This is a wonderful, well written, thoughtful article. I hope someone in a position to make positive change in support of Britain’s farming community reads it as well.
The compliment is well deserved. I always enjoy your articles and photos. I miss the days of having a couple of horses and going to my in-laws’ small sheep farm but once I move from New Jersey (soon, very soon!) I plan of getting critters of my own again.
Quite right Helen. Rewilding arable land will not help with food supply. You and I are strong believers of regenerative farming methods - that is the answer.
Here in Worthing, a Labour run council, rewilding is a virtuous policy. The traffic islands are full of weeds, no flowers mind you. The roadside is too. I have written to the council to offer to sew wild seed instead of weeds but they're not interested - in the too hard box.
Here in West Sussex, we have plenty of housing estates being built which, while we need affordable homes, (500k average here unless it's a flat), it seems counterintuitive in the wider 'environment protection' issue. More houses, more cars, more people, more water needed etc.
Typical pen pusher plans - never talk to anyone who 'knows'. Lateral thinking totally absent.
You have put this so well and I am nodding along with all of it.
I completely agree that rewilding productive arable land will not solve our food security problems. Like you I see regenerative farming as the real way forward, where we are rebuilding soils, supporting wildlife and still feeding people.
Your example from Worthing is such a good illustration of how shallow some of these “rewilding” policies can be. Letting traffic islands and verges turn into scruffy weed patches without even bothering to sow wildflowers is not nature recovery, it is box ticking. The fact you offered to help and they were not interested says a lot.
And yes to the housing point as well. We are told it is all about protecting the environment, yet at the same time prime land disappears under expensive estates, with more cars, more pressure on water and infrastructure, and very little real joined up thinking. It feels like policy made on paper by people who rarely speak to those who actually work the land or live with the consequences.
Thank you for sharing what is happening in West Sussex. Voices like yours are so important in pushing for something more honest and practical than slogans about rewilding.
Where I live, the otters that were released some years ago have found their way into several of the lakes stocked by local coarse fishing angling clubs. The otters are so well off, that they drag the largest fish out of the water and just eat their hearts. Close by, beavers have also been released into a large, fenced off, area of wetlands and have promised not to escape. The rewilding fans are ecstatic at their success.
I also believe that the Bibury Trout farm were overjoyed when some "Rogue Rewilders" decided to release otters near their farm. That's part of the problem, we have the both national and local Government, organisations like the National Trust plus these Rogue Rewilders all working to save the planet with their imaginary theories.
This is slightly my issue with Knepp. Whilst it’s a beautiful project and excellent rewilding project it’s not realistic to achieve nationally. We’ve done the damage now and we have a huge population to feed. Steps need to be made to recover wildlife and natural habitats but the need to be introduced slowly and integrate.
Knepp have beavers, cows, pigs etc but they aren’t trying to produce food. The rewilding project comes first and the meat or produce is a byproduct.
Thanks so much for sharing my work and thoughts, Helen. Rewilding is always more complex and never straightforward in practice but anything that helps us move beyond the polarised shouting and towards genuine land sharing and collaborative solutions can only be a good thing ☺️
You are so right, Carrie, and your expertise in this space carries a lot of weight in the conversation.
I really like what Sally Morgan said to me: “renaturing” rather than rewilding. It feels closer to what you are describing here moving away from polarised shouting and towards genuine land sharing, where nature and farming collaborate instead of one being sacrificed for the other.
If we can keep centring that nuance and your kind of practical, on‑the‑ground perspective, I think there is real hope for more joined up, collaborative solutions.
Great post Helen. I get fed up with the use of the word rewilding. I listened to an excellent talk by James Canton and quite rightly he explained that you can't rewild on a small scale - you need a huge estate and a few top predators to control it all. Having used the term rewilding, I know now that the better term to use is renaturing and I think its a term that people can relate to - its small scale in gardens. smallholdings, on small family farm etc and this allows us to produce food while at the same time boosting biodiversity
I’m in the uplands and whilst lowland farms get sprayed with allsorts of chemicals, the use of them here is mercifully little and there is much biodiversity in the ancient grassland meadows. There is much pressure on land use and there is no simple answer. I totally agree with this article because so often the conversation is reductionist. The answer is usually “it depends where” - there is really no one size fits all. Regen Ag / strip mob grazing would increase biodiversity massively. I was trained as a coppicer and am interested in woodland creation but we can’t just plant woodlands on ancient grasslands. It’s all so complex but farmers need to be revered, listened to, and supported financially to farm in ecological ways that still produces food, timber as well as “ecosystem services”. Thanks for your thoughtful article
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment, it really adds an important layer of nuance to the conversation.
You are absolutely right that “it depends where” is the honest answer far more often than people like to admit. Ancient upland grasslands with very little chemical use and high biodiversity are a completely different reality to heavily sprayed lowland arable, and treating them as if they are the same is where so much damage starts. I really appreciate you bringing in your coppicing and woodland experience too. The point about not planting woodland on ancient grassland is so important and so often missed by well meaning policy and campaigns.
I am with you on the potential of regen grazing and strip mob grazing to boost biodiversity and soil health, especially in places like yours. And I could not agree more that farmers need to be listened to, properly valued and financially supported to farm in ways that work with their specific landscapes while still producing food, timber and genuine ecosystem services.
Thank you for taking the time to share what you are seeing in the uplands. This kind of grounded, place based perspective is exactly what we need more of if we are going to get beyond the reductionist “rewild everything” vs “farm everything” debate.
here in Canada - the equivalent is cutting back on farmer's use of fertilizer- the purpose is the same here and in your country- cut back food supply, increase prices and willingness to eat unhealthy factory produced food- crickets etc for protein- make us miserable and revolt so that the globalists can take control of the chaos "for our benefit". De-population is the overarching goal and sickness and poor health to sell more pharmaceuticals, along the way. I don't say this to discourage our resistance- just to help us see what i think is the big picture to understand and plan accordingly.
I find it interesting that your equivalent is cutting back on fertiliser. Is that to ensure lower yields? Normally I would say cutting back on fertiliser is a positive not a negative.
gov’t -Trudeau-former PM, now Carney- you remember him- your former chief banker- Pushing to cut back fertilizer usage ostensibly to cut back carbon production- the side effect of making fertilizer i believe. But our farmers who use high tech on massive farms to minimize how much fertilizer is used, state using less will result in lower crop yields per acre. Thanks for your blog.
Presumably after we have given in to full "rewilding", us lower orders will be free to hunt cattle, sheep, pigs, deer, game birds, hares, rabbits, salmon, trout and any amount of seafood, while killing beavers for their fur, and eagles for their feathers, or are we going to be in a situation where only the elite leftie loonies get to play Lords of the Manor? Imagine Sadiq Khan and his ilk as Sheriffs of Nottingham.
A few beaver dams down river of Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster might put things right.
You have put your finger on one of the things that worries me most about the way “rewilding” is being sold. There is a real risk that we end up with a kind of playground countryside where access, decision making and even the right to harvest anything from the land are effectively reserved for a small, well connected class while everyone else is told to stay on the path, pay for the view and buy imported food from the supermarket on the way home.
I am not against nature recovery at all but I am very much against a version of it that writes working people and working landscapes out of the picture. If we are serious about resilience and fairness then any future for the countryside has to include farmers, foresters, fishers, gamekeepers, small producers and rural communities as active participants not as museum exhibits.
Your beaver dam image is quite something though. I suspect a few policy makers would think very differently about flooding and land use if they had to live with the consequences instead of pushing them onto everyone downstream.
I really appreciated this piece. The debate isn’t simply “rewilding vs farming”, but something far more human and tangled.
What struck me most is the point about who carries the cost of change. As someone working in the field of dietetics, I see every day how food is not just calories or carbon footprints but culture, dignity, access, and livelihoods. When land-use decisions push food production out of our own communities, we don’t magic away the environmental impact. We outsource it, usually to places with fewer protections and weaker voices. The nutrition world has its own version of this - people talking about “sustainable diets” without ever asking who grows the food, or what happens to rural economies if production collapses.
I think your framing is exactly right: rewilding has a place, but the real national project has to be making it possible for ordinary farmers to transition towards agroecology without losing their identity, income or agency. James Rebanks wrote that the future of the countryside depends on “a million small choices made well.” This feels like one of them — stitching nature back into working land rather than pushing farmers out of it.
Thank you for such a balanced, humane piece. It’s the kind of conversation we need more of.
Its all about context and true diversity.... We need to embrace the complexity of the system, look at the wide range of tools in the toolbox and actually listen to the ground.
Some of the rewilding principles are undoubtedly powerful in context and there are a some tremendous projects, but time moves forward not back and there is no one gold standard.
There is a powerful case for Agroecology - Here at Mindrum we are working to produce Healthy Food from Healthy ground by working to harness the productive natural power of the ground. Hair raising at times, its in credibly rewarding, and looks like its going in the right direction.
I'm thinking there are many routes, but critically, they share a common mindset - its all about enabling diverse approaches, understanding our impacts and owning them!
I usually suspect anything Monbiot is pro (fake meat, eg) turns out to be really NOT what is needed. As it is it's mad to pay farmers not to farm. One local field has a herbal lay. Lovely the first year. Now, scrub and mallow. Though pheasants hide in it for Bear to pursue, so he likes it.
This is a wonderful, well written, thoughtful article. I hope someone in a position to make positive change in support of Britain’s farming community reads it as well.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the feedback 🥰
The compliment is well deserved. I always enjoy your articles and photos. I miss the days of having a couple of horses and going to my in-laws’ small sheep farm but once I move from New Jersey (soon, very soon!) I plan of getting critters of my own again.
I look forward to reading all about your new critters soon!
Quite right Helen. Rewilding arable land will not help with food supply. You and I are strong believers of regenerative farming methods - that is the answer.
Here in Worthing, a Labour run council, rewilding is a virtuous policy. The traffic islands are full of weeds, no flowers mind you. The roadside is too. I have written to the council to offer to sew wild seed instead of weeds but they're not interested - in the too hard box.
Here in West Sussex, we have plenty of housing estates being built which, while we need affordable homes, (500k average here unless it's a flat), it seems counterintuitive in the wider 'environment protection' issue. More houses, more cars, more people, more water needed etc.
Typical pen pusher plans - never talk to anyone who 'knows'. Lateral thinking totally absent.
You have put this so well and I am nodding along with all of it.
I completely agree that rewilding productive arable land will not solve our food security problems. Like you I see regenerative farming as the real way forward, where we are rebuilding soils, supporting wildlife and still feeding people.
Your example from Worthing is such a good illustration of how shallow some of these “rewilding” policies can be. Letting traffic islands and verges turn into scruffy weed patches without even bothering to sow wildflowers is not nature recovery, it is box ticking. The fact you offered to help and they were not interested says a lot.
And yes to the housing point as well. We are told it is all about protecting the environment, yet at the same time prime land disappears under expensive estates, with more cars, more pressure on water and infrastructure, and very little real joined up thinking. It feels like policy made on paper by people who rarely speak to those who actually work the land or live with the consequences.
Thank you for sharing what is happening in West Sussex. Voices like yours are so important in pushing for something more honest and practical than slogans about rewilding.
Where I live, the otters that were released some years ago have found their way into several of the lakes stocked by local coarse fishing angling clubs. The otters are so well off, that they drag the largest fish out of the water and just eat their hearts. Close by, beavers have also been released into a large, fenced off, area of wetlands and have promised not to escape. The rewilding fans are ecstatic at their success.
I also believe that the Bibury Trout farm were overjoyed when some "Rogue Rewilders" decided to release otters near their farm. That's part of the problem, we have the both national and local Government, organisations like the National Trust plus these Rogue Rewilders all working to save the planet with their imaginary theories.
This is slightly my issue with Knepp. Whilst it’s a beautiful project and excellent rewilding project it’s not realistic to achieve nationally. We’ve done the damage now and we have a huge population to feed. Steps need to be made to recover wildlife and natural habitats but the need to be introduced slowly and integrate.
Knepp have beavers, cows, pigs etc but they aren’t trying to produce food. The rewilding project comes first and the meat or produce is a byproduct.
Thanks so much for sharing my work and thoughts, Helen. Rewilding is always more complex and never straightforward in practice but anything that helps us move beyond the polarised shouting and towards genuine land sharing and collaborative solutions can only be a good thing ☺️
You are so right, Carrie, and your expertise in this space carries a lot of weight in the conversation.
I really like what Sally Morgan said to me: “renaturing” rather than rewilding. It feels closer to what you are describing here moving away from polarised shouting and towards genuine land sharing, where nature and farming collaborate instead of one being sacrificed for the other.
If we can keep centring that nuance and your kind of practical, on‑the‑ground perspective, I think there is real hope for more joined up, collaborative solutions.
Great post Helen. I get fed up with the use of the word rewilding. I listened to an excellent talk by James Canton and quite rightly he explained that you can't rewild on a small scale - you need a huge estate and a few top predators to control it all. Having used the term rewilding, I know now that the better term to use is renaturing and I think its a term that people can relate to - its small scale in gardens. smallholdings, on small family farm etc and this allows us to produce food while at the same time boosting biodiversity
Renaturing is a great alternative I will definitely start using more.
I’m in the uplands and whilst lowland farms get sprayed with allsorts of chemicals, the use of them here is mercifully little and there is much biodiversity in the ancient grassland meadows. There is much pressure on land use and there is no simple answer. I totally agree with this article because so often the conversation is reductionist. The answer is usually “it depends where” - there is really no one size fits all. Regen Ag / strip mob grazing would increase biodiversity massively. I was trained as a coppicer and am interested in woodland creation but we can’t just plant woodlands on ancient grasslands. It’s all so complex but farmers need to be revered, listened to, and supported financially to farm in ecological ways that still produces food, timber as well as “ecosystem services”. Thanks for your thoughtful article
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment, it really adds an important layer of nuance to the conversation.
You are absolutely right that “it depends where” is the honest answer far more often than people like to admit. Ancient upland grasslands with very little chemical use and high biodiversity are a completely different reality to heavily sprayed lowland arable, and treating them as if they are the same is where so much damage starts. I really appreciate you bringing in your coppicing and woodland experience too. The point about not planting woodland on ancient grassland is so important and so often missed by well meaning policy and campaigns.
I am with you on the potential of regen grazing and strip mob grazing to boost biodiversity and soil health, especially in places like yours. And I could not agree more that farmers need to be listened to, properly valued and financially supported to farm in ways that work with their specific landscapes while still producing food, timber and genuine ecosystem services.
Thank you for taking the time to share what you are seeing in the uplands. This kind of grounded, place based perspective is exactly what we need more of if we are going to get beyond the reductionist “rewild everything” vs “farm everything” debate.
here in Canada - the equivalent is cutting back on farmer's use of fertilizer- the purpose is the same here and in your country- cut back food supply, increase prices and willingness to eat unhealthy factory produced food- crickets etc for protein- make us miserable and revolt so that the globalists can take control of the chaos "for our benefit". De-population is the overarching goal and sickness and poor health to sell more pharmaceuticals, along the way. I don't say this to discourage our resistance- just to help us see what i think is the big picture to understand and plan accordingly.
I find it interesting that your equivalent is cutting back on fertiliser. Is that to ensure lower yields? Normally I would say cutting back on fertiliser is a positive not a negative.
gov’t -Trudeau-former PM, now Carney- you remember him- your former chief banker- Pushing to cut back fertilizer usage ostensibly to cut back carbon production- the side effect of making fertilizer i believe. But our farmers who use high tech on massive farms to minimize how much fertilizer is used, state using less will result in lower crop yields per acre. Thanks for your blog.
Presumably after we have given in to full "rewilding", us lower orders will be free to hunt cattle, sheep, pigs, deer, game birds, hares, rabbits, salmon, trout and any amount of seafood, while killing beavers for their fur, and eagles for their feathers, or are we going to be in a situation where only the elite leftie loonies get to play Lords of the Manor? Imagine Sadiq Khan and his ilk as Sheriffs of Nottingham.
A few beaver dams down river of Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster might put things right.
This made me smile and wince at the same time
You have put your finger on one of the things that worries me most about the way “rewilding” is being sold. There is a real risk that we end up with a kind of playground countryside where access, decision making and even the right to harvest anything from the land are effectively reserved for a small, well connected class while everyone else is told to stay on the path, pay for the view and buy imported food from the supermarket on the way home.
I am not against nature recovery at all but I am very much against a version of it that writes working people and working landscapes out of the picture. If we are serious about resilience and fairness then any future for the countryside has to include farmers, foresters, fishers, gamekeepers, small producers and rural communities as active participants not as museum exhibits.
Your beaver dam image is quite something though. I suspect a few policy makers would think very differently about flooding and land use if they had to live with the consequences instead of pushing them onto everyone downstream.
A well balanced piece with lots of food for thought. Thank you for writing it.
I really appreciated this piece. The debate isn’t simply “rewilding vs farming”, but something far more human and tangled.
What struck me most is the point about who carries the cost of change. As someone working in the field of dietetics, I see every day how food is not just calories or carbon footprints but culture, dignity, access, and livelihoods. When land-use decisions push food production out of our own communities, we don’t magic away the environmental impact. We outsource it, usually to places with fewer protections and weaker voices. The nutrition world has its own version of this - people talking about “sustainable diets” without ever asking who grows the food, or what happens to rural economies if production collapses.
I think your framing is exactly right: rewilding has a place, but the real national project has to be making it possible for ordinary farmers to transition towards agroecology without losing their identity, income or agency. James Rebanks wrote that the future of the countryside depends on “a million small choices made well.” This feels like one of them — stitching nature back into working land rather than pushing farmers out of it.
Thank you for such a balanced, humane piece. It’s the kind of conversation we need more of.
I completely agree. Thank you for setting this out so clearly. In the domestic gardens sphere sphere too, rewilding is much misunderstood.
Well written.
Its all about context and true diversity.... We need to embrace the complexity of the system, look at the wide range of tools in the toolbox and actually listen to the ground.
Some of the rewilding principles are undoubtedly powerful in context and there are a some tremendous projects, but time moves forward not back and there is no one gold standard.
There is a powerful case for Agroecology - Here at Mindrum we are working to produce Healthy Food from Healthy ground by working to harness the productive natural power of the ground. Hair raising at times, its in credibly rewarding, and looks like its going in the right direction.
I'm thinking there are many routes, but critically, they share a common mindset - its all about enabling diverse approaches, understanding our impacts and owning them!
I usually suspect anything Monbiot is pro (fake meat, eg) turns out to be really NOT what is needed. As it is it's mad to pay farmers not to farm. One local field has a herbal lay. Lovely the first year. Now, scrub and mallow. Though pheasants hide in it for Bear to pursue, so he likes it.