Grass-Fed Nation

Graham Harvey is a journalist who is also one of the co-founders of the Oxford Real Farming Conference on low input, ecological agriculture. As the title suggests, this book is an impassioned argument for a traditional, grass-fed and rotational crop system that nourishes the soil and produces healthy food at the same time. In short, this is a biological rather than a chemical agriculture, and the author shows how chemical agriculture is compromising soil quality, as also recognised by a World Bank report of 2009 recommending an ecological future for agriculture. As we know, this is not the agenda of agrochemical agribusiness with its vision of continued use of chemical inputs and reliance on GM, pesticides and herbicides. The author reminds us of the ecological, wildlife and landscape destruction that has already taken place while providing us with far too much wheat, which itself, along with sugar, is the source of many of our health challenges. Much of this wheat is either refined into processed foods or fed to animals.

Recent research shows how chemicals are actually destroying soil ecosystems, and therefore undermining long-term food security. Harvey shows how a return to mixed farming could benefit the health of the soil and our own as a result. This vision was shared by Sir Albert Howard and Sir George Stapledon FRS, but the post-war regime of production maximisation supported by subsidies undermined the pre-war system and is now locked in to government, science and agriculture. There are some signs that things are moving in the direction recommended by the author, and a powerful argument is the way in which carbon can be locked into the soil as a huge contribution to climate change policy. This book points the way to a renaissance of real agriculture beyond the current agrichemical system, while on the way demolishing the oft repeated arguments that only GM can feed the world.