The whole planet is in the midst of an eruption of disease. Agricultural occurrences are no different than human epidemics, in terms of potential damage.
The British Isles are on the list of places that come to mind when the words “agriculture” and “outbreak” are put together, not because they have any more than the rest of the planet, but because their battles over the last 30 years have been a particularly media-rich affair. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, and Scrapie (another transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, or TSE) hit Britain. They’re pretty powerful examples of the destruction that occurs in our food and economic systems from something like this.
But it’s not all bad. Humans have some pretty powerful tools to work with, and top on the list are conceptual ideas like collaboration, cooperation, information, and resource diversification.
Today we’re going to bring you a conversation with a guy that uses all of those tools in his daily life. John Wilkes is a business consultant and journalist who uses his life experience and expertise from both sides of the Atlantic to produce a balanced perspective on commercial U.S. livestock production topics. The first half of his life was on a traditional mixed farm in Shropshire, England, with a later stint in business and the restaurant industry. He married a colonist (read: American), and ended up living in Maryland, and writes a column for the UK Farmers Guardian called “View From The Hill.” We caught up with him in November 2016 at the Livestock Conservancy Conference in Amhurst, Massachusetts, where he was attending both as a member of the Board of Directors of the Conservancy, but also in his role as the North American Ambassador for the UK’s Rare Breeds Survival Trust. He has a broad base of knowledge about many areas of British and American agriculture, including commercial and small farm production, heritage and commercial breeds, import and export requirements, genetics, the food supply, and on and on. We hope you enjoy our conversation with a man that truly understands the power of collaboration.
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-wilkes-0b533a26
https://www.fginsight.com/
https://www.fginsight.com/news/top-stories/view-from-the-hill-us-talks-tough-on-trade-with-eu-77283
https://www.rbst.org.uk/
https://livestockconservancy.org/index.php/about/internal/board
http://www.rarebreedscanada.ca/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Breeds_Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Livestock_Conservancy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Breeds_Survival_Trust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie
https://www.rbst.org.uk/news/rbst-join-up-with-the-greatest-online-agricultural-show