Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution

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An eloquent and personal insight into the terrible human as well as environmental cost of cheap food and an inspiring account of the people working to heal our relationship with our habitat and ourselves. Urgent, necessary and moving. Ben Rawlence, author of The Treeline There’s no shortage of opinion in this book, but it’s always supported by facts and figures, and Ben is more inclusive in his suggestions for farming reform than other rewilders. The book can be poetic at times and some may struggle with the dense content – for those, I strongly recommend the Audible version, which is well-performed, and perhaps my favourite audiobook of them all! Enthralling [...] An unignorable call to understand the challenges facing not only farming but the Earth itself."

Rooted by Sarah Langford | Waterstones

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. 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 MiraclesForget Me Not– Sophia Pavelle: Someone much younger than me wrote a book about rewilding – and by all accounts it’s really good (this makes me feel like perhaps I’m being left behind!). Will read this soon!

Sarah Langford - Penguin Books UK Sarah Langford - Penguin Books UK

If you’re wondering about how to manage the community response to a rewilding project, then the discussion of Patagonia’s rewilding experiment in S America is very informative. There is also insightful guidance into how rewilders might navigate choppy political waters, and some predictions of future industry growth. Monbiot is not a farmer, which frees him to have an outsider’s perspective. At the same time, he gives little consideration to the cultural side of farming, the realities of rewilding and its impact on rural populations. He criticises “conventional organic farming” and “foodies”, which do not feel like the most important enemies. The ideas that we should eat “less and better” meat or that food should be more expensive are vividly challenged in the passages where he meets users of food banks. 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."

This book broke my heart at times but also contained humour and such poignant insights into the criminal justice system.' Sarah has featured in The Sunday Times, The Evening Standard, The Guardian and more. Read interviews with Sarah: 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.

The Best Rewilding Books | How to Rewild

Langford also tells the stories of farmers who are quietly leading an agricultural revolution. ‘It is a revolution that might just abate a climate crisis, a physical and mental health crisis, and a biodiversity crisis,’ she writes. She shines a light on the human side of farming, on the real cost of cheap food and on the regenerative choices some farmers are making. ‘All of us are connected to farmers, and them to us. They may represent just one per cent of our workforce but they look after 70 per cent of our land. Their choices affect us all.’ A beautifully written, incredibly timely book' - Clover Stroud, author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights For those in the farming community who are feeling skeptical about the benefits of rewilding farmland and the financial impact it might have, this book may be of interest. The Knepp Estate went from a relatively high yield, high intensity area of farmland which was going into the red, to an enterprise which had a 22% profit margin in 2021. My grandfather Peter,” Langford writes, “was a hero who fed a starving nation. Now his son Charlie, my uncle, is considered a villain, blamed for ecological catastrophe and with a legacy no one wants.” From Langford’s immediate family we move around England, meeting dairy farmers crushed by the low price supermarkets pay for milk, disillusioned pig farmers turning to mixed agriculture and small scale organic farmers. The stories are often frustrating and heartbreaking: tales of falling incomes, BSE, foot and mouth, and Covid. Langford is brilliant at explaining how complex economic forces impact on individuals. The book is absorbing, compassionate and should have a galvanising effect. An evocative journey through the history and natural history of the woodland. A beautiful and poetic book, which shines a light on many unfamiliar stories from across the world.More than a memoir; Langford manages to contain and convey the whole scale of the coming agricultural revolution."