Only Reconnect - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 103

One of the rarest animals in the world persists in patches of these
industrialized landscapes. It is the Suffolk Punch, the giant horse first bred
in the 16th century to work the heavy Suffolk clays of eastern England.
Suffolks are tall, often with a white star or blaze on the face, and have long
been admired for their calm temperament and ease of care. 1 But in the
modern era, such shire horses could not compete with machinery, and
since the 1950s they were rapidly replaced with tractors and mechanized
combines. Farms, of course, became more efficient. More land was
cultivated in less time with less labour. But when these horses and their
horsemen disappeared from farms, something else was lost, too. The
horsemen had an intimate relationship not just with their horses, but with
the whole farm landscape. They were expert botanists, using up to 40
species of wild plants for horse care. Today, having forgotten this know-
ledge, we call these once useful plants weeds, and the Suffolk only survives
through the efforts of dedicated societies and individuals, one or two of
whom still farm with shire horses.
From generation to generation, horsemen passed on knowledge about
the value of certain plants for treating illness and disease, shining the coat
or improving appetite. George Ewart Evans, eloquent observer of English
agricultural change, wrote in The Horse and the Furrow of fevers treated with
agrimony or with apples sliced and stored until infested with antibiotic-
carrying fungi; and of colds and coughs cured with fever few, belladonna,
meadow-rue and horehound. For de-worming, the horsemen used celandine,
yellow-flowered indicator of spring, and to encourage appetite, put
gentian, elecampine, horehound and felwort into food. They used box to
keep down sweat, and burdock, saffron, rosemary, fennel, juniper, tansy
and mandrake for coat conditioning. Hazel, holly and willow were
fashioned into withies and traces for harnesses. This example shows that
there is a simple principle for our modern era of agricultural progress.
As food efficiency increases, so landscape diversity is lost, and so, too, goes
an intimate knowledge of nature and a duty of care. 2
Far from the clays of Suffolk, Kevin Niemeyer stands in the shade of
his veranda, looking out on one of the most fertile landscapes of Queens-
land. This is the Lockyer Valley, sub-tropical vegetable garden of eastern
Australia, and home to another modern revolution in nature-friendly
farming. In a land farmed for only a few generations, crisis point was
reached during the late 1980s and 1990s. Every two or three days, Kevin
had to spray his brassicas with pesticides. But this pattern of use carried
an ecological hazard, as pests quickly developed resistance. When Kevin
bought his farm in the 1970s, he did not need to spray much for the first
few years. Later, he found he had to spray more often as the beneficial
insects disappeared. Thus, the seeds of failure are contained within a