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ECO HERO: ROB ELLIOTT

Greta Jonyniate | 23.11.11

A quiet observer of life, Rob Elliott is nevertheless ardently committed to promoting a way of living that reconnects us to the natural world, our unique and precious support. Communicating mainly through his writing and informal talks, he has published two books, The Food Maze and How To Eat (Like There’s No Tomorrow). His more general observations are posted on his blog Food Life and All That. The B&B he runs with his partner, Sally, has a strong educational element, leading by example to endorse localised economies as one effective answer to the hugely destructive global industrial food system, the biggest contributor to carbon emissions.

1. What inspires you?

What inspires me is the person who is prepared to stand up and say, “No, this is not how it is meant to be, and I will not accept it.” Where I am seeing this most frequently today is amongst the younger people – that is to say, anyone under the age of about 40. This fearless generation, who took on the challenges of skateboarding, snowboarding, hip-hop and street dance and made them into art forms, is the frontline of a new renaissance, not simply facing up to authoritarianism but calling for a radical rethink of how the human species conducts itself.

2. What makes you angry?

In considering this question, it was difficult to decide which makes me angrier: the deceit with which this modern world is imbued, or the gullibility of those who accept the deceit as truth. I settled for the former, in the belief that trust is one of our fundamental human default instincts, built up from the earliest days of human cooperation. Thus I conclude that it is deceit that makes me angry, particularly when such deceit is perpetrated by governments, corporations, banks or religious authority motivated by greed and self-interest. Deceit of this nature has taken us to war, undermined our health, destabilised societies, robbed us of most of the attributes that define a decent human being, ravaged nature and exploited, despoiled and polluted the planet to the point of collapse.

3. If you were Prime Minister, what would be the first thing you’d change?

If I were Prime Minister, I would respect the ethos of democracy. The first thing I would change would be the way government is funded, in order to put people before profit and deliver the transformation urgently required to return society to equilibrium. In order to escape from the shackles of the corporatocracy, I would find the courage to tax banks and corporations, close the tax haven loopholes and channel the money thus raised into generating an economy based on social prosperity without corporate growth – beginning with food. I would make it clear that changing the way we produce food in order to deliver fresh, seasonal, uncontaminated and unadulterated real food would be the bedrock for all the other positive changes we need in society.

4. Can individuals really make a difference?

As someone once said, “If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” It is folly to think one voice will not be heard. Throw a small pebble into a pond and you see the splash and ripples. Keep throwing pebbles one by one and the ripples join up. So it is with us. I might be one voice of change, but if one other person open to change accepts what I say, we become two voices. Two voices will become many voices. Before long, you can’t hear your own voice for the din, and you find yourself occupying a patch of ground outside St Paul’s with a few hundred others. Individuals always make a difference, because they talk to other individuals who also want to make a difference. A new journey begins with a single step, and change begins with a single voice.

5. What is your personal mission?

I dislike the word ‘mission,’ as it has evangelical associations that I personally find uncomfortable. I am certainly not here to impose my views on other people. If there is one thing that motivates me, however, it is the pursuit of truth. Since being tested for food intolerances some years ago, I began to find out about the truth behind the global food industry, prompting my first book, The Food Maze. This was written from a personal viewpoint in order to create something of a ‘primer’ for those in confusion about food issues. My deliberate attempt to create something accessible and non-academic has worked, in that I receive a lot of positive feedback from readers who claim that the book has changed their relationship with food for the better. The task I have now set myself, if I can put it like that, is to do everything I can to disseminate the truths I have learned to as many people as possible because, in understanding the truth, we can uncover the lies we are told about everything from climate change to what we should feed our pets. By the time I reach the end of my days, I hope I will have added something positive to the change that I believe will happen in that time.

6. What’s more urgent: changing things from the inside, or starting a revolution on the outside?

The problem with revolution is that it almost invariably goes wrong, replacing one reviled ideology with another. Revolutions need leaders, and leaders all too easily slip under the narcotic influence of power. For lasting and meaningful change, a renaissance is required, and this can come only from the inside, from the soul of a society.

7. What’s the best meal you’ve had in your life? Cooked by whom? Eaten with whom?

I have been fortunate in having been brought up in a family environment in which food was a central theme, and I have thus enjoyed many memorable family meals. There is, however, one meal that stands out in my memory. In 2001, I was on holiday in Kraków with my partner, Sally, and my Polish mother. This was only the second time my mother had been in her old home town since the end of World War II, and the only time I had been there with her. Two years after an acrimonious divorce, it was with a deep sense of contentment that I explored this ancient capital city with my mother and my new partner. On our first day there, we had lunch in a modest family-run restaurant offering traditional Polish dishes just like my mother used to cook when I was growing up. It was, quite simply, a meal I will never forget.

8. Can you describe a typical work day?

I run a B&B with Sally, and so a typical work day usually involves looking after guests. Thus our day might start around 7.00am, when we get up to begin preparations for breakfast. There are a number of elements to this as regards what is put on the tables (e.g. freshly baked bread, fresh butter, fruit, milk and preserves), which Sally takes care of, while I take care of the cooked breakfast. We eat after our breakfast duties are over and we have said goodbye to any guests leaving that morning, which is usually between 10.00 and 10.30. After that, there may be rooms to change, linen to wash and dry or shopping to get, all of which Sally and I treat as joint chores.
Once I have time to myself, I will check the computer for new enquiries or any other emails I need to deal with, many of which will be ongoing conversations with people or organisations with whom I am in communication. On a good day, I will perhaps have time to write a blog posting for our blog www.foodandlife.co.uk or add something to a new book I am trying to find the time to write. I do my best to spend some time on Twitter, as this is also a way of talking to some interesting people.
Around 6.30 to 7.00, I will reappear in the kitchen to prepare an evening meal for the two of us. Once we sit down to eat, we can switch off for a while. If there is something worthwhile on TV (e.g. a stimulating documentary, or Doc Martin!), we will watch that. Alternatively, I might go back to the computer if I am in the mood to write. Currently, I am taking time out to watch the BBC News, as I am fascinated by the present speed of change and, after that, I will read and research until about 11.30, then off to bed.

9. How do you define success?

In tackling this slippery issue, one thing is certain: success cannot truly be measured using the false flags of received wisdom. It is ‘so last-century’ to believe that personal success should be measured in terms of material gain or career progress, and that national success can only be measured by Gross Domestic Product. True success is far more elusive, but I would say that a successful person is one who makes a positive contribution to the lives of others whilst maintaining a set of principles that leaves that person unwilling to conduct their own lives in a way that causes harm to others, to other creatures and to the natural world that ultimately protects us all.

10. What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you?

The best advice I have ever received came not from my father, mentor, favourite teacher or best friend, but from a snippet of graffiti written on the inside wall of a public toilet in Anglesey. Some wit had started the ball rolling by putting up a quotation from the classics, and the idea had caught on, so the wall was covered in quotations from Shakespeare, lines from Keats and Walter Scott, pithy aphorisms and Buddhist philosophy. Amongst these was the following exhortation: “Trust no one, question everything.” I have lived by that maxim ever since.

11. What’s your favourite book or film of late?

If I had been asked which book or film has made the greatest impression on me in my life, the answer would be relatively easy, but to choose something that has become a recent favourite is trickier. However, there is one book that confirmed for me, in clarity and depth of detail, most of the suspicions I have long harboured about our modern world, and that is The Great Turning, by David Korten. Its subtitle, From Empire to Earth Community, says it all. This is a book that spells out what is wrong with the world as we know it, the myths and fables that have kept us locked into belief systems that divide us, but it is full of optimism too, as it frames for us the stories we might have been told, those that will now help to bring us together and back into the fold of nature.

12. What would you most like to happen to protect the planet?

Having spent five years researching the questions of climate change, peak oil, resource depletion and the impact of humanity on all of the above, I have come to understand that, once again, what we are told is cloaked in disinformation and half truths. More importantly, I now understand that our globalised industrial food system is profit-motivated just like any other industrial system. Its impact is phenomenal, however, because of its sheer size.
It sucks in everything from the manufacture of machinery, artificial fertilisers and pesticides to the growing of monoculture cash crops, to the processing of those cash crops into artificial foodstuffs, to the retailing of those artificial products in giant big box retailers. It takes in along the way, fuel to run the machinery and the transport systems, to say nothing of all the heating, lighting, chilling and air conditioning in the warehouses and retail outlets, the generation of waste and the processes involved in dealing with that waste. Altogether, this system is generating something like 60% of our carbon emissions.
So, what I would most like to see is a change in the way we produce our food worldwide. It is time to dispel the myth of ‘feeding the world’ and replace it with the understanding that we must all regain the right to feed ourselves, by growing nutritionally efficacious foods in small-scale, truly sustainable ways. Changing the way we feed ourselves is the one thing that each of us can do without hardship, and it will make the biggest contribution to protecting the planet.

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