Fixing the broken food system
An interview with Charlie Curtis, independent agronomist
Charlie Curtis was all set to be a PE teacher until she realised that health wasn’t necessarily all about exercise, but rather a more fundamental factor – the stuff that fuels us. With that moment of epiphany, she switched her studies, took up agriculture and has been learning how to improve the quality of the soil and the way food is produced ever since.
Listen to the podcast here.
Her learning has taken her all over the world – Africa, America, Oceania – and has introduced her to all components of the agricultural supply chain – from corporate food retailers such as Marks and Spencers and Premier Foods to the farmers supplying them.
Now Charlie works as an independent agronomist in Norfolk. She is an advocate of regenerative farming and is working with like-minded farmers to support them through a transition into more regenerative farming practices and develop a more resilient way of farming. When she says ‘resilient’ Charlie means resilience in terms of soil health, financial resilience, social resilience and environmental resilience.
In this wide-ranging discussion, Charlie also points to the importance of getting the message of where our food comes from and how it is produced to everyone. That means people sitting in board rooms as well as kids in their classrooms.
‘People in board rooms of big food retailers are so far removed from the growers that they have no idea what is going on,’ says Charlie. ‘The Future Food Movement is working to overcome this and is a fantastic movement that we should really support.’
Tune into this week’s episode of the Farming Social Hub’s Farming with Nature podcast to listen to this thoughtful and enlightening interview.