The Real Farming Trust
Our food system is broken. We waste almost half the food that is produced whilst at the same time millions go hungry and diet related illness have reached epidemic proportions. The way we grow food is causing huge environmental damage, jeopardising the ability of future generations to feed themselves. An urgent resetting of our relationship with food and the biosphere on which it depends is needed. We believe that the answer lies in reconnecting people and producers, revitalising and supporting small mixed farms, who practice agroecologically and provide good food to everyone in their community.
The Real Farming Trust (RFT) works to rethink food and farming from first principles; to build and support a new generation of farmers, food producers and sellers; and to establish “Enlightened Agriculture” – farming that provides good food for everyone forever, without cruelty or injustice and without adversely affecting other people and the biosphere – as the global norm.
We believe that agriculture cannot be changed in the ways that are required ad hoc. Society needs to re-examine and where necessary re-structure the underlying economic and political assumptions that frame policy; the science and technologies that influence how farming is practiced; and the moral and indeed metaphysical assumptions that determine the general direction of all human activity. It is clear, too, that the Enlightened Agriculture that is needed cannot flourish without a corresponding Food Culture – a populace that knows what good food is and cares how it is produced.