Farms Not Factories

01/06/2026

I totally agree with this philosopher’s dystopian description of our Western culture. This is also in the food section as it is an important message that should be heard – ie our culture is turning most of us into big powerful and little weak monsters. I can see it in myself perhaps because I have seen the kindness, openness, happiness, generosity and love of rural people in the so-called Third World, particularly Muslims.

Shahid Bolsen; “You’re looking at a person, a Westerner, okay? You’re looking at a Westerner who has been completely seized by a very twisted culture that has been twisted as a culture for longer than almost any other continuous culture on earth. So your advice, your nasiha, your reminders, even your condemnation, your attempts at rehabilitation and so forth, these are not going to be processed. These are not going to be processed. The person that you’re trying to talk to is not available. The person that you’re trying to talk to is buried beneath a mountain of Westernism. And if you know what to look for you will see what I mean. And you can think back on any encounters that you’ve ever had with Westerners and you’ll see what I’m talking about. You’ll remember the combativeness, the competitiveness, the hostility, the obfuscation, the gaslighting, the evasiveness around any sort of moral framing about anything. You’ll remember them baiting you, them trying to provoke you, the pressure to accommodate them. On and on and on. It’s uniform. It’s uniform. Everyone has had this experience because it’s uniform. And it’s uniform because it is a condition. It’s the same condition, even if the carriers of the condition are different. That’s why I say, you know that you’re dealing with a condition and not an individual. I’m telling you, you don’t know any Westerners. You don’t know any Westerners that you know. You understand me? If you know any Westerners, you don’t know any Westerners. You don’t know them. You don’t know those people. You have no idea who they are because they have no idea who they are. This is ironic because another one of the facets or one of the defining traits or characteristics of their so called civilisation or the condition of Westernism is this hyper fixation on individualism, on the importance of the individual, the sanctity of the individual and so forth, right? And yet Westerners are not ever even allowed to know themselves. They’re not allowed to even know themselves. They are caught forever , in the riptide between the culture, what their culture has made them in reality and what their culture has made them pretend to be. You understand me? And these two things, both of these things are definitively opposites. Understand? The culture is objectively vile. It’s objectively vicious and perverted and deranged and depraved. Objectively that’s not how they were born. That’s not what they were born to be. That’s not what they were created to be. That’s not what their fitra is, but that’s what Westernism made them in reality. And then the culture makes them pretend to be good, upright, moral and so forth, and it makes them pretend to disapprove of everything that their own culture promotes, make them pretend that they disapprove of everything their culture applauds and everything that their culture rewards. So you’re caught between these two things, these two falsities, and you never even get a chance to ever find out who you really are as a person.”

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31/05/2026

This video seems to divide farming between intensive agriculture or wildlife whereas we could have both. Land-sharing is where crops are grown in symbiosis with nature. But corporations don’t want farmers to come away from their petrochemicals and so the stooge politicians are subsidising farmers to grow intensively in the middle of the fields and leave less favourable land to wildlife, called land-sparing.

A funny film about a serious issue, restore nature or produce food? Featuring Derek Banbury, a dairy farmer who is horrified at the “devastation” of his neighbour’s farm. Over the hedge lives another Derek – dubbed the “maverick rewilder” by the media – Derek Gow is an ex-sheep farmer hellbent on turning his land into an oasis for nature. The pair argue over everything from food production and hedges to beavers and escaping wild boar. Made by BAFTA award winning director James Dawson, it’s blunt, funny and heartwarming in equal measure.

Around it’s release in 2026, our dream is for the film to drive real world change for both food security and nature. Recognising farmers as key to both but often under-supported.

Director, James Dawson:

“Five years ago, I realised that the countryside was becoming central to the conflict around the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. I felt it was undervalued as a focus for films. And not properly understood. So I went in search of a story that would allow this conflict to be explored in real time. And yet wouldn’t easily drop into the cliches that seem to dominate so much of the debate in our polarised world.

When I found the two Dereks I knew they were a great way of crafting a story that could tease out the underlying issues in a funny and engaging way.My hope is their story will at turns amuse, entertain and provoke audiences to think about the difficult questions the film poses and to catalyse tangible change for farmers and for nature.”

Theatrical release planned for Autumn 2026. To find out about screenings you can sign up for our newsletter here: https://www.derekvsderek.com/contact

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30/05/2026

Yorkshire farmers discussing farming

Intro; “There’s a crisis in farming that needs addressing and Farmers Rob & Dave have drafted in their Dad, Roger, to talk all about it. Roger has 70 years of farming experience so can modern day agriculture learn from its past?!’

56 likes, 5 comments. "There's a crisis in farming... and this is how we fix it!"

29/05/2026

Shane Holland grew up on the clifftops of Cornwall in a food and farming community, then went to London as a student to study medicine. In London, he noticed what he’d lost, the quality and taste of real local food.

Reflecting on the quality and taste of the food he had left behind in Cornwall, compared to what he was eating in London, he decided to abandon medicine and devote his life to improving the way we think of food, to value local, seasonal vegetables, grains, fruits, meat and seafood from local producers. Shane's wish to connect people with artisan farmers and producers led him to the Slow Food movement which was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986 in the aftermath of a campaign against the opening of a McDonalds near the Spanish Steps in Rome, and it has since spread worldwide. Its message is simple, food should be hugely valued, grown by farmers who are closely connected with their land, soils and animals, and prepared with care and respect for the local food heritage.

He is now the Executive Chairman of Slow Food in the UK and Chairman of Borough Market where many of the stallholders trade under the Slow Food Snail emblem which guarantees ethical, agro-ecological and high animal welfare food produced by small-scale, artisan farmers.

"So often we think of food as being about calories or macronutrients. They're important, but there's so much more to be gained from sharing food around the table, sharing food with someone that we love and thinking about where our food comes from. What we really need to do is to get back to actually supporting our farmers, and we do that by eating genuinely local, genuinely seasonal food. If we do that, it's going to be better for our health, it's going to be better for the planet.”

On 22 May Slow Food announced that Carlo Petrini had passed away at his home in Bra, Piedmont, Northern Italy, the ancient market town surrounded by small farms, terraces and wooded hillsides where he was born and from where he inspired the Slow Food Movement into a worldwide campaign for locally produced, healthy and traditionally prepared food.

Watch and share the film. Join the Slow Food movement - Seek out local, seasonal food from farm shops, farmers’ markets or online hubs. Choose a connection with your food while keeping money in local communities.

29/05/2026

Interesting history of the modern food system dominated by supermarkets and volatile global supply chains.

Intro; “Richard Hames presents a new show about the systems that make modern life possible. We’ve made the planet into a giant machine, filled with the strangest stories – and now it’s all coming apart. It’s time to Do Your Own Research. There’s nothing in the world more important than the food system. The twentieth century was scarred by enormous famines – and, like the one in Gaza, they are still deliberately engineered. But since the 1970s, the absolute number of deaths from famine has dropped by over 90%.

On a global scale, we now make so much food that farmers will sometimes destroy it just to keep the prices high. How is there so much food? How did we get to a world where, globally, people are more likely to be obese than underweight? And, amid all these calories, how are so many people still malnourished? Why is it suddenly all so expensive? And is it all about to come crashing down? Charles C. Mann explains the historical power of bird s**t, the strange reason Indian scientists put wheat in a nuclear reactor, and how the genius who made modern farming possible also invented the gas that was used to murder millions in the Holocaust. We’re mapping the world and everything in it.’

Support our work:http://novara.media/supportRichard Hames presents a new show about the systems that make modern life possible. We’ve made the planet into a ...

28/05/2026

Ffinlo Costain interviews two farmers about converting to Regen farming

Tom Edmonson, Farmer; “High welfare (pigs), smaller groups, reduced antibiotic usage, everything that we should be doing, but we had a couple of batches where it just for one reason or other didn’t go right for us. And we had a period of vice, tail biting, ear chewing by the pigs because they weren’t happy for whatever reason whether it be the food quality or the weather conditions. It was quite a period of foggy weather where it was always quite damp and the pigs are quite sensitive to those changes within those systems and I got to a point where I was going out in the morning and I’d have to go out and euthanise pigs because of the tail biting and things like that and it got to a point where I was euthanising quite a high number on some days.

And when we got to a point where we realised the consumer didn’t want what we were producing, they wanted what our vision for the farm was, and what it could be from smaller amounts of different species of animals, so chickens for eggs and pigs in a smaller way, and cows and sheep, all produced within this regenerative farming system. People do want that and I can produce that and I can make money doing that. And actually, everyone’s happier and it’s got all these added benefits that you can’t really measure, such as increased bird life and insects and all these things. And a few years down the line of doing this and we’ve got a really good group of customers who we’ve created great relationships with, and it’s made farming for us much happier. And it’s a really a thing we’re really, really proud of doing, and it’s amazing.”

'It'll never work on my farm'

27/05/2026

‘If the government supported land sharing instead of land sparing, we could get rid of the expensive inputs and farm in symbiosis with nature, increasing the health of both the consumer and soil.’

‘The UK imports 60% of its fertiliser and close to 50% of its food, often from countries which in turn import significant amounts of fertiliser and rely on input-heavy production systems. The UK’s system is also heavily centralised and consolidated, nine big retailers account for more than 94% of all retail food.

If the government created support that took a whole farm approach, integrating nature and food production through agro-ecological farming methods, and promoted healthier diets aligned with what the UK can sustainably produce, we could move away from input-heavy agriculture, reducing our reliance on imports and increasing the resilience of domestic production to extreme weather. A decentralised supply chain is also critical for true resilience, embedding smaller-scale localised infrastructure across the country would be more flexible, able to pivot in a crisis and be less of a target from a security point of view. Empowering communities to produce food should also be taken seriously, supporting community growing, improving access to growing spaces and embedding practical food growing skills within the curriculum for young people. And we need to address our huge reliance on imported fruit and veg by creating market gardens and horticulture enterprises across the UK, accompanied by localised processing facilities.’

Reflecting on current situation in the Middle East and the subsequent impact on food security around the world, the SFT's research team imagine what a future food system that's more resilient to global shocks and price volatility might look like.

26/05/2026

‘Lawyers for one of the country’s biggest producers of industrially farmed chicken have attacked a claim that they are responsible for pollution in the River Wye and River Usk.

More than 1,300 people have signed up to sue Avara Foods, its subsidiary Freemans of Newent and the local sewage company Welsh Water for extensive and widespread pollution in the rivers and their catchment areas.

In what their lawyers are calling the UK’s biggest ever environmental pollution claim, they blame the companies for the rivers turning green in the summer and becoming smelly and slimy.

But at a preliminary hearing at the high court in London on Monday, Charles Gibson KC, representing Avara and Freemans, said the claim that their activities had caused the river pollution was “entirely inferential and is an oversimplification”.’

Lawyers for Avara Foods and Freemans of Newent say legal claim backed by 1,300 people is ‘entirely inferential’

25/05/2026

We can all help bring an end to cruel, polluting factory farming by only buying high welfare products labelled free range, outdoor reared/bred, or best of all organic.

‘Ammonia pollution hotspots have been identified in areas with some of the greatest numbers of intensive pig and poultry farms in Britain, research has revealed.

A new map for the first time reveals the most severe concentrations of ammonia emissions are clustered in Lincolnshire, Herefordshire and Norfolk. These regions all have a high density of intensive poultry and pig units that drive dangerous levels of ammonia, according to researchers from Compassion in World Farming (CiWF) and Sustain.

The research comes as the government attempts to rewrite planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms despite concerns about water pollution, air quality and local opposition, the Guardian revealed earlier this month.

Michele Franks, who lives near a poultry megafarm in Lincolnshire told researchers emissions regularly force her indoors, triggering chest tightness, eye irritation and breathing difficulties during shed clean-outs that can last up to five days at a time.

“When the chicken sheds are cleaned out, the smell and the polluted air hits me straight away – my chest tightens, my eyes sting, and I have to shut every window in my house just to cope,” she said. “I’m asthmatic, and for days I can’t even step into my own garden. They say escape to the country for cleaner air but no one should have to live sandwiched between industrial units that make them gasp for breath.”

CiWF and Sustain are calling for an end to the expansion of factory farming.’

Map reveals most severe concentrations of ammonia emissions, which are dangerous to health and environment

24/05/2026

‘Ministers are rewriting planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms despite concerns about water pollution, air quality and local opposition. Documents obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act show that proposed changes to the national planning policy framework (NPPF) were discussed by ministers and officials in response to concerns of the country’s leading chicken producers, who have been lobbying on the issue for at least two years.’

Exclusive: documents chronicle years-long campaign to make it easier to build intensive livestock units