Robin Maynard

Robin Maynard has worked for over 20 years in the environment movement, starting as a volunteer at Friends of the Earth in 1985. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986 hugely increased environmental awareness and indirectly led to a full-time job tracking fall-out from Chernobyl with a mobile radiation monitoring unit. After various projects, Robin became FOE’s Countryside & Agriculture campaigner from 1990-3.

From 1993 -4, he worked as producer/presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today, as well as assignments for BBC World Service and Costing the Earth to Malaysia and India; reporting from Bhopal on the 10th anniversary of the disastrous pesticides plant explosion and travelling into Sarawak to investigate impacts of logging and palm-oil plantations.  From 1994- 5, he worked as Campaigns Director at the Soil Association, before returning to FOE as Director of Local Campaigns from 1995-9. After a brief spell developing environmental content for Carlton TV’s millennium programming and supporting Anita Roddick’s campaigning interests, in 2001 he joined with a group of independent-minded farmers to launch FARM, where he worked until 2004. In 2005, he returned to the Soil Association in 2005 as Director of Communications, becoming Campaigns Director in May 2008.

Before becoming involved in environmental campaigning, he studied English at University spending vacations working at an agricultural merchants and farm in the Derbyshire Peak District.  After University, he worked briefly in advertising, before escaping to a saner life, working as a tree-surgeon; later spending a year teaching in Egypt.  On return to England, he went into volunteer at Friends of the Earth and his environmental career began.

 Related Sessions

Saturday 1 November 2008, 3.30pm Lecture Theatre 2
Can GM crops feed the world?



 Festival Buzz

"The audience were the stars of the Battle of Ideas - engaged, informed and enthusiastic. As a panellist, I felt both ashamed and educated. Exactly as it should be."
John Street, professor of politics, University of East Anglia