Wow! I know I don’t get off the farm enough these days, but it’s still quite exciting to be in a room with a bunch of small farmers and farmers organisations from 25 different countries – Ireland to Azerbaijan, Portugal to Norway – talking about building the alternative to corporate control of the food system. It was a wonderfully democratic meeting, and so a bit woolly at time especially when the simultaneous interpretation went for a coffee. Lessons for Whitmuir? Well, we’re bigger than we think, given that the average farm size in Europe is 35 acres, and the Polish NGO linking farmers to consumers is working with 5 acre farms in the south of the country. There, organic food costs twice or three times the less sustainable stuff, so I felt better about our prices. Hazelnuts grow better in Turkey. Community supported agriculture and organics are growing steadily across many countries, and in Germany they got a turnout of 23,000 people at a demonstration for sustainable agriculture. In Serbia, people who did well from the Milosevic regime are buying up land from small farmers hoping the price will go up when Serbia joins the EU. And in Norway, there’s a debate about how much food it’s worth growing, and how much of the land should revert to trees and bears (now, that would liven up the farm walks!). And on the way I stumbled upon Le Pain Quotidien in St Pancras, where they sell freshly made organic artisan bread from a little bakery round the corner…