Sunday, 30 May 2010

Highgrove

 Talking of the "right use of creation", here's an example - Prince Charles' home and garden at Highgrove. Far from the hobby of a self-indulgent eccentric, this is actually a test-bed for agricultural techniques that should be applied on a wider scale, and with any luck a sign of things to come. Geoffrey Lean writes in the Telegraph:
Organic cultivation, the heart of the estate, has long been viewed as irrelevant, a throwback to the bad old days of "muck and magic" farming, before the liberating arrival of agricultural chemicals. But – quite apart from the popularity of chemical-free food, dented but not destroyed by the recession – there are good reasons for thinking that it is going back to the future.
Agriculture is going to have to be more sustainable... as population growth, resource constraints and climate change combine to cause shortages of food, water and energy... A recent report by Andersons, the farm business consultants, reckons it will become more profitable than conventional agriculture when the oil price reaches $200 a barrel, which is predicted within a decade.
 I am beginning to plan a special issue of our journal Second Spring next year on the theme of gardening, and I expect Highgrove will get a mention.

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