Jordans cereals founder Bill Jordan says his company's method of farming can feed the world and safeguard biodiversity
As the owner of Jordans Cereals, Bill Jordan has spent years promoting Conservation Grade farming, a system of agriculture that aims to increase levels of farmland wildlife.
Detractors say it is merely a ‘B-grade’ version of organic farming, as pesticides are not completely banned. But measures such as requiring 10 per cent of land on participating farms to be given over to wildlife-friendly habitats have increased numbers of birds and insects.
He talks to Tom Levitt about why he wants more farmers and manufacturers to start using Conservation Grade farming, his fears about GM food and why he is in favour of some pesticides.
Tom Levitt: Why did you start using Conservation Grade farming?
Bill Jordan: When we started the business in 1972 I had just come back from America and it was fascinating the way the natural foods sector was growing there.
Myself and my brother David came at it originally from the organic perspective because we thought that everything was going to be organic.
But the interest in whole and natural foods grew faster than the supply of the organic ingredients so we were looking for a halfway house, which is how Conservation Grade came about.
To begin with the system was about the inputs - so we stopped a lot of things farmers were using because that was what consumers were concerned about.
Over the last 15 years the interest has been in having ingredients from farms that are really healthy - "you are what you eat" was the Jane Fonda line. Another was, "food is as good and as clean as the land that it is grown on". That was our mantra 15 years ago and it’s what we’ve been working on with our farmers to achieve - reducing inputs and increasing the wildlife they were getting on the farms.