry of animals must be shaped by their physiology and psychology how the one must follow from the other. Bob also spends a significant slice of each year promoting peasant farming in what Mahatma Gandhi called the Third World (the PC expression developing world is at best a euphemism and is in many ways misleading) and is showing that the West has at least as much to learn from them as they from us. More recently I have been heavily influenced by Prof Martin Wolfe, plant pathologist turned arable farmer, who is a pioneer of agroforestry and organic husbandry at Wakelyns Farm in Suffolk. I regard them both as gurus (whether they like it or not).

In recent years, too, my discussions with archaeobotanist turned arable farmer-cum-baker-cum-thatcher John Letts have been tremendously instructive (to me). Others who have contributed enormously to my general feel for farming and growing include David Wilson, farm manager at Highgrove in Gloucestershire; Ed Hamer, smallholder on Dartmoor in Devon; David and Anneke Blake, smallholders at Cassington near Oxford; Roland Bonney, co-founder of FAI at Oxford (formerly called the Food Animal Initiative); Tim Waygood, mixed farmer at Church Farm in Hertfordshire; Denise and Christopher Walton at Peelham Farm in Berwickshire; and Catherine and Graham Vint at Hornton Grounds Farm in Oxfordshire. All are showing how mixed farms with very high standards of husbandry including animal welfare can work even in todays political and economic climate (and what might be achieved if conditions were favourable).

I have also been informed and encouraged by many people in various capacities who simply think along the same lines and have contributed to the various initiatives that Ruth (my wife) and I have cooked up over the years (see to the enormously important crafts and traditions of crofting; Jon Rae, Tim Crabtree and Rachel Fleming for enabling me to run a course at Schumacher College, Dartington, on Enlightened Agriculture in 2013 (though it was billed as Agroecology); Michel Pimbert, now executive director of The Centre for Agroecology, Water, and Resilience, for marvellous insights and lots of encouragement; Scott Donaldson of Creative Scotland; Tim Lang, Britains first professor of food policy at City University, London; Geoff Tansey, deep thinker on the politics of agriculture, who runs the Food Systems Academy with its excellent website; and friends and fellow travellers at the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association, including John Meadley, and farmers John Turner, John Crisp and Will Edwards, who honoured me and Ruth by electing us as lifetime members.

I am aware, too, of my ongoing debt to a variety of people over the years who have helped in many different ways to make our various initiatives work. They include Martin Stanley, who first helped us to set up the Campaign for Real Farming and has been unstintingly helpful since; Peter and Juliet Kindersley, who have supported the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) for most of its life; Sir Crispin Tickell, who set the tone of the ORFC by delivering its first-ever speech in 2010, and has chaired various sessions since; Patrick Holden, now of the Sustainable Food Trust, and Philip Lymbery of Compassion in World Farming, who have been good friends to the ORFC; to the many people who now help us to run the ORFC, and especially Harry Greenfield; and, from the ORFCs early days, Tom Curtis who set up LandShare, and Sam Henderson who now, with his wife Lucy and friends, runs Whippletree Farm in Devon.