Patrick Holden’s talk to Wildlife Groundswell 5.10.2024

 by Maggie Freegard

We were very fortunate to be visited by Patrick Holden, a busy man on the world stage of speakers,  who delivered his message – which is that we need to transform our food and farming, thereby addressing climate change, biodiversity loss and and improve public health. Patrick founded the Soil Association and more recently the Sustainable Food Trust, for which he continues to be the CEO. He cited a recent publication From the Feeding Britain from the Ground Up which can be viewed here.

Patrick is a farmer, mostly using his 300acres of land to graze and feed a herd of dairy cattle. Half that land is permanent pasture and includes sloping land which would be difficult to farm in any other way. Rotational grazing, or mob grazing, is yielding impressive figures with carbon drawdown, such that his farm is overall considered to be carbon negative.  The milk from the cows is made into cheese. The farm used to produce carrots and wheat for flour, but this became impractical when centralisation of packaging and distribution meant the produce was being transported to the east of England. Here on the Lizard, it was easy to relate to his style of farming – Patrick lives in West Wales, which must have similar weather and terrain to that of farmers here on the Lizard in Cornwall. Farmers in our audience and consumers of similar fine produce were encouraged by his words. Indeed, Patrick is an important influencer, a planter of new ideas, an educator and a story teller.

You can see Patrick talking at last year’s COP 28 here

It’s also worth watching a debate hosted by Intelligence Squared between Patrick and George Monbiot, where George challenges Patrick regarding the ecological and carbon opportunity cost of meat and dairy farming of any sort, and particularly that which takes up the most land,  compared to that of a plant based diet. View here.