I have returned from a week in Westminster just before the election, on the final part of the Institute of Agricultural Management leadership development course.
With Government departments in limbo following the dissolution, Defra flatly refused to come out of Smith Square to talk to our group. I found this rather baffling as we were not going to influence them politically and were operating under Chatham House rules.
We had a raft of top notch speakers ranging from members of the House of Lords and MEPs to the man who organises the International Air Tattoo at Fairford. The latter gave a fascinating insight into approaching the task of getting tens of thousands of members of the public and hundreds of planes from every part of the world, in and out of a live American air base over a weekend in July.
This is done with around 1,800 unpaid volunteers who take over the airfield from the Americans and run it as their own, with each volunteer being of equal status.
One speaker who particularly struck me was Professor Robert Pickard FRS, who spoke about sustainability and climate change. His presentation was both erudite and frightening. He stated that the species which have survived thus far are the ones which adapt to change, which is what we have done up to now. Humans were described as herd animals which aspire to be social ones like bees. All social animals are female controlled to regulate the size of their populations. Nature is not benign and there are an awful lot of things which would like to convert us into bacteria, but interestingly no one is actually more than ten years old as every cell in our bodies is replaced at least once in ten years.
Vegetarianism was raised and it was noted that there are no cave paintings of Neanderthals eating broccoli and even if there were they would have to eat mountains of the stuff to get the same amount of iron the human body needs. He went on to say that the biggest threats facing humanity are over population, water, energy and food shortages and that without global social code, government and regulation we face an uncertain future. His take on food crises was interesting as he told us that during the BSE/CJD scare in beef there were 20,000 media articles for every death from the disease, but there are 30,000 deaths for every article related to smoking.
Many others spoke to us made the whole week both challenging and enjoyable and I would recommend the course to anyone who wants to be at the cutting edge of future agricultural policy. The friends I have made over the three weeks will last a very long time.
One thing none of us must lose sight of is our fallacies, because no matter how brilliant a leader there are always failings. This is illustrated by the great WWII naval hero Admiral Gregory, who was known as Pope Gregory as he was always right and had successfully lead many Atlantic convoys and forays into the Meditteranean. After breakfast each day he would disappear into his cabin studying a sheet of paper with a very few words on it. This was a great mystery to the ratings as they wanted to know what great mantra or wise words were written thereon. One day the Admiral was called back to the bridge on an emergency and failed to lock his cabin. Two junior ratings went inside keen to learn his secret from this bit of paper. Their discovery was surprising to say the least. There written in capital letters were the words: PORT IS ON THE LEFT, STARBORD IS IN THE RIGHT!
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