Heart-to-Heart 2008 at the Hay Festival

Saturday 31^st May. 7pm

There are wonderful benefits to food that is produced and consumed within a few miles, that is 10's rather than 1000's of miles. Real benefits like the health of individuals and communities, security, unique products, cooks and farmers getting to know and understand each other, so why have small farmers and Welsh farmers in particular, been in the doldrums for so long? Terry Jones extolled these benefits with an appreciation of the traditions and what the small farmers are currently trying to cope with. He broadened the discussion into a comment about the industrialization of food - the lack of profits for the small farmer, the profits of the super-markets and the food industry, the homogeneity of food culture, the role of GM in allowing global corporations to control our food supply, the current rise in petrol prices and the impact that will have on flying in food from across the world instead of growing it at home - and indeed the oil that goes into the fertilizers and the like.
Martin Orbach, from his own experience, suggested what might be done about it.
Jon Snow with his experience and skill at asking pertinent questions that lead to the right answers chaired the meeting.

Jon Snow, Chair
Jon cycles everywhere, shunning the car that is on offer to take him to and from the ITV News building on Gray's Inn Road. It's an attitude that causes some consternation among his bosses
. Jon has been the he main presenter of Channel 4 News since 1989. Jon has presented the news from all over the world very often at the moment that it is happening. From Hong Kong at the time of the handover to China, Washington during the Clinton impeachment hearings, from Stormont during the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement and from the West Bank, India, Iran and Iraq.
In 2005 he was awarded the Richard Dimbleby BAFTA award for Best Factual Contribution to Television. In February 2006 he was named Journalist of the Year at the Royal Television Society and has awards for his reports from New Orleans, Pakistan and from Africa.

Martin Orbach
From milking sheep to making carob ice cream, from music festivals to organising the Abergavenny Food Festival, which was voted 'The best Event in Wales'. Martin Orbach, a Welsh farmer became an entrepreneurial ice cream maker and wanted to bring his sheep milk produce to the public without going through wholesalers. He and his partner opened Shepherds ice cream parlour in Hay on Wye, and travelled to music festivals selling cornets of ginger or lemon ice cream, among other flavours. A creative and unusual career for a farmer, you might say.

Terry Jones
Actor, Film Director, Author, Monty Python team member and Medieval Historian. Terry is an authority on Chaucer. He wrote 'Chaucer's Knight' and 'Who Murdered Chaucer?'.His time is taken up writing books, lecturing around the world and presenting television programmes, notably a major documentary series, The Crusades and Medieval Lives. He is a regular writer in the press expressing his views on the state of democracy and questioning decisions made by governments throughout the world. Terry was born and brought up in North Wales and has a small cottage half way up a mountain near Machynlleth. He knows several hill farmers personally and has a deep understanding and interest in their lives.