Patrick Holden Event, July 2nd 2008
On Wednesday evening Transition Town Market Harborough were please to host an event with Patrick Holden, director of the Soil association who arrived to give a talk about how agriculture might work in a post peak-oil world.
The event held in Roman way day centre was well attended by 30 plus people and all were engrossed by the message that was delivered by Patrick, he is a tremendous speaker and his message is given credence when he can humbly mention that he met this minister or that shadow minister and honestly say that they did not get it.
The issue to be addressed is that with peak-oil/peak-Natural gas industrial agriculture will become more and more expensive but soils are so degraded that they will need time to be rebuilt to enable organic farming methods to thrive. We will need to rotate crops again and lay land to fallow which means that a fifth of agricultural land will be out of use at any one time which can be grazed for meat.
He was so engaging that the questions just kept coming and we struggled to wrap up the evening as the audience was so keen to bombard him with questions.
To address the issue of food security in our locality a food group was launched this evening and instantly had seven new faces volunteer, if you would like to work with our food group or to propose a group that you would like to establish then please contact info@transitionharborough.org.uk or call Darren on 07974 220102.