Wise Farmers: Gerald Miles

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For more than twenty years he has campaigned for seed sovereignty, for a ban on GMOs, for more farmers to transition to organic farming and for easier access to land for growers. He was one of the original directors of the Landworkers Alliance, an organisation that represents growers and small family farmers and is the UK branch of La Via Campesina, a global peasant farmers’ union that represents 200 million farm workers worldwide.

One of the main pillars of The Landworkers Alliance manifesto is food sovereignty which means ‘the right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems’. This includes the right to seed sovereignty which is threatened by huge global seed companies that develop and patent genetically modified seeds which means that farmers who use them have to buy new seeds from the company every year. This has resulted in farmers becoming trapped in a debt cycle with mass bankruptcies, land sales and farmer suicides across the world.

In May 2022 the Government took advantage of Brexit to reverse the EU ban on gene editing by introducing the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill which deregulated crops that have been modified using gene-editing, a process that the EU regulates in the same way as GMOs (genetically modified organisms). The purpose of the bill was to separate GMOs from gene editing, although scientists say there is no real difference and that this was just a back door manoeuvre to allow gene edited food into the food chain. Although GMO seeds are still banned in the UK, and if GMO food is imported it must be labelled, gene edited food can now be sold unlabelled in England (but not in Scotland, Wales or N Ireland), so the only way to ensure you are not ingesting gene edited food is to buy Organic.

Gerald said, “Politicians should be edited, not plants. Gene editing and precision breeding are weasel words to describe ways of genetically modifying organisms which is unnecessary when we have an abundance of heritage crops and new methods of improving soil quality, such as using nitrogen-fixing crops, rather than pesticides. Food security is a priority in the UK, and diversity of crops is what will make food production secure in the UK and recover the biodiversity lost by intensive monoculture farming, not more genetically-modified food and feed.

“Why are we altering the DNA in plants? Plants in nature have evolved over billions of years – they’ve survived and altered naturally. We should use the precautionary principle. If we speed things up in nature we could speed things up to a possible disaster. We need to keep strict regulation because once you release it, it is difficult to reverse it.”

Because seed marketing regulations can make it illegal to market, or even give away seeds that have not been listed, Gerald has joined the Gaia Foundations Seed Sovereignty campaign to preserve traditional seeds and protect them from governments falling in line with the agribusiness lobby that would like to see them eliminated.

Two and a half years ago the Landworkers Alliance organised a march through central London to demand fair subsidies, an end to trade deals that unfairly undercut local UK farmers with cheap, sub-standard imports, and an end to the deregulation of gene-editing seed technologies. Gerald drove his 55-year old Massey-Ferguson tractor from his Pembrokeshire farm to London, which took him four days, “I could only do 60 to 70 miles a day – she only travels 15 miles an hour.”

“I want to make the biggest protest possible to keep the government’s Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS), save nature, stop the deregulation of genetically modified crops and support young farmers and young people trying to go back to the land.

“I am passionate about creating a farming and food system that is good for people and the planet and have dedicated my life to growing local, healthy food and campaigning for the government to support small-scale, agro-ecological farms and make it easier for new entrants to begin their careers.”

In the past Gerald’s father used to grow an old Welsh strain of Black Oats Ceirch Du Bach, but over the years they proved too short for modern combine harvesters.

“My grandfather used to grow black oats and everybody did at that time because they used the black oats to feed horses and to feed livestock. Black oats was sown and mixed with barley because they are ripe and ready for harvest at the same time.. And I can remember my father feeding sheaves to the cattle. Once he’d cut them with a binder, he used to feed some sheaves to the cattle before they came in for the winter. It put condition on them and it wormed them at the same time, because the cola, the little thin stick on the end of the grain, would go through the rumen and would collect the worm eggs and it would come out with the dung of the cow. So it was a nature’s way of worming.”

But gradually the demand for Black Oats decreased until it was no longer worthwhile growing the crop, and even the seeds disappeared. When, twenty years ago Gerald had the idea of growing Black Oats again he searched England and Wales for some seed, without success, then by a stroke of luck, some seeds appeared from an unexpected source.

“I was coaching boys aged from nine to eighteen in the Saint Davids Rugby Club and it was a good part of my life, it made me what I am now, I can take any amount of stick and it does not affect me because if you survive in a rugby club, you’ll survive anywhere. Anyway, I was organising a rugby tour to Naas in Ireland, and talking to some other coaches there about farming and about black oats and one of the coaches said, I know a farmer who grows black oats. So I had an e-mail afterwards saying that he’d found the farmer and he was willing to give me 50 kilos of black oats. So in April when the Naas rugby club came to Saint David’s, they put 50 kilos of black oats in the back of the bus and that was delivered to the rugby club, and that’s how I ended up growing black oats again.”

There has also been renewed interest in heritage wheat as a result of increasing numbers of people who are becoming ill after eating modern high-gluten wheat, and Gerald now grows several strains of heritage wheat including an ancient local wheat Hen Gymro (Old Welshman) which has long straw that is used for thatching. Similarily he now grows heritage strains of barley that are in demand from distillers and brewers to improve the flavour of whisky and beer.

“My exchange will enable me to learn how others have progressed from growing to processing on-farm and supplying artisan bakers. I hope the knowledge I gain will lead to the creation of a farmers’ co-operative and a viable market for Welsh wheat.”

Gerald is anxious to pass on the knowledge and skills he acquired over a lifetime of organic farming and raising farm livestock, so that future generations will understand animals and value and respect the soil and all the living organisms that provide its fertility and health.

“Now at the age of 75 and having 50 years farming on this lovely farm of ours, I want to leave a legacy of an apprenticeship on the farm, from growing a carrot to calving a cow, so they can leave here with the confidence to be farmers, to learn about and respect nature from the microrhizomes that are in the soil, that are benefiting us, that are being replicated in our stomach. We need to understand this. We are part of the cycle, part of nature and really to farm sustainably with nature like we’ve endeavoured through the decades on this farm.”