Agricultural Reform Group

Philip Conford writes in his book The development of the organic network (Floris Books, 2011), that both Patrick Holden and Simon Gourlay "belonged to something called the Gay Hussars Dining Club, a clique which was changing its name to the Agricultural Reform Group and whose other members included environmentalist JONATHON PORRITT; the Cambridgeshire 'barley baron' Oliver Walston; Hugh Raven of the SAFE (Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Environment) Alliance, and" Dame Fiona Reynolds, "Director of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. The mind boggles at trying to imagine what agricultural reforms might have been unanimously accepted around that particular dining-table." (p.115)