Pastoral Song: A Farmer's Journey

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I have been thrilled by English Pastoral, an account of farming by James Rebanks. A real working farmer, whose own reading runs from Virgil to Schumpeter, he lays out in great detail just what has gone wrong, and what can be done to put it right.”— Andrew Marr, Spectator

I really enjoyed the first part of the book that involved him learning about farming from his grandfather. The book makes it clear that with modernity and our instant culture of now we are ruining and losing many aspects of our land. So many things are interwoven and if one thing is changed for the immediate benefit of one group, this may be at a massive and destructive cost to others. We need to think long term about the ecosystems, land, nature, wildlife and not just look at the end products wrapped in plastics in the supermarket. So many of the answers we are looking for our rooted in history if we look, even if we didn’t know why things worked like they did at the time. The New York Times bestselling author of The Shepherd's Life profiles his family's farm across three generations, revealing through this intimate lens the profound global transformation of agriculture and of the human relationship to the land. Rebanks' lifetime spent farming gives this book its credibility; his sensible tone gives it its power. And his eloquence describing his beloved farm gives it its beauty." — Minneapolis Star Tribune To the details: Pastoral Song is the sort of volume which SHOULD (and sometimes does) give the unapologetic side-eye to the economist’s mantra, instead we hear “we have to be realistic…” Instead we get homage to the ‘inevitable’ reality of economics, homage couched in conflicted melting regret. Instead contradictions in the polemic structure confuse by setting the book with either/ or tropes, either you are over here or you are the enemy, and then pretending that was never ’neath the message.Remarkable … A brilliant, beautiful book … Eloquent, persuasive and electric with the urgency that comes out of love.”— Sunday Times (London) Rebanks asks: “There is an old saying that we should farm as if we are going to live a thousand years. The idea is that we might protect our natural resources better if we had to face the long-term consequences of our actions instead of passing on a mess for someone else to sort out. I find the thought of a thousand years in the future rather daunting and impossible to comprehend. Who is rich enough to be that holy?” p206

The main thrust I think of the author’s arguments is captured in this compromise. At its worse this seems to be rather resentful of both sides: he seems to share equal dislike for the world of neo-liberal free-trade and globalised economics (economists in particular seem to be his rather odd bête noire) and for left-wing extremists (George Monbiot is not named in the book but the two seem to have a history of opposition). But more commonly he argues against entrenched positions (that farmers are either all bad or all good) and bifurcation (for example colleges which turn out either economics focused MBA farmers or nature loving ecologists but without ever bringing the two into dialogue). I will be honest, I absolutely adored “The Shepherd’s Life” and was not sure this would appeal to me. However, I was so very wrong. Rebanks has written a book that is both informative and offers an insight into his family history. Rebanks really opens up to the reader about what his family life is like, how far they have come and how far they have to go. At the same time, Rebanks reflects on modern farming and the damage that has been caused, is being caused and could be caused in the future. Hailed as “a brilliant, beautiful book” by the Sunday Times(London), Pastoral Songis the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community, and wild things were lost. And yet this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future. The constant wanting of store-bought things he (James Rebanks’ grandfather) held in disdain. He thought these people (he and his fellow local farmers) had understood something about freedom that everyone else had missed, that if you didn’t need things–shop-bought possessions–then you were free from the need to earn the money to pay for them.

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James Rebanks is a historian and farmer. English Pastoral is a memoir that presents a view of English farming beginning during his grandfather's farming days and ending in 2020 at the book's publication. A vividly-recalled memoir of a farming childhood, but also a forensic defence of the kind of agriculture that has nearly been wiped out. ... Perceptive, eloquent, and passionate. ... Rebanks writes so well that I can’t imagine anyone starting to read it and not being eager to read it all at once, as I did, and not being moved by the life and the landscape he describes so well. I was thrilled by it.”— Philip Pullman,#1 bestselling author of the “His Dark Materials” series?