British farms have been reduced to little more than factories and must be brought into greater harmony with the planet, the Prince of Wales said yesterday.

Dwindling biodiversity and environmental crises risked “derailing humanity’s place on Earth for good”, the prince said as he claimed that science backed his vision of organic farming. He told the Harmony in Food and Farming conference that industrial agriculture was dangerously cut off from nature. There was no excuse, he said, for farmers to damage the soil, treat animals inhumanely or destroy biodiversity.

“Deplete it, reduce it, erode and destroy it and we will succeed in causing such disorder that we risk derailing humanity’s place on Earth for good,” he said. “In my lifetime I have watched the industrialisation…