I wrote a long review article that’s just been published in The Land magazine, engaging critically with various books bearing on farming and wildlife in Britain, but hopefully of wider interest.
I live in Scotland at the head of a strath that lies at the western limit of cultivation (in these agrochemical days). The cultivated fields are all barley (apart from occasional ones rented for a year to produce seed potatoes or neeps). The barley goes to malting for the whisky industry or cattle feed. None the output of these fields directly feeds our local community (except for the odd neep salvaged from the mud bath of fields harvested by heavy machinery).
It could be different.
Just outside our village a young couple set up a market garden a few years ago. They produce an astonishing amount of vegetables and fruit from a relatively small area. This provides veg boxes for many families during half the year with surplus sold in local shops.
Another young couple have been looking for land for a micro dairy, which could supply the local community. But no land has been forthcoming.
Our village also has allotments and a community orchard, planted and maintained by volunteers.
Volunteer run communal gardens and orchards seem to be springing up around Scotland. Maybe this is a way that many can participate in food-growing without the full responsibility of land ownership?
This is a brilliant piece, thank you Chris. To me, land sparing is more of the same binary - and colonial - thinking that got us into the trouble we are in. You've articulated the issues so well.
Excellent article. I’m reminded of a systems project I was involved in a few years ago when I worked at a Global system change NGO. We were looking at SE Asia food production futures and most people assumed that ‘efficient’ factory farming and synthetic food would win out… but when you actually looked at the resilience of the whole system of ecologies, land, people, food, within a future of climate shocks - smallholders were the key and the linchpin. In fact they already are, as you know. Supporting them to stay and flourish on the land and sea was absolutely essential, and there is so much knowledge about how to do this now. But it flies in the face of all our modern assumptions!
Returning to the land however once you’ve left it is not going to be easy. My grandmother was a smallholder in rural Kenya and after a lifetime of it she was made of iron. When my English husband first shook her hand he said he felt very soft and weak in comparison, and this is when she was 90! We have been very de-conditioned physically from what such a life requires, especially if we are going to use less energy.
Maybe we should ask farmers to start mentoring us!
I saved this up to read over the Christmas break, and it has proved very restorative after an afternoon clearing fallen trees from the public right of way on our farm. Of course, I’m bound to see myself as a responsible landowner. We’ve even got some decent Atlantic rainforest (mostly overgrown coppice, of course).
Your article makes me reflect on how the ‘state’ behaves when it is the landowner. My experience in Indonesia shows the state to be a poor steward, especially when acting on behalf of ‘the public’, expressed in terms of ‘national development’. The forest ministry in Jakarta is a peculiar place: simultaneously modernist in its embrace of ‘scientific’ forestry for economic value, whilst also rhapsodic about the flora and fauna in the remaining remnants of forest untouched by bulldozer or the plantation surveyor’s acquisitive gaze. The people who have lived in the forests for thousands of years are invisible, or dismissed as settlors that shouldn’t be there at all, rather like the Welsh, perhaps?
For the few of us working on locally-controlled landscapes, the direction of travel has been depressing. The emergence of a new wave of environmentalists, who appeared as allies but now wish the people out of the picture, in their lust for the pristine. As you say, they want the wild without the wild people in it.
On the bright side, there are promising community movements springing up all over the world that are holding back the tide, and in some cases pushing it back. They tell a story about guardianship of landscapes and coasts that is more nuanced than public versus private.
Thanks Dominic. Indeed, the narrative of state = public = common good requires thorough critique, but there are a lot of good people working towards better options. Appreciate you feeding into that!
A fabulous article, which needs a second and third reading to get to grips with all the issues fully.
Sharp, alert, and quick to identify the words and numbers that turn to smoke and mirrors before our eyes.
I live in Scotland at the head of a strath that lies at the western limit of cultivation (in these agrochemical days). The cultivated fields are all barley (apart from occasional ones rented for a year to produce seed potatoes or neeps). The barley goes to malting for the whisky industry or cattle feed. None the output of these fields directly feeds our local community (except for the odd neep salvaged from the mud bath of fields harvested by heavy machinery).
It could be different.
Just outside our village a young couple set up a market garden a few years ago. They produce an astonishing amount of vegetables and fruit from a relatively small area. This provides veg boxes for many families during half the year with surplus sold in local shops.
Another young couple have been looking for land for a micro dairy, which could supply the local community. But no land has been forthcoming.
Our village also has allotments and a community orchard, planted and maintained by volunteers.
Volunteer run communal gardens and orchards seem to be springing up around Scotland. Maybe this is a way that many can participate in food-growing without the full responsibility of land ownership?
This is a brilliant piece, thank you Chris. To me, land sparing is more of the same binary - and colonial - thinking that got us into the trouble we are in. You've articulated the issues so well.
Thanks for those generous comments - appreciated!
Excellent article. I’m reminded of a systems project I was involved in a few years ago when I worked at a Global system change NGO. We were looking at SE Asia food production futures and most people assumed that ‘efficient’ factory farming and synthetic food would win out… but when you actually looked at the resilience of the whole system of ecologies, land, people, food, within a future of climate shocks - smallholders were the key and the linchpin. In fact they already are, as you know. Supporting them to stay and flourish on the land and sea was absolutely essential, and there is so much knowledge about how to do this now. But it flies in the face of all our modern assumptions!
Returning to the land however once you’ve left it is not going to be easy. My grandmother was a smallholder in rural Kenya and after a lifetime of it she was made of iron. When my English husband first shook her hand he said he felt very soft and weak in comparison, and this is when she was 90! We have been very de-conditioned physically from what such a life requires, especially if we are going to use less energy.
Maybe we should ask farmers to start mentoring us!
I saved this up to read over the Christmas break, and it has proved very restorative after an afternoon clearing fallen trees from the public right of way on our farm. Of course, I’m bound to see myself as a responsible landowner. We’ve even got some decent Atlantic rainforest (mostly overgrown coppice, of course).
Your article makes me reflect on how the ‘state’ behaves when it is the landowner. My experience in Indonesia shows the state to be a poor steward, especially when acting on behalf of ‘the public’, expressed in terms of ‘national development’. The forest ministry in Jakarta is a peculiar place: simultaneously modernist in its embrace of ‘scientific’ forestry for economic value, whilst also rhapsodic about the flora and fauna in the remaining remnants of forest untouched by bulldozer or the plantation surveyor’s acquisitive gaze. The people who have lived in the forests for thousands of years are invisible, or dismissed as settlors that shouldn’t be there at all, rather like the Welsh, perhaps?
For the few of us working on locally-controlled landscapes, the direction of travel has been depressing. The emergence of a new wave of environmentalists, who appeared as allies but now wish the people out of the picture, in their lust for the pristine. As you say, they want the wild without the wild people in it.
On the bright side, there are promising community movements springing up all over the world that are holding back the tide, and in some cases pushing it back. They tell a story about guardianship of landscapes and coasts that is more nuanced than public versus private.
Thanks, Chris!
Thanks Dominic. Indeed, the narrative of state = public = common good requires thorough critique, but there are a lot of good people working towards better options. Appreciate you feeding into that!