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.
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.
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.
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.
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 🥰
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.
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.
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.