Date/Time
Date(s) - 23/03/2019
12:00 pm - 2:15 pm

Location
Leamington Spa Baptist Church

Categories No Categories

Warwick District UN Association are holding their next event on Saturday 23rd March, 2019 in a joint meeting with Friends of the Earth to discuss

Environmental issues and Food Security: How can we meet the needs of people without trashing the Environment?

The speaker will be Mr David Gardner, Former CEO of the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

The focus of his address will be about the challenges of food and energy production and use against the phenomenal demand associated with a growing population. He will also cover biodiversity, soils, greenhouse gases, automation, animal welfare, human diets, genetic editing as well as farm based energy production and storage and how they might contribute to future energy demands.

David is a director at Waldersey Farms on the fens and represents the industry at the Rural Payments Agency. He is a Director of The Farm Carbon Cutting Toolkit, a Trustee of The Frank Parkinson Agricultural Trust, an Ambassador for Social Farms and Gardens and helps St George’s House at Windsor Castle organise their farming consultations.

Prior to his ‘retirement’ in May 2018 David was CEO of the Royal Agricultural Society of England where he developed the Innovation for Agriculture initiative. Innovation for Agriculture is a consortium of 16 Agricultural Societies that promotes emerging technologies that will shape agriculture over the coming decades. Innovation for Agriculture has three technical programmes focused upon Soil Health, Precision Livestock Technologies and Antibiotic Resistance. The organisation is project coordinator for the 4D4F Horizon 2020 project which promotes the adoption and development of precision technologies in the dairy sector.

Previously David enjoyed a long career with The Co-operative Farms who he joined as a graduate after studying at Seale Hayne. During his time with The Co-operative Farms David held a number of Senior positions including Head of Fruit Operations and Manager of Stoughton Estate in Leicestershire. He has considerable experience in the combinable, dairy and fruit sectors.

In 2010 he completed a Nuffield study on ‘New Science and Pioneer Technologies to transform UK agriculture’ which took him to leading research facilities in the USA, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. The study developed a particular interest in genetics and automation.

There will be a Ploughman`s Lunch and coffee/tea (£3.50 per head) from 12:00 pm till 2:15 pm and the meeting starts at 12:30 prompt.