FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A champion of organic food and artisanal producers, our new king has always put food at the heart of his agenda…
Coronation SPECIAL FEATURE
King Charles III may only have begun to rule this country at 73 – but for the past 50 years, he has been a vocal visionary, working tirelessly to champion UK food, promote organic farming and sustainable produce, and offering the weight of his support to small growers and rural communities. Often, he’s been a lone voice in the wilderness, his green-living, nature-loving views mocked as new age mumbo jumbo. But the King’s belief that humankind must reconnect with the natural world to have any hope of a sustainable future has been a theme he’s returned to again and again.
‘There’s no doubt that the King was way ahead of his time,’ says Leon co-founder and author of the National Food Strategy, Henry Dimbleby, whose new book Ravenous (Profile, £16.99) examines how our global food system is wreaking havoc on the environment. ‘Charles was talking about issues such as soil health, regenerative farming and the circular economy long before it was fashionable – and was met with mockery. But now the science has caught up with him.’
The King’s first major speech on the environment was way back in 1970 when he was just 21, five years before the term ‘global warming’ was even coined. And Charles himself says he was ‘considered rather dotty’ when he first started speaking up about environmental concerns. ‘In those early days I was described as old-fashioned, out of touch and anti-science; a dreamer in a modern world,’ he wrote in his book Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, in which he set forth his blueprint for a more balanced, sustainable planet.
Today, the King’s influence reaches every corner of the British food scene, from the choice of food on our supermarket shelves to the way our farmers produce it. And nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the growth of organic farming. ‘At the Soil Association, we have been fortunate to have worked closely with King Charles for many years, and he has consistently championed this vision of living in harmony with nature – the science and politics are only now catching up with him,’ says Joanna Lewis, policy and strategy director of the Soil Association, one of the many green charities of which the King has been patron.
GOING ORGANIC
In 1985, the King committed to showing the doubters how sustainable farming could work in practice, when he ‘rather cautiously’ converted 40 acres of the Duchy Home Farm at Highgrove – followed shortly after by the rest of the farm – to a fully organic system, rejecting the use of artificial pesticides and fertilisers on the land and pharmaceuticals on livestock, while prioritising animal welfare, crop rotation, soil health and biodiversity. ‘It would be
