English Pastoral: An Inheritance

Recommended by my daughter who moved to the Lake District earlier this year, I absolutely loved this book. It talks about issues that I believe most of us are more or less aware of, but makes them a lot more tangible and personal.

It's a book in three parts - in the first part, Rebanks talks about his childhood helping out on his grandfather's fell farm in the Lake District, which his grandfather is farming in the old, “traditional” way.

The second part, and perhaps the most powerful one to me, describes the modernisation of farming over the last few decades, with the availability of new technology, pesticides and chemical fertilisers, and the pressure for efficiency and productivity forcing farmers into ever more intensive farming practices in order to survive. Rebanks becomes increasingly disillusioned with this trend, seeing the impact it has both on nature and on the farmers themselves.

The final part is all about Rebanks inheriting his grandfather's farm after his father's death, and trying to farm it in a as-sustainable-as-possible way. This is the most hopeful and almost romantic part, although he is at pains to point out that this type of farming barely pays the bills and he has to work off the farm to make ends meet.

Unless our food system, with its emphasis on cheap prices (especially for meat) and the major supermarkets driving a race to the bottom, is completely changed, then sustainable farming will forever be an unrealistic option for the vast majority of farmers.