We started our herd of English longhorn cows with Faith, Hope and Charity. Faith turned out to be bad tempered and Charity had narrow hips, but Hope has gone on to be the matriarch of the entire herd. After the second world war the Hampshire downland farm had been stripped of woodland, deep ploughed and soaked with chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
There was little life left above or below ground. In the past 25 years we have replanted a third of the holding as native broadleaved woodland and sown the rest with grass and herbal leys to be grazed by Hope’s longhorns. The transformation has been astonishing; from barn owls moving in within two weeks of putting up a box, to orchids and helleborines rampaging through the young woods. The earthworms and the insects are back and the whole place feels alive again. The secret is in the soil.
Think of soil as a biological community of living organisms rather than a chemical supply depot and the whole approach to farming changes. Scientists like Merlin Sheldrake are exploring the extraordinary relationships between the fine networks of mycorrhizal fungi filaments and the ability of plants to take up nutrients and even communicate with one another to fight predators. The health of the soil directly affects the health of the food it produces and the bodies that eat it. Graham Harvey, the agricultural editor of The Archers on BBC Radio 4, has recently published Grass-Fed Nation which explains how soil and human health are intimately connected.
The beneficial bacteria in the soil transmit through food and milk to the human gut where they play a crucial role in stimulating the immune system. And the immune system is now seen as key to switching off cancerous cells. The earthworms and the insects are back and the whole place feels alive again. The secret is in the soil The big question is how best to revive the soils we have exhausted over the past 50 years.
Arable land that has been treated as an inert substrate for chemicals to boost crop production has proven a very short-term solution. Drenching farmland in artificial nitrates not only kills the organic life of the soil, it is an inefficient way of getting nutrients into plants. As more and more nitrates are then needed to make the impoverished soil grow crops, the indigestible quantities are washed out into watercourses and pollute rivers and aquifers.
The fragile soil, deep ploughed and no longer bound together by organic matter (the life in the soil), also washes away into the sea. The Environment Agency estimates that across the UK, 2m tonnes of topsoil are eroded every year. But before deep gloom settles over the weekend, there is some good news. A farmer in Virginia, Joel Salatin, has been managing livestock and poultry on his land with remarkable results. He has increased the soil organic matter on his farm from 1 per cent to 8 per cent over the past 50 years. Salatin believes that “all it takes is a move of 1 per cent of organic matter nationwide, to sequester all the carbon that’s been emitted since the Industrial Age — in fewer than 10 years we could return to pre-1960 atmospheric carbon levels with this kind of approach — moving the animals every day in rotation”.
Cattle at Kim Wilkie’s farm in Hampshire © Leo Goddard Based on the understanding that millennia of herbivores on grass have created the top soils of the planet, sequential grazing on deep-rooted herbal leys gives a good steer. Combined with sensible farming, such as nitrogen-fixing crops and minimum tilling of the land, a return to mixed farming (rotating arable cultivation with cattle and sheep pasture grazing) does seem to offer a way of growing enough protein to feed the planet while at the same time restoring a healthy and stable environment. In the British Isles grass grows particularly well and livestock, grazing on pasture outside rather than on corn in sheds, is an efficient method of converting photosynthesising plants into protein. Co-operating with the land in this way continues a natural environment that has evolved with man since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago.
There seems to be a belief that we can abandon British farmland and import all our food or grow things hydroponically in skyscrapers, but this denies the fundamental relationship between human beings and the natural world. We have to find a way of living on the land in huge numbers that works with ecological systems. ‘GB. Wales’ (2017) — a view of farmland in Wales © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos The old argument runs that we can only feed the world if we pursue intensive chemical agro-industry. New understanding of soil science suggests that we can actually only continue to produce enough food if we change our farming practices and reverse the depletion of our soil. Enclaves of special habitats must continue to be protected but not as isolated pockets in a desert of industrial agriculture; lone Nero-like violin sonatas while the rest of the country burns.
All farming needs to work harmoniously with natural systems. Attitudes to agriculture are buffeted by fears of starvation on the one hand and the desire for cheap food on the other. War, weather and pestilence haunt productivity. Hard as it might try, government can never quite come up with the right legislation to protect against these unpredictabilities; but then neither can an unregulated market. Agriculture cannot be treated as a purely commercial industry because too many other natural factors are at stake and the timescales are millennial. In his book Natural Capital, Professor Dieter Helm of New College, Oxford makes the case for valuing long-term natural assets as part of realistic economic policy. Soil, air and water are the key assets and farming has both a need and responsibility to look after them well.
This should be directly factored into the costs of producing food, rather than surreptitiously paid for through pollution and the degradation of the environment. Farmers still need to be supported, but in a way that recognises all the long-term contributions to the environment that they make. The land’s first primroses of spring © Leo Goddard Farming is also a part of national identity and determines the landscape we live in. Sweden completely embraces the part of cows in its culture and environment. It is illegal to keep a cow in a shed year-round and on the day that the cattle are released from their winter quarters, the whole community gathers to watch the exuberant somersaulting of the animals as they return to their pasture.
The farm, the livestock, the community and the natural environment are all connected. Even though more than 80 per cent of people in England and Wales now live in towns, the Wilderness Foundation highlights a survey that shoes how the love of landscape and national identity linked to the countryside is as strong as ever. The image and character of British farmland is central to the tourism industry. This is, however, a moment of major change in farming and the landscape. Brexit has precipitated a complete review of subsidies. Housing demand is putting major pressure on the rural South East and particularly the greenbelt. Free Trade in chlorinated chicken looms ominously over agricultural integrity and food health. Where will it all end? The first indications are it might go in some surprisingly good directions.
The emphasis may shift from volume annual yields to long-term productivity. Farm support may be targeted towards methods that work with the health of soil and water. Chemical nitrates and pollutants may be taxed. Market gardens may reappear around our bulging urban edges. And the new technologies of automated tractors and electronic fencing, that controls stock movements remotely, might actually make mixed farming more viable by allowing labour to be used where it is most effective. Fungi growing among moss © Leo Goddard It is probably asking too much to put faith in government institutions to guide such a local and particular thing as agriculture.
From the 1815 Corn Laws onwards, the British government has somehow managed to get it wrong. But whatever your views on Brexit, it does offer an opportunity to revisit the Common Agricultural Policy. The Basic Payment Scheme has become something of a misplaced charity for large landowners and support based on Natural Capital makes much better sense. So I do have hope for the future. In my lifetime, we’ve had two secretaries of state for the environment who have stood out as really understanding farming and the environment: John Gummer and Hilary Benn. Michael Gove may prove to be a third. In his first speech in office he mentioned beauty and science in the same sentence and he seems prepared to be bold.