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Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution

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This book broke my heart at times but also contained humour and such poignant insights into the criminal justice system.' In Rooted, you highlight how regenerative farming can benefit the land and the output of a farm but balance it with the reality that there are a lot of farmers, who have been used to certain practices their whole farming life. What have you found to be the most effective way of starting those conversations and getting people to consider change? Moving, startling, uplifting, galvanising and unsettling, this plainly beautiful book is one of those rare few that changes how you see the world around you' - Ella Risbridger, author of The Year of Miracles As I began reading, my feeling was that I needed to be convinced. Sarah and Ben relocate from London to Suffolk to take over Ben’s family’s small farm. This is privilege. So many other young families would love such an opportunity, but getting on that farming ladder is fiendishly problematic. My hope was that Sarah would handle this sensitively. She does. More than a memoir; Langford manages to contain and convey the whole scale of the coming agricultural revolution."

Rooted by Sarah Langford - Geographical Review: Rooted by Sarah Langford - Geographical

Those days come to mind reading two books that challenge us to think again about farming – what it has come to mean and how it could be transformed. Sarah Langford’s Rooted, with its case studies of agriculture over the last few decades, makes me thankful I grew up on the type of mixed family farm far less common than it once was. George Monbiot’s Regenesis takes as its subject no less than the entire world’s food production system and dares to imagine a world largely free of farming as we have known it. Moving, startling, uplifting, galvanising and unsettling, this plainly beautiful book is one of those rare few that changes how you see the world around you: the shape of fields seen from a train, the vegetables in a supermarket chiller cabinet, the earth beneath your feet and falling through your fingers." I think it’s for a lot of the reasons that you’ve just said, and it’s clear through the farmers’ stories you’ve told in the book, that agriculture is an aging industry. D o you think there’s a main cause for many young farmers not staying? Taking a more concise approach to rewilding, and acting as a sort of ‘primer’ for those new to the concepts, this is nevertheless a surprisingly good read. The highly-experienced authors cover a lot of interesting topics, including the potential of using ancient DNA to recreate extinct species, and even dry subjects are livened up with colourful stories of people and places. The way forward can been found in the many places that these books agree. Both explore the wonder and complexity of soil. They strike on several of the same solutions, including the “no-till” method of growing crops without ploughing, or the use of perennial grains. Both see the benefits of organic methods such as planting wildflowers as a means of controlling pests.Evocative and resonant. These are stories that need to be told. Andy Cato, Groove Armada and Wildfarmed Rooted offers us an honest look at the farming life today. It is not an easy way to make a living, but through Langford's personal story – and those of who she meets – we appreciate how it offers a connection with the land, and a firmer sense of our place in the world. Raw, earthy and inspiring." An honest look at the farming life today. Raw, earthy and inspiring' - Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

Rooted by Sarah Langford - The Royal Countryside Rural Reads: Rooted by Sarah Langford - The Royal Countryside

Funnily enough, I think we’re seeing a pivot on it because when the job was sitting on a tractor with no autonomy, the agronomist decided what was planted and how it was farmed and the merchant decided what price it was sold at, then it was a boring job, that carried none of the status and very little of the money it used to have. But the interesting thing about regenerative farming is that there seems to be a renewed enthusiasm amongst the younger generation, who are getting into farming again. I think it’s very intellectually challenging – you have to really understand how plants work and how they respond to the soil and how they have a symbiotic relationship with animals – but it’s also a chance for farmers to be heroes again because through the way they are farming, they are not only providing food but they are also stopping villages from being flooded downstream; they are cleaning rivers; they are sequestering carbon; they are improving the biodiversity on their farms that people who walk through it can see and love and appreciate. I think that this way of farming, which is of course a very old way of farming but rebranded, has attracted both a large number of farmers’ children who wouldn’t have wanted to do it otherwise and also new entrants into farming. Enthralling ... An unignorable call to understand the challenges facing not only farming but the Earth itself. Spectator

Retailers:

Rooted is a brave thing: a book that prods into the ever-widening gulf between the binaries we increasingly use to examine the world. As conversations about what we eat and where it comes from reach fever-pitch, Sarah Langford's clear-eyed, inquisitive and passionate plea for farmers and farming offers a vital understanding when it has never been so needed. I hope everyone reads it."

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