Why Farming Must Be Linked to Health in Order to Survive in a Post-Subsidy World

Durwin Banks is one of my trusted suppliers. Durwin is a farmer, given a Rural Development grant to diversify into pressing his home grown linseed, the only farmer in the country growing, pressing and selling this valuable and necessary food. Here Durwin shares his thoughts on the importance of farming and the implications for our continued good health.

“What does this mean; well let’s look at what’s going on. The nation is falling into obesity, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, allergies of all kinds and mental health problems, dyslexia ADHD and the like.

These problems are largely due to a poor diet. We are wasting an estimated 50% of food and eating 25% to much so here is a cycle that needs to be broken.

The NHS is spending three billion pounds treating diabetes alone; this is all due to food, so it does not take a rocket scientist to see that if this money could be used to encourage a better diet we could reduce the risk of diabetes. This step alone would save a lot of pain, anguish and improve the quality of lives.

Three billion is more than the income from farming at the moment, so just this one move could double farm incomes alone. Imagine if we included all the other food related illness and the drugs being used to cure them how much money is available probably 10 billion pounds for a better food system.

How can these changes to be made, well some Government legislation to take man made hydrogenated oils and all other man made products out of the food production chain. These are not naturally occurring, our bodily systems do not have the means to digest them and they go towards making us ill.

Education, of course, at present the government is in effect saying to us OK eat yourself ill and we will tax you to try and cure you. To make changes will be a huge undertaking but that does not mean we should not try.

We have been turned into food addicts by inclusion of monosodium glutamate and too much salt and sugar, we are largely unaware of why we eat, we get hungry so we eat. In fact we are eating for the raw materials that our body needs to turn into a myriad different chemical compounds to keep us healthy. Therefore these raw materials must be the right type in order for the body to use them.

We need to understand that our bodies have not changed since we emerged, in terms of the food needed to maintain health. This is fundamental, food has changed especially in the last fifty years the whirlwind we reap for this is poor health.

Farmers can be in the vanguard of changes to alter the health of the nation, for, surely we cannot go on spending on totally food related health problems, it is a road to ruin.

What can farmers do, well a small lesson on what the body needs and how we survived will help focus the mind. We were mainly hunter gatherers, we caught and ate animals who grazed over pasture containing many herbs and plants, this kind of meat gave us the right balance of oils and fats. We also ate many different plants, fruit and maybe even honey as well. This coupled with the exercise needed for hunting kept us fit and clearly enabled survival and population growth.

Very little wheat was available and it was no doubt some time before we domesticated cattle for milk and meat and even then these cattle would have been grazing on good pasture and giving us meat and milk akin to wild animals.

We grow many cereals to feed livestock, these changes alter meat and milk making it less healthy, and in fact it is part of the food chain that is killing us.

Food production needs to be closer to the farmer with many small units producing fresh food for us of a kind we were designed to eat. We must stop trying to compete on world prices by growing more and more using ever more costly inputs, it was this philosophy; well meaning though it was has led to the radical changes in agricultural practices and consequently health.

So we must stop giving money to big food production companies and supermarkets whose only interest is having us buy more and more food we do not need and certainly the pharma-medical industry (Durwin’s words) whose products have side effects and can kill us. We need to transfer this money to a new set of people who stand a chance of keeping us healthy. Who are these people, why farmers of course.

Not wishing to castigate supermarkets completely, they could play an important role in the nation’s health but they might have to be part of the new National Health Service with an entirely different ethos.

Blue sky thinking is hard, but farmers must be prepared to go where courage is needed to stand up and be counted. Farmers should be valued; they have been de-valued, de-skilled, isolated and turned into producers of commodities. They must produce less, receive more for it and ensure the health of all”.