Graham Harvey, Jake Fiennes and Sarah Langford

Journalist Graham Harvey, conservationist Jake Fiennes and former barrister and returning farmer Sarah Langford discuss their recent books on farming and their common themes of the challenges facing farming communities and of reconnecting with the land and nature.

Harvey has written on farming for Farmers’ Weekly, Country Life and national newspapers and is a scriptwriter and agricultural consultant for The Archers. In Grass-Fed Nation: Getting Back the Food we Deserve, he argues that modern agriculture has locked us into an unhealthy circle and impoverished landscapes. He says there is a simple remedy in the grass-fed movement that promotes meat, dairy food and eggs from animals grazing on open pasture.

Fiennes is conservation manager at the historic Holkham country estate in Norfolk and an advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Farmers Union, the Prince of Wales, the National Trust, the RSPB and Natural England. In Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside, he describes how radical habitat restoration and agricultural work has nurtured species and risen crop yields at Holkham. He argues that we can bring back flora and fauna by reclaiming traditions and by trialling new experiments.

Langford’s Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution explains how she left her life as a city barrister and returned to her family roots in farming by joining her husband to manage his small family farm in Suffolk. She describes a farming community beleaguered by climate change, Brexit, falling incomes and charges of ecological mismanagement and discovers a new generation of farmers on a path of regenerative change.

Discussions will be chaired by the chief executive of the Soil Association, Helen Browning, who runs a mixed organic farm in Wiltshire and sells her products through the Helen Browning Organic brand. She is also author of PIG: Tales from an Organic Farm.

This event is part of a series under the banner Pasture to Plate® that looks at the environmental and health benefits of raising food on pasture and getting it to the consumer quickly through a short supply chain.