Harmony in food and farming

The groundbreaking Harmony in Food and Farming Conference explained why a sustainable food culture sits naturally at the heart of an inspiring philosophy for harmonious living, says Craig Sams

In 2010 a book called ‘Harmony – A New Way of Looking at Our World’ was published. Written by HRH The Prince of Wales along with Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly, the book set out a coherent philosophy of harmonious living for communities and society, along with inspiring examples and a roadmap to a better future. It was inspired by the philosophy of the Stoics of Greece, while acknowledging Taoism, Zen and the Vedic texts. The book aims to re-engage the thinking that sought harmony with the order of the cosmos and a reconnection with Nature. It covered subjects like architecture, urban design, natural capital, deforestation and farming.

Inspired by the book, Patrick Holden, former director of the Soil Association and founder and Director of the Sustainable Food Trust, organised a conference in Llandovery Wales on July 10-11. The aim of the conference, entitled ‘Harmony in Food and Farming‘ was to put meat on the bones of the Prince’s book and to map out a way forward for agriculture and food production that resonated with the principles of harmony.

The conference kicked off with an inspirational keynote speech and then looked at a range of subjects, with key speakers from all around the world. Rupert Sheldrake led a session on ‘Science and Spirituality,’ Prof Harty Vogtmann moderated a session on ‘Farming in Harmony with Nature.’

A session on ‘The Farm as an Ecosystem’ saw Helen Browning, director of the Soil Association, describing her new agroforestry project that encourages happy chickens to range free in a productive orchard of apple trees.

A session entitled ‘Sacred Soil, Sacred Food, Sacred Silence’ highlighted the extent to which faith communities put harmony first in developing their food production systems.

A session on ‘Agriculture’s Role in Rebalancing the Carbon Cycle’ was my opportunity to shine with a presentation entitled ‘Capitalism Must Price Carbon – or Die’ in which I showed that if carbon emissions were priced into farming organic food would be cheaper than industrial food and we’d get the extra benefits of biodiversity, cleaner water and regenerating soils – all themes familiar to readers of my column in NPN. Then Richard Young set out the case for livestock farming that could operate harmoniously within our climate constraints and Peter Segger described his carbon-sequestering vegetable growing operation, which was a fascinating field trip that afternoon.

A session on animal welfare sought to see a way forward to keep animals happy during their short lives and to make that final moment of betrayal as pleasant as possible, with reference to examples and a deepening of the understanding of the sacred relationship between the animals we rear with care and then kill.

Patrick Holden learned his farming at Emerson College and is empathetic to biodynamic principles. A session on Harmony and Biodynamic Agriculture showed how the ideas of Rudolf Steiner resonate with the Harmony philosophy. At a reception the evening before the conference I mentioned to HRH that our original Zen Macrobiotic company was called Yin Yang Ltd and that our brand was Harmony Foods and that we had taken our philosophical guidance from Zen Buddhism and Taoism, unaware that the Stoic philosophy or Greece was on the same page. He commented that the Egyptians had laid the philosophical foundations for the Stoics. I wondered at how a way of thinking that had arisen simultaneously in China, India, Greece and Egypt was now guiding the effort to restore balance to our dysfunctional and unsustainable world.

The conference was attended by delegates from every continent and the closing plenary session included individual delegates describing how the conference had affected them. It was very moving stuff and helped us realise how much we all had been changed by two days in Wales. Patrick stood up to finalise the session and received a prolonged and much-deserved standing applause. The conference was a remarkable achievement. It is now the job of the Sustainable Food Trust to build on its relationships with the organisations that were represented at the conference, capture the momentum of the gathering and give impetus to the movement for harmony, regeneration and an end to the war on Nature that has brought us so dangerously close to disaster.

The proceedings of the conference, filmed and edited, can be seen on the Sustainable Food Trust website.

Man or machine?

When I got into macrobiotic food the American Medical Association warned it could ‘lead to death’ and Dr. Frederick Stare of Harvard University called it the ‘hippie diet that’s killing our kids.’  That’s when I was sure I was on the right track.  45 macrobiotic years later I have the last laugh, just by being alive and well. 

At Cambridge in the 1970s, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a research scientist, discovered auxin, the hormone that regulates plant growth.  He also developed a hypothesis of why and how cells age and die, which led to our understanding of apoptosis, subsequently a key to understanding cancer and to stem cell research.  But then he goofed.  Big time.  He described what he could see.  When Sheldrake’s book A New Science of Life came out in 1981 Sir John Maddox, the editor of Nature, the world’s leading science magazine wrote an editorial entitled ‘A Book For Burning?’ writing: ‘his book is the best candidate for burning there has been for many years’  Later he said “…Sheldrake…can be condemned in exactly the same language that the popes used to condemn Galileo: it is heresy.”  That’s probably when Sheldrake realised he was on the right track.

What was so radical about Sheldrake’s book?

He suggested that DNA was not the be all and end all of development.  He proposed the idea of ‘morphic resonance,’ of a memory of form that guides us and that can change as we evolve.

Since then we’ve discovered that DNA is not the be all and end all of development.  DNA controls protein synthesis but most of our genes are found in mosquitoes. We don’t look like mosquitoes.

Morphic resonance is about patterns, about energy fields, about invisible forces that create the framework around which life evolves.   It also helps explain the inexplicable: why homing pigeons fly unerringly homne; why dogs know when their owner is coming back why people can sense when someone is staring at them.

The Gaia theory proposed that the Earth is a living conscious organism and that all who live on her are parts of that consciousness  This is called ‘holistic theory.’  Everywhere you look the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, on every level of existence.

My brother Gregory's book, published last year, is called Sun of God.  He shows how early religion took God everyone could see, the Sun, and made it an invisible God that could only be accessed via intermediary priests. Anyone who questioned the existence of invisible God got burned at the stake.  Gregory's book also shows that recent discoveries in physics confirm that the Sun must be a conscious entity, as the ancients believed.  There is no other way to explain what it does.  It is Gaia’s mother. The Universe itself could be alive.

So why are morphic resonance and energy fields important to health?  They explain the ‘placebo effect’ and the ‘bedside manner.’  When a sense of how things should be in a healthy organism is shared and experienced, it is easier to get there.  Acupuncture, reiki, yoga, homeopathy, massage, chakra balancing, breathwork, chanting, Chi Gong, healing sounds and many other alternative ways to health use invisible forces that embody a universal memory or resonance.

Sheldrake’s new book, The Science Delusion, shows how science has painted itself into a corner by insisting on a mechanistic and materialistic worldview.  His best selling book (which I strongly recommend) throws down the gauntlet to the people who called him ‘heretic’ 30 years ago.  By taking 10 fundamental doctrines of science and gently but penetratingly questioning them in a spirit of reason, Sheldrake takes the reader on a journey to a new understanding that understands but transcends the self-imposed restrictions on thought of establishment science.  This book could change the world.  If they don’t burn it (or him) first.