The main source of information for farmers today is the agrochemical industry
so if you've got a problem
and you ring up an agrochemical salesman
he will have a solution in a can that will solve all your problems.
He's not going to tell you that if you grew a different variety
you wouldn't have the problem in the first place,
or if you grew them further apart wouldn't get a problem.
He wouldn't make money out of that.
He makes money by selling chemicals.
Back in 1986 when I planted my first field of vegetables
I was not utterly committed to organic
I just really didn't want to use those chemicals
with skulls and crossbones on them.
The first crop that I grew was leeks.
They started developing these little red pustules
like this one here.
It's called Rust Puccinia.
It's a disease that's spread by rain splash in warm weather.
It just ripped through the field
and it looked like I would loose the whole crop.
So I made a few phone calls
and the agrochemical salesman told me
what you need to do is spray it with some fungicide
and that'll clear it up.
Anyway I didn't and then it got colder and the leeks
grew away from the rust and I ended up
with a fantastic crop.
When you're a farmer in your field
and it's all going wrong
that little whisper in your ear
of all your solutions in a chemical container
is pretty persuasive
and I'm very glad we didn't listen to them.
We have subsequently found out that
there are varieties of leeks
which have good resistance to rust.
By growing those varieties
and growing them a bit further apart
it really is not necessary to spray leeks with fungicide.
Today about 75% of acrochemicals
are sold by 4 global companies
and increasingly they've also bought  the seed industry,
which means they control the supply of seeds
and the use of chemicals
and they have been completely dictating
the direction that agriculture has gone in.
It's really more about their profits
than it is about producing healthy food
or maintaining farmers' incomes.
I think greenhouses are a really interesting example
of what can be done with an ecological or biological
approach to pest control.
When we put up our first tunnels 20 years ago
to grow peppers and tomatoes and aubergines
they were devastated by red spider mite and aphids.
They just went in there and had a field day.
We were then advised to actually fumigate our greenhouses
with some really toxic chemicals.
At the time we were assured by the government that
these were safe chemicals to use.
If they were safe then and they're not safe now,
how are we supposed to believe the governement
when they tell us it is safe to use neonicotinoids?
I'm pretty sure they will be banned just like virtually all of
the chemicals I used as a teenager have been banned.
There's no safe level for a nervous system disrupting insecticide,
there's no safe level for a hormone disrupting herbicide,
not for a bee, not for a leek
and not for a human.
We slowly found that by managing the habitat
to encourage the predatory insects,
and sometimes actually introducing predatory insects,
that we could control all those pests.
Interestingly 20 years later that's what everyone's doing
because all the chemicals they were using,
either the insects have acquired resistance,
or they've been banned because they're not safe for use.
Almost everyone is now using an ecological approach
to insect control in greenhouses because they've had to.
To arrive at a saner agricultural system
we really do need to invest in knowledge
and we can't expect private enterprise to do this
because it doesn't produce something that's sale-able.
We need agricultural colleges, we need horticultural colleges
we need natural sciences that aren't funded
by the agrochemical companies.
Since the 1970s the government has been gradually
withdrawing anything that it regards as near market research.
If you allow the industry to fund research
the industry will lead you towards things
it can make money out of,
and that's what's happened in agriculture since the 1960s.
