Patrick Holden

Everyone should have the right to high quality, health promoting milk from ethical and sustainable dairy farms.

I believe this situation is applicable to the majority of the world’s farmers – in front of us is a monumental task, we need not only to maintain but to build soil fertility, which we must and can do by commencing a new relationship of the soils under our management, harvesting and growing the body of experience and evidence of the pioneers of soil building both historic and living.

Namely, if we switch from chemically dependent agriculture to biologically based farming systems operating in harmony with nature and within planetary boundaries, how much food could we produce on an acre, from a region, a country or the entire planet? And would this be enough to nourish us all?

If it is true that we only have 10 years or so to bring about the great transition towards regenerative and sustainable farming systems, then our need to create an informally coordinated network of beacon farms, hopefully working collectively to become more than the sum of their parts in the educational process, becomes absolutely imperative.

I gained the impression, perhaps unfairly, that none of the so-called experts who were presenting had any practical knowledge of, or insights into, regenerative farming.

I have the feeling that we are on the threshold of a transition to more sustainable practice which, if it could be made economically viable, could quite quickly become mainstream.