Alex is passionate about the environment and always keen to reduce waste. He is a Green Party member and has put himself forward in local election campaigns as a candidate.

LOOKING TO THE PAST FOR A GREENER FUTURE

"At the heart of my passion for farming, the countryside and our rich rural heritage is, ultimately, a desire to preserve the world around us for future generations. Exploring the ways and methods of the past is not just a flight of fancy for me. There may very well be a time when the skills and crafts of old come to serve the 'new'. We are confronted with uncertain times ahead. Pressure on global resources and increasing shortages of food and energy are forcing us very slowly to think about how we will sustain ourselves over the next hundred years and more. The changes we see in the society and the economy of the Victorian and Edwardian periods were immense and we will almost certainly experience similar scales of change over the next hundred and fifty years. I don't believe in some romantic view of the past and certainly don't prescribe a reversion to the hardships of rural England of the nineteenth century. But I do believe we can learn an enormous amount from our ancestors about how better to care for the world around us in the future."

Alex Langlands, September 2010