Stuart Meikle is an agricultural management and policy specialist, an economist, a writer and an advisor. He was brought up with agriculture and studied at the University of London. He joined the faculty on graduating and spent several years teaching, researching and consulting. His last 25 years have seen him advising governments, the World Bank and the IFC, NGOs, universities and private businesses in places as far afield as SE and Central Asia, the Caucuses, the Levant, SE Europe and the UK. Over the years he has developed a particular focus on agricultural and food sector strategy at the national and regional levels and linking rural development initiatives with the consumer through the food supply chains. He first arrived in Romania to work on a Commission project in 1997 and he lived in Transylvania for more than a decade from 2002; a location to which he was appointed as the United Kingdom's first Honorary Consul. Nowadays he and his family live in the Republic of Ireland.
Biodiversity must exist across all British farmland. Farming must be about food production, stewardship of the environment and our landscapes. Food and farming policy must promote a mutually beneficial approach to produce wholesome food, enhance farmland biodiversity while preserving Britain’s landscapes. […]
What role does – or can – farming and food play in mitigating climate change? Retaining and storing carbon in the soils should be an obvious climate-change mitigation, improving soil fertility through the natural processes of grazing, returning animal manures, and using legumes to fix atmospheric nitrogen has the indirect benefit of reducing the farmer’s reliance on artificial nitrogen fertilisers manufactured using fossil fuels. […]
The food security of the British population and its following generations cannot be simplified into a policy founded on the erroneous principle that the global market will always provide. It is vital for the food security of the British people that a sizeable proportion of the nation’s food comes from accessible and reliable sources operating regenerative food systems. Chapter 1 by Stuart Meikle. […]
CAP has had a massive influence on British agriculture. No other industry will have been so greatly impacted by the United Kingdom’s EU membership, and no other industry will be as affected as Britain leaves the European Union. Leaving the EU now offers the UK the opportunity to create a new food and farming policy. […]
Stuart Meikle takes us back to the future, to the poorly named green revolution aka the origins of industrial farming, to the humus farming of just before that, and up to today with the huge challenges farming faces. Agtechtakeback: Tech Revolutions, Retro-Innovations and Humus Farming. […]
A UK supermarket chain’s anti-palm oil advert has been banned, it’s focus habitat destruction caused by deforestation deemed too political for public television. Stuart Meikle reports on the past and present global obsession with palm oil and whether a plea to changing Western food habits is really the way forward. […]
Interested in reducing the GHG emissions from producing our food? Better nutrition and health and lower healthcare costs? Reducing the pollution from our food production systems? Then read what Stuart Miekle has to say about how a soil focused farming benefits these and other aspects of society. […]
Stuart Meikle focuses on three main areas: society, farming and transitioning – all to soil-focused farming. The transition section includes seven suggestions for new farm support mechanisms. These suggestions focus on both payments and practices. […]
“A sustainable food system is not about reducing animal-product consumption so to ‘free-up’ land for direct-for-human-food plants: rather, it is about using the land now used for feeds for shipping to animals confined elsewhere, for grazing livestock – be they ruminants, pigs or poultry.” Stuart Meikle outlines his position. […]
What are the implications – on the farm, in the region, the EU and globally – of the ever-increasing production milk production in the EU? Stuart Miekle explores. […]
What are the viability and sustainability issues with milk in two parts of Europe quite far from each other – Ireland and Romania? Stuart Miekle has spent many years in both places, working with dairy farmers. Here he gives his perspective. […]
After the recent suggestion that there should be a tax levied on GHG emissions from agriculture, will a proposal to tax nitrogen fertilizers be next? Stuart Miekle outlines the pros and cons. […]
‘Grass-fed’ is now widely used across the global market place for bovine products. It is loosely defined and can mean anything from 51% of the animal’s diet coming from grazed grass and forages to 100% fed on grass. ‘Grass-fed’ is now so common place that one must ask whether it retains any great value as product differentiation. Has ‘grass-fed’ seen its day? And how should sustainable food move forward? […]
Smallholders feel the impact of declining investment in irrgation […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention