We filmed an interview with David when he was the manager of Fir Farm near Stow-on-the-Wold, where he was looking after a herd of rare-breed Red Poll dairy cows. The cows are fed entirely on grass, either on pasture during the summer or on silage and hay in the winter, and their milk reaches the public through a vending machine at the end of the farm road, so the farm gate milk has no food miles and reaches the consumer unblemished without having been processed, pasteurised or degraded by being sloshed around for hours in a milk tanker.
The Red Poll is a traditional heritage breed, related to the native breeds of red cattle that were thought to have been introduced to Suffolk and Norfolk in Roman times. They are dual-purpose cattle, being used for both beef and dairy, and make excellent mothers, while thriving on low-input systems, efficient at converting grass and forage with no additional feed, which is ideal for David’s vision for ultra-low input milk production. The calves finish well on grass, and produce excellent quality meat due to their grazing on rich, diverse herbal leys, and to their slow growth outside in the fresh air.
The Red Poll cows produce around 5,000 litres of milk a year, and live for 10 years or more. Contrast this system with conventional dairy farming where cows are fed on grain and have been bred to produce up to 12,000 litres a year, but at a shocking cost to the welfare of the animal who can hardly walk because of her oversized udder, and who is killed after only three lactations, when she is only 5, when her diminishing output cannot satisfy the predatory supermarket pricing regime. Likewise, conventional beef comes from genetically adapted cattle who are fed high energy cereals grown with heavy inputs of chemicals and fertilisers, raised indoors and killed at only 18 months when their weight has been forced to 650 kilos.
“We’ve been led very strongly down a particular pathway by the multinational companies of the world. There’s huge amounts of money made and invested in plant and animal breeding programmes, all to make money for corporations.
“And it’s taking us further and further down this narrowing of our genetic pool for our food. And it means that our diet is changing, subtly but definitely. It is less diverse than it was. And we all know that diversity at all levels is the key to our survival.
“Diversity in our gut biome, the soil biome, all of these things we need to think about, if you like, in the same sort of context. But we’ve lost something like 80 or 90% of our food genes in 100 years. And that narrowing is increasing. And for that reason alone, we should hang on to some of our rare breeds.”
Under David’s management, the arable fields at Fir Farm were sown with heritage strains of wheat, barley and rye as part of the soil-building rotation. The spring wheat strains they grow are lower in gluten content, such as Maris Wigeon, whose long straw smothers weeds, is also used for thatching, and which produces a soft grain that is milled on the farm and sold on to artisan bakers in the neighbourhood.
“The thing that fascinates me is the fact that we have actually changed the nature of gluten in breeding, and we affect the quality of our bread with our baking techniques as well. But whole grains prepared in the right way, slow fermentation of bread, but also more fermented foods helps planetary health and our own health from the context of a biome. The gut biome and the soil biome are just variations on a theme. And I remember hearing a wonderful Italian soil scientist at one of the Slow Food things through a translator talking about the fact that we should regard the soil as the stomach of the plant.
We shouldn’t think of them as separate entities. And I really like that with all the knowledge that we’ve got, this increasing knowledge of the incredible function of the soil, the interrelationship, all the microbes and the fungi and the mycorrhizae, it’s really riveting. But it emphasises, if nothing else, the total interrelationship between all life forms. And until we really start thinking of the planet in that context, we’re going to keep getting things wrong.”
Having studied agricultural sciences and initially worked on a conventional farm, David began to re-think his views on food and health in the 1980s around the time his children were born. In 1985 Prince Charles asked him to run the Home Farm at Highgrove, and to manage the transition to sustainable, organic farming with livestock as an integral part of the fertility and soil-building cycle.
“The Prince of Wales had a vision, and he also had a real unease about intensive farming systems, and it just gave us all an opportunity to learn together. Which we‘ve done and we certainly continue learning, that‘s for sure.
“Back in the 1980s, organic farming was seen as pretty cranky and the Prince was conscious of the fact that many people were against what he was doing. But he said: If the Duchy can’t afford to try this, who can?
“Working for The Prince could not be anything other than an opportunity,” he adds, citing the success of red-clover pasture as the achievement he’s most proud of. “Representing his views, which I happen to share, is a huge privilege. He says ‘seeing is believing’ and it’s true. Farmers judge crops and livestock at a glance, so it’s best to come and have a look at what we do.”
Part of the Highgrove farming philosophy was to try and use homeopathy to heal animals whenever possible.
“I think homeopathy works best when a stockman embraces the whole topic and understands it, otherwise they tend to use it as a bit of a bolt on. There is nothing easier than saying ‘it’s got a high temperature, right, give it 12 mL of Engemyin’. The decision making process is clearer, it does not require as much expertise, but I think using homeopathy satisfies a very good stockman in a way that antibiotics don’t.
“For example, we had a whole bunch of ewes with really bad orf (a skin disease) which got very infected, the vet had said ‘all these have got to go onto antibiotic treatment’, but with help we cleared it up without using any antibiotic at all.
“We will use homeopathy and use conventional medicines along side if we think we need to. It does depend to a large degree on the individual who is administering the treatment as to what precise approach is taken.”
David’s wisdom, experience and vision for regenerative, organic farming that respects animals and soils has inspired his two sons to carry on his mission to renew our broken food system. Benj who is a vet, and Luke, a farmland estate agent, were jointly managing a herd of Saddleback pigs on a nearby farm that were being carefully handled to fertilise and re-seed the leys by moving them according to a rotation principle that allows seeds to germinate and the mulch from the pigs’ rooting to be absorbed back into the soil.
Luke says, “Having Dad around to tweak the tiller, sometimes drastically move the tiller, you know, Dad has done it and been around things that haven’t worked and really knows when to do it differently. I think it’s a nice model for farming in the future. Let’s not start a fresh from nothing, let’s have that slow transition.”
Standing in a field where the herbal ley had been fertilised and regenerated by the rooting and manuring of the Saddleback pigs, Benj says, “You need that open mindset to keep challenging what we’re doing. This feels right, part of a journey towards a sustainable world, and that definitely comes from you Dad.”
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