Dear Steve and Daniel,
Congratulations on your new appointments as Defra Secretary and Farming Minister! I’ve had a quick look at your backgrounds and can’t see much evidence of hands-on farming experience, so I thought I would recommend this book that I’ve just finished reading that basically tells it like it is in the farming sector. It’s called Six Inches of Soil and is the companion to the popular film that is doing the rounds.
I may be one of the rare people in the regen ag community who hasn’t seen the film yet, so I read the book “blind”. To be honest, based on the title, I was expecting the usual treatise on the wonders of soil biology and the amazing potential of soils to capture carbon and mitigate climate change. As a well-seasoned soil scientist, I am a bit hesitant to jump on that bandwagon, knowing all the “it depends” and “have you considered” moderating statements that should accompany discussions around soil C sequestration and climate mitigation. So I started off the book armoured with a healthy dose of cynicism. That didn’t last long! To start with, the book is about much more than soil, although there is a useful chapter on the science of soil with contributions from Hannah Jones (Farm Carbon Toolkit) and Lizzie Sagoo (ADAS) who lay out the facts about soil health and carbon sequestration in a balanced and clear way.
But the book is mainly the story of three new entrants to farming who are following a regenerative approach to building their businesses and managing their land. One of them is certified organic, which we can think of as the “gold standard” of regenerative farming. These are exactly the kind of people your government should be supporting to get into farming if you want to realise your vision to reconcile environmental and economic challenges and address declines in biodiversity, while ensuring future food security. And their stories make for a captivating read! I couldn’t put this book down because I genuinely wanted to find out how things turned out for them.
The three are on very different journeys: Adrienne Gordon (Sweetpea Market Garden) is a young, idealistic, market gardener struggling to build a viable business that will provide healthy, fresh organic vegetables to her local community. The generosity and vision of her landlord, Tom Pearson, who actively sought a market gardener to diversify the products grown on his Cambridgeshire arable farm, is truly inspiring. Anna Jackson returns from a life in London during the COVID pandemic to her family farm in Lincolnshire and must find a way to earn a living from the farm in partnership with her father, Andrew. Far from being a stereotypical conservative arable farmer, Andrew has been fired up by the likes of Gabe Brown and David Montgomery and supported by the farmer-led BASE-UK network (who have been promoting regen ag practices since long before we called them that!) to promote more wildlife on his farm and improve soil health. Ben Thomas raises Belted Galloway cattle at his farm on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, using mob-grazing and woodland grazing methods in accordance with organic principles. This natural approach to producing beef has proven to be economical, but high animal welfare is another added benefit.
Our new entrants are guided on their journeys by many wise and experienced regen ag practitioners whose advice is integrated into each chapter. Anna and Andrew visit organic farmer John Pawsey who pragmatically discusses the pros and cons of ploughing, pointing out that “So long as you’re monitoring it and soil health is going up, as far as I am concerned, it’s okay”. Ben gets advice from Matt Chatfield on integrating livestock into his woodlands; dispelling the myth that tree planting competes with food production. And Adrienne visits FarmEd to meet their market gardener who points out “…you don’t get people to do things by making them feel guilty. You show them the positive solutions and then they want to be a part of it”. And this book is doing just that! Far from being a tale of gloom and doom, it offers a vision of hope for a regenerative future that will address so many of our environmental and social problems in a holistic way.
Before you get too worried that Six Inches of Soil is all anecdotal feel-good stories, rest assured that there are plenty of hard facts in the six ‘interludes’ interspersed throughout the book. These interludes are written by experts like the amazing Vicki Hird (formerly Head of Sustainable Farming at SUSTAIN and now Strategic Lead on Agriculture at the Wildlife Trust and Trustee of ORC) and provide clear and succinct explainers on important issues like land use, greenwashing, and that elephant-in-the-room that you managed to avoid discussing in the recent election….Brexit!
But coming back to those personal stories that make this book so engaging. It is striking that none of the three new entrants can support themselves solely from their food producing activities. Anna is trying out a range of farm diversification enterprises including high ropes courses for kids and doggy day care, to diversify sources of income on her farm. Ben works another job five days a week managing cattle for someone else to afford to build up his own farming business. And Adrienne doesn’t pay herself in the first year and works in a friend’s café over the winter to make ends meet. The real struggles that they all face as they begin their regenerative agriculture journeys are palpable. As a new government, I hope you will develop programmes and schemes to support new entrants to regenerative farming.
So, read this book, watch the film, and go out and meet the people making a difference on the ground in the regenerative agriculture community. I know their stories will inform and inspire you to make the changes we need from government so that many more Annas, Adriennes and Bens can get started on their regenerative farming journeys.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Cooper Head of Research, Organic Research Centre
