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Pastoral Song: A Farmer's Journey

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What are the questions? Rebanks, author of Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey, wants to know about the ongoing evolution of agriculture. What is being lost? What is gained? This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against all the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.

PASTORAL SONG | Kirkus Reviews

The demise of family farms means that there are fewer and fewer people living in rural areas and that is why communities are dying on the vine and why there are fewer houses and trees – and it is also why I feel no attachment to the place where I lived from age five to age twenty-one. Today, there are no buildings or trees or any evidence that anyone has ever lived on it; it’s just 160 acres of dirt that belongs to a corporation. This was a great follow-up to other books I’ve been reading recently about environmentalism and long-term thinking, such as Losing Eden (which, similarly, took inspiration from Silent Spring) and The Good Ancestor, and should attract readers of Wilding by Isabella Tree. I hope it will go far in next year’s Wainwright Prize race. Nostalgia (which broadly is the author’s reflections on his Grandfather’s more traditional approach to farming around 40 years ago in an already changing era – his Grandfather a late resister to the changes around him) Each of the chapters is named slightly ironically: the first chapter does not hide some of the brutal realities and precariousness of his Grandfather’s approach; the second commendably tries to be partly even handed about the change (recognising what it has done to enable more people to be fed alongside concentrating on all that has been lost) and the third is far from a utopia but a very deliberate compromise the author has made which he knows will disappoint both “die hard production focused farmers” and “extreme wilderness-loving ecologists” He is eloquent — scenes of mud and guts are interspersed with quotes ranging from Virgil to Schumpeter, Rachel Carson to Wendell Berry…[ Pastoral Song] builds into a heartfelt elegy for all that has been lost from our landscape, and a rousing disquisition on what could be regained — a rallying cry for a better future." - Financial Times (UK)

ASF compartmentalization moves a step forward

The book is divided into three parts, and these are subdivided into short sections that hold anecdotal tales or brief arguments about the benefits or problems with different farming practices. Rebanks presents a nuanced view, influenced by his reading of Rachel Carson and his life on his family's farm. The overall narrative is about striking a balance between industrialisation in farming and keeping traditions alive, presented with some suggestions for future farming in the last chapter.

Pastoral Song - James Rebanks - Hardcover - HarperCollins Canada Pastoral Song - James Rebanks - Hardcover - HarperCollins Canada

James Rebanks’s new book may be the most passionate ecological corrective since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring." — New York Review of Books James Rebank is a farmer, son and grandson of farmers. When the old style of farming - mixed and rotational - made a final shift towards industrialised farming, he had a front row seat. Some of what he recounts, I already knew. I grew up in rural Dorset, went to school with farmers' children, played on their farms and saw some of this shift for myself - although it would be many years before I really understood what I was seeing. Even after those realisations bore fruit, there was a level of nuance that I just didn't have. Like James, I am a country person. I know the plants, trees, birds, wildlife. I feel an intense connection to the land. Everything he says here lands on fertile soil with me, confirming much of what I did know and deepening my understanding in other ways. Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins ... After the Second World War governments were eager to see their countries rise from the economic ashes, and they wanted to help citizens build lives that were free of hunger and disease, so they declared that it was the farmer’s job to produce “vast amounts of cheap food, and to use whatever tools were required,” Rebanks writes. “Many farmers wanted to hear this and embraced the changes. Others were swept along behind them in an attempt to survive. This new culture told consumers that food was little more than fuel and that it should cost less and less of their income.”

Pastoral Song

I loved this. Such a good and thoughtful (although not exhaustive) lesson in farming, ecology, and environmental science. I love how gently he shares his experiences and how much truth there is in it. This was a very thought provoking book for me and THIS is how I like to be "preached" to: by experience and kindness and simple logic. James Rebanks’s story of his family’s farm is just about perfect. It belongs with the finest writing of its kind.” — Wendell Berry This was a brilliant book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. James Rebanks is a farmer in Cumbria. He comes from generations of farmers on the same land and muses over the changes that have taken place on the same land and within farming in general within the UK.

Pastoral Song by James Rebanks — Open Letters Review Pastoral Song by James Rebanks — Open Letters Review

I found this a compelling read and a lovely sympathetic story of the author's life and upbringing on a small farm in the Lake District. Rebanks has a gift for capturing both the allure of his beautiful surroundings and his difficult work, and for articulating the complex, worrisome issues facing farmers today. Pastoral Song enchants. ... Urgently conveys how the drive for cheap, mass-produced food has impoverished both small farmers and the soil, threatening humanity's future." — NPR.org, What We're Excited to Read Next Month It’s gorgeous … I can’t recommend it enough.”— Caitlin Moran,NYT bestselling author of How to Be a Woman

So I hear you, James Rebanks. Maybe you can make some headway in your country, I sure hope so, but things are not going to get any better in ours before they get worse, and you know it. The bigger the better mentality is here to stay and I read what you said about us in an interview. You said that nothing about agriculture changes in our country “because the status quo works just great for a handful of giant corporations who own the food and farming system.” And that both U.S. political parties are bought off by lobbyists from Big Ag and Big Pharma.

Think Sustainability Is Simple? This Sheep Farmer Would Like

Lyrical and passionate … I was gripped from the very first paragraph … Rebanks has shone a brilliant light onto a world about which the vast majority of people know little … a cri de coeur for a healthier countryside, rather than a manifesto … a magnificent book.” — Literary Review The New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd's Life chronicles his family's farm in England's Lake District across three generations, revealing through this intimate lens the profound global transformation of agriculture and of the human relationship to the land. James Rebanks family has been farming in the Eden Valley in Cumbria for many years. He learned his craft particularly from his grandfather whose methods of framing owed much to the past. His own father stood on the cusp of the old and the new economical and industrial framing which caused him a great deal of internal conflict. Now it is James turn to inherit the land - in which direction will he err, the old or the new?This intimate and moving book is timely and relatable.... With a critical and curious eye, he asks of himself—and society at large—what does it mean to be a “good” farmer?" — Civil Eats

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