In addition to meeting with President Obama, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales gave the keynote address at “The Future of Food” conference at Georgetown University, sponsored by the Washington Post.
Since the prince has “tried to farm as sustainably as possible for some twenty-six years” he was about the closest to an actual farmer that the conference had on the agenda (see Chuck’s previous post). On the Royal Website, there is a page about the Prince’s farm which is “a completely organic system” he developed “to demonstrate the environmental and commercial benefits.” Among the farm’s produce is organic mutton. “The Prince is enthusiastic about restoring mutton (meat from a two-year-old sheep), to the dinner tables of the nation after speaking to struggling sheep farmers who found they could no longer get a decent price for older ewes. To this end, The Prince launched the Mutton Renaissance campaign.” I am not making that up.
So, HRH believes that we can feed nine billion people on this planet with a food system that is “not dependent upon the use of chemical pesticides, fungicides and insecticides; nor, for that matter, upon artificial fertilizers and growth-promoters or G.M.” and he provided His Royal Vision of a “sustainable food production” system during his address in Georgetown.
“For me, it has to be a form of agriculture that does not exceed the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem and which recognizes that the soil is the planet’s most vital renewable resource,” he said, adding that “genuinely sustainable farming maintains the resilience of the entire ecosystem by encouraging a rich level of biodiversity in the soil, in its water supply and in the wildlife – the birds, insects and bees that maintain the health of the whole system. Sustainable farming also recognizes the importance to the soil of planting trees; of protecting and enhancing water-catchment systems; of mitigating, rather than adding to, climate change. To do this it must be a mixed approach. One where animal waste is recycled and organic waste is composted to build the soil’s fertility. One where antibiotics are only used on animals to treat illnesses, not deployed in prophylactic doses to prevent them; and where those animals are fed on grass-based regimes as Nature intended.”