Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
and hill-walkers. It would provide the British market with fine cheeses of the quality that is
so fiercely guarded by the Swiss manufacturers of summer-pasture Gruyère. And it would
bring to pastures that have been left to the ravages of unguarded and subsidized sheep, the
watchful eye of the cowherd and the grazing habits of the cow.
Even without a revival of the shielings, we can anticipate a return to dairy cattle in up-
land areas, both to supply the local population with milk, and to make money from the
export of cheese, which packs more value from less grass into a kilo than does lamb, and
supplies pigs with whey. As well as assisting in the transport of nutrients, an increase in
the number of cattle would be welcome in landscapes punished by an excess of sheep, and
might assist in the control of weeds such as bracken.
While regions regarded as remote will see an intensification of agriculture and forestry
commensurate with their repopulation, in areas which are already very intensively cultiv-
ated we may see some land taken out of intensive production. This is already happening,
though not necessarily for the best reasons or in the best spot, as patches of land are turned
over for forestry, or returned to the status of 'wildflower meadow'.
An obvious candidate is fenland, which could well allow a proportion of its fertile arable
land to revert to waterland. Drained by Dutch engineers and Scottish prisoners of war in
the 17th century for agriculture, much of the land is now kept dry by the use of diesel or
electric pumps. A return to fenland is already being carried out by the National Trust at
Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, where the aim is to rewild 3,700 hectares of farmland and
return it to fenland. Currently some of the reclaimed area is being grazed by semi-wild
Konik horses, though as far as I know the National Trust is not, like the Dutch wetland
managers, retailing pony-burgers. The scheme will sequester carbon in the peaty soils that
have been stripped bare by years of arable farming; and it will serve as a 'green lung' for
residents experiencing spiritual suffocation in the new expanse of suburban sprawl planned
for the Cambridge area. It would be good to think that Wicken Fen could become the haunt
once again of some endangered species of human such as eel catchers and fowlers, who
350 years ago employed guerrilla tactics against the engineers destroying their homeland
and livelihood.
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Throughout lowland England we might see some areas of intensively farmed land or
pasture returned to something like a common. It is here that we would be most likely to
find the classic silvo-pastoral landscape described by Vera, and that indeed is what many
remaining commons look like today. The degree of nutrient removal from these areas can
be calibrated by the extent to which livestock are returned from the common to their farm-
yard or onto arable land at night. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, not unlike that
enjoyed by Mr and Mrs Spratt, both for farmers who require the fat of the land for their
fields, and nature conservationists who want to see the ecosytems under their guardianship
kept lean. The removal of surplus nutrients through grazing and folding often has a benign
