English Pastoral by James Rebanks

Green and pleasant land? Sheep enriched or sheep-wrecked?

I’d have thought a lot of these themes would be familiar to many, particularly for those interested in ecology and food production. As with the author, my grandad too was a farmer and very interested in the old ways of doing things and resistant to the more highly destructive methods employed to feed the current population. A population that recently tipped past eight billion hungry mouths.

Rebanks’ grandad takes time from tractor work to notice a curlew nest and scoop up their eggs and place them down elsewhere. A laughable notion in the highly industrialised modern system that prizes speed and efficiency. Short term production over longterm sustainability is now king.

You can imagine ecologists such as George Monbiot gnashing their teeth at this partial defence for animal agriculture and managed farmlands over plant-based diets and full rewilding. Monbiot of course would call the Lake District and the herds that graze there an example of “sheepwrecking”; the creation of sterile land that even some urban environments are said to surpass in biodiversity.

Fields, even in “the good old days” were turned over to swedes for the sheep and oats for the horses and Monbiot et al would insist that we are better off eating the crops directly, rather than inefficiently passing them through another animal. Nor is turning over large areas of land to grazing to be recommended. Preventing as it does the re-emergence of long lost woodlands.

To be fair the author does endeavour to be honest, utilising Virgil’s quote on agriculture being a matter of war between man and nature. He includes the brutal realities of the trade, cutting throats and battling rabbits for the rights to the land.

It’s always a tad ironic when crows, ferrets, foxes et al are framed as villains for wanting to kill the very same farmed animals he too will kill when it is profitable to do so. He questions whether cows or humans work for the other but I highly doubt he would fancy the life cycle of a cow, being bred, exploited and killed. Mastitis and lameness the order of the day as your calves are taken from you so humans can steal your milk.

Stopping to consider Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, modern farming techniques (rampant usage of water, pesticides and fertilisers) are said to be industrial warfare when compared to the previous swords and arrows referenced in Virgil’s quote on humans’ warring with nature. The soil is increasingly denuded and floods are now common in a mass society that has lost all grasp of limits and constraints.

Agriculture (the destruction of habitats for farmed animals and crops) has been highlighted as our greatest mistake by the likes of Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari. Both favour the small scale human endeavour of nomadic tribes gathering and hunting, leaving a smaller footprint on the land. Harari would also claim that our industrial usage of sentient farmed animals is one of history’s greatest crimes.

Ultimately, with the aforementioned eight billion hungry mouths (predicted to rise to 10/11) we are trapped in a cycle of calamitous short-termism, always duty bound to fill the next belly and cater to the next whim. Bellies that will then of course beget more bellies. A fact that Monbiot (a confirmed overpopulation denier) would assuredly fail to highlight.