A slightly edited version of the following letter appeared in yesterday's Evening News in Norfolk. For anyone unfamiliar with Robert Kett, by the way, he was a Norfolk farmer who led a massive rebellion against the enclosure of the common land. Today patents on life and genetically engineered crops threaten invasion and control of what have been termed "the global commons".
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Dear Sir

Agriculture and how we manage the land has always been a hot topic in the county of Robert Kett and Turnip Townsend.

And it’s never been hotter than in the era of Dolly the sheep and Lucky the lamb, as our industrialised agriculture lurches from crisis to crisis.

Last year we had the BSE report and front page images of a Norfolk farmer ploughing up the GM contaminated Oil Seed Rape crop neither he nor his customers wanted on his land. This spring's crop of pictures are of culling and funeral pyres, distressed farmers and mud-bespattered lambs.

It is not only in this country, of course, that the future of agriculture is a vital concern.  And nowhere is it more vital than in India, one of the hungriest nations on the planet. Here the very existence of millions upon millions of small farmers depends on the crops they grow and the land they manage.

Their voice has an added poignancy for another reason. These are the farmers who were betrayed by the "green revolution" of the 1960s and '70s, which had the effect of concentrating wealth, land and power in the hands of the few who were able to afford the expensive new seeds and chemicals. This contributed to the migration of millions of farmers to the cities -- the new urban poor who often continue to starve even when the granaries are full to bursting.

Meanwhile, back in the Indian countryside, the hungry rural poor and the environment have often been the ones to pay the price of the new more industrialised agriculture with its unsustainable demands on eco-systems and on scarce resources such as water.

Many of the experts who pushed the "green revolution" are now pushing the "gene revolution". But what do those at the sharp end really think? Will their voices be heard in this heated debate? Will they be offered choice and sustainable options for development, or will it once again be a case of the imposition of the will of the corporations and the technical elites?

This week the people of Norfolk will have the chance to hear some of these normally little heard voices, and to discuss the various options for the future of global agriculture. A group of Indian agriculturalists are touring arable farms in the county, and will be discussing their needs and their perspectives at the University of East Anglia (Lecture Theatre 1), this Wednesday at 7.30p.m.

This is a real opportunity to link the farmers and peoples of two parts of the world where the future of food is a passionate concern, and to help discover what kind of informed future we all want for the year 2020 and beyond.

Jonathan Matthews
for The 2020 Vision Collective