Sir Julian Rose

Julian Rose was born in March 1947, on the Hardwick Estate in South Oxfordshire’s Chiltern Hills, the youngest of four children. On the premature death of his brother (1963) and his father a few years later, Julian suddenly found himself thrust from being the youngest sibling to the heir of the thousand acre estate and baronetcy, passed down from his great grandfather.

After some years exploring his passion for theatre he moved back to Hardwick in 1983, to become a full time farmer, completing the conversion of the estate to organic farming methods, a process started in 1975, making him one of the pioneers of this ecological land management system. Joining the board of the Soil Association in 1984, Julian became involved in an intense campaign to promote ecological food and farming in the face of the rapid rise of industrial agriculture.

Amongst his many campaigns for justice Julian led a successful high profile campaign to save unpasteurised milk from a government ban. Recently Julian has opened up the Hardwick woods for increased public access and in support of the socially and educationally disadvantaged, as well as for young offenders seeking the therapeutic advantages of a mixed forestry environment.

Julian also gained notoriety as both a defender and promoter of holistic approaches to the rejuvination of struggling rural economies. Notably his unremitting insistence on the need to support local and regional, as opposed to ‘global’, food economies. An approach coined in a formula he named “The Proximity Principle”.
He sought to raise awareness of the need to build a dynamic balance between economic, social and environmental concerns. Never just one or the other.

In 1990 he took on the position of agricultural correspondent of the green broadsheet ‘Environment Now’, becoming one of the first UK activists to warn of the impending dangers of genetically modified foods. 

In 2000 Julian was invited to become a co-director of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside, co-launching a highly successful ‘Campaign for a GMO Free Poland’ as well as leading a high profile defence of peasant farmers whom he holds-up as the true guardians of biodiversity throughout the world. Regular listeners to BBC radio 4’s Farming To-Day will have heard Julian’s 2007 series of once monthly “Letters from Poland” passionately highlighting the crisis provoked by forcing ‘corporate globalisation’ onto traditional family farming communities.

In “Changing Course For Life”, Julian Rose draws together all the strands of his highly diverse life experiences and, in a multidimensional vision of the future, calls for an uncompromising commitment to dynamic, decentralised community leadership as the chief vehicle for overcoming the dominant and life threatening Orwellian collusion between corporate greed and political ineptitude. Julian foresees this new beginning blossoming into a life-affirming process of humanistic and spiritual self realisation.

Julian's books include: 'Overcoming The Robotic Mind: Why Humanity Must Come Through' and 'In Defence Of Life'

www.hardwickestate.co.uk