TO EVERYONE'S SURPRISE, THE EWE GAVE BIRTH TO A HUMAN BABY.

Sorry - there's virtually no gardening in this post.  More, I promise, next time.  Meanwhile, the Muscari azureum seeds that I scattered two years ago are coming into flower.  Huzzah!  But now, down to business. . .














Oilseed rape growing on the fens near my village. Heavy inputs of nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides are needed to produce good crops, but it is highly productive.  A well grown rape crop can produce nearly 1.5 tonnes of vegetable oil per hectare.

Back to that ewe. . .

It was a little girl.

I know!  I could hardly believe it either but I was listening to BBC Radio 4's Farming Today when, to my astonishment, a woman shepherd (she sounded too bossy to be a shepherdess) announced, amid much grunting and other agricultural sound effects, that the ewe – I believe it was a Norfolk Horn – had just 'had a little girl.'

Now I know Norfolk has a reputation for, shall we say, eccentric couplings but even the simplest grasp of biology will tell you that when sexual liaisons between genera occasionally happen, however satisfactory the consummation might be to the participants, no progeny can result.  The DNAs wouldn't mesh.

And then it dawned on me that this was not a fleshly abomination at all.  It was worse!  This was an example of anthropomorphism – a fashionable tendency which I find extremely worrying.

If you call a lamb a lamb, nasty minds like mine turn quickly from cuddly little woolies, gambolling in daffodil-strewn paddocks, to thoughts of Barnsley chops, Lancashire hotpot, Kleftiko or mutton Shashlik.  And if I were a livestock farmer – which I once was – I'd be totting up potential profits on the carcasses and wondering how I could maximise them.

But if you call a lamb a 'little girl,' that gives a skewed picture.  It gets you closer to cuddly toys or to characters like Larry the Lamb – bet none of you remembers him! – or to LambChop.  Nice, comforting imagery?  Certainly! But it's removed from the reality of livestock farming.  And the more removed consumers are, from the truth about origins of their food, the more unrealistic the whole thing becomes.  Or is that balderdash?

Anyway, if you could just keep the foregoing rubbish at the back of your mind, while I bombard you with a couple more thoughts, I'd be deeply grateful.

Some thoughts:

1.  According to the United Nations, world food production needs to double by 2050, if everyone is to be fed. It's here.

Achieving high yields already consumes profligate levels of resources, many of them irreplaceable.  Doubling production will have to be achieved, therefore, not with the same resources, but with fewer.  Have a look at this New York Times piece which outlines the need to change production methods.























Traditional vegetable gardening can be incredibly efficient as a means of raising food. As gardeners, we can care for our environment, enhance biodiversity and can be highly productive.  Food gardens, to me, have greater beauty than the over-topiarised pretentiousness of some 'great' gardens.


2.  If we are to feed the 9 billion – expected population in 2050 – we need to box clever.  A lot cleverer, I suggest, than we've done so far.  There isn't the luxury available, of fostering bat-brained ideas based on emotion or worse, inaccurate pseudo-science.   We've got to learn how to have two birds in the hand while leaving another two constantly in the bush.


3.  Environmental damage, as witnessed in the past half century cannot be repeated.  It is obscene and intolerable.  Such reckless destruction is also dangerous to the whole of humanity and is therefore stupid. Yet we persist. Can't stop. Have to carry on wrecking.

Answers to our most desperate needs could be out there, in the wild.  But if the loss of biodiversity continues at its current rate, there'll be nothing left.  Then what?  Will we live in a degraded earth, continually hammered by destructive climates, cowed by political instability and enduring constant, nagging wars over resources.


4. The power fulcrum is shifting eastwards. The world's second largest economy, China – and with it, the rest of Asia – will be calling the big shots pretty soon. And if the populations of India and China want the levels of self-indulgence we enjoy in Europe and the United States, where will the resources come from?

Virgin rainforest was removed to plant tea, in the Cameron Highlands region of Malaysia. Can production of such commodities be increased without further destruction of rich, natural resources?


Meanwhile, here in Britain we are about 65% self-sufficient in food.  But with predicted population growth, that will drop to about 50%.  We should be aiming higher.

Livestock production, butchery and our Western diets have become difficult and emotive subjects. In the face of dwindling resources and changing values, many of us are increasingly troubled about what we eat, and how much.  But it is also becoming clear, that we must be ready to embrace technological advances that will benefit productivity, provided safeguards such as animal welfare are firmly in place.

After the traumatising experience of BSE, and subsequent food scares, consumers have become suspicious of anything new.  That has to change: not the suspicion - that's healthy - but the willingness to keep an open and curious mind, rather than following the mob.

Genetically modified crops were roundly - and in my view, unwisely - condemned.  The chorus of disapproval, led by Prince Charles and orchestrated by the Soil Association has been deeply destructive, closing people's minds to reasoned argument and shutting doors not only to efficient food production, but to a vast range of potential benefits including better wildlife conservation, reduced dependency on fertilisers and chemical-free plant health.

In a challenging future, I think we must be ready to look judiciously at all new technologies. And we should embrace any that will help to fill bellies without causing collateral damage.  

Tapioca, manioc, cassava, Manihot esculenta - call it what you will, the roots are a source of dietary starch and the plants can grow in cereal-hostile conditions, even rainforest.  Therefore a valuable world feeder with huge potential, even though we Brits remember it mainly for the gloopy 'frogspawn' milk puddings.  It'll be better still if the toxins can be bred out of the sap. (This is a curious red-stemmed variety I photographed on the island of Sulawesi.)

I'm listening to Haydn's The Creation or rather Die Schöpfung. Neville Marriner is conducting.

This week's film was Bunny Lake is Missing.  A British thriller, directed by Otto Preminger, screenplay by John and Penelope Mortimer, starring Larry Olivier, for once rather under-playing his role as an educated policeman. (You could tell he was educated 'cos he wore a Cambridge University tie all the time.)  For all those big names, it's a bit of a disappointment for two reasons: first, the long suspense scene at the climax is milked so dry that one is beginning to yawn before the denouement arrives.  But the big reason is that it's one of the few British films of its day without an appearance by Sam Kydd.  We felt bereaved, having scoured every frame for him.

This day, roughly, in 1956 I was in the worlds coldest and most inhospitable spot – the corridor between classrooms at my Norfolk prep school. Icicles developed on the insides of the windows. The Suez Crisis and Budapest Uprising were to follow that year.

Bye bye