How can we improve our health, reduce the costs to the NHS by 50%, restore soil biodiversity, reduce flooding, reverse ecosystem decline and draw carbon down from the atmosphere into the earth's crust? Regenerative Farming does all of these and more - and Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust is at the heart of a movement to spread the word around the world.
After studying biodynamic agriculture at Emerson College, he established a mixed community farm in Wales in 1973, producing at various times: wheat for flour production sold locally, carrots and milk from an 85 cow Ayrshire dairy herd, now made into a single farm cheddar style cheese.
He was the founding chairman of British Organic Farmers in 1982, before joining the Soil Association, where he worked for nearly 20 years and during which time the organisation led the development of organic standards and the market for organic foods.
His advocacy for a major global transition to more sustainable food systems now entails international travel and regular broadcasts and talks at public events.
He is Patron of the UK Biodynamic Association and was awarded the CBE for services to organic farming in 2005.
Patrick is passionate about the application of Nature’s principles of Harmony to food and farming, which is explored in the SFT’s latest initiative,
The Harmony Project.
In this episode, Patrick talks about the work of the Sustainable Food Trust in building a commons-based trust network which can co-create a global farm metric to assess farms around the world for their environmental impact in all ways. With this, farms can really begin to assess their own impact, and political institutions across the world can begin to rewards farms and farmers for restoring our land to the extraordinary fertility and abundance that we used to take for granted.
Links
Sustainable Food Trust https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/
Patrick's Farm: https://holdenfarmdairy.co.uk/
Patrick's Farm on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/hafodcheese/
https://www.facebook.com/Holden-Farm-Dairy-100227754976198/
https://twitter.com/hafodcheese
What is Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian Podcast?
Another World IS still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose - and now it's collapsing around us. So how do we co-create a Thrutopian future that we'd all be proud to leave as our legacy?
What stories can we weave of possibility? Of transformation? What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?
What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that really matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves, between ourselves and each other, between ourselves and the Web of Life - so that we can reclaim our birthright as self-conscious nodes in the web of life?
We can do this. Some of us already are. Every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being, courageous pathfinders who are exploring the emergent edge of inter-becoming.
As a species, we have all the answers, we just haven't yet crafted all the new stories and woven them into a future that works. We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.
Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.
Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
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