A fine book: heartfelt, honest and hopeful. Sarah has the knowledge and skill to help people better understand where their food comes from and why we should all care. Helen Rebanks

Rooted - Penguin Books UK Rooted - Penguin Books UK

Despite it being hard to stomach for many of us from the countryside, Monbiot makes a convincing case. In desperate times, a shift to plant-based and even lab-grown food makes simple mathematical sense. Monbiot’s arguments take account of the needs of everyone in society, not just those who can afford premium meat, and not just those of us in the UK. Regenesis aims to be a gamechanger, and indeed it already makes ideas once thought radical seem tame.

The way this book is structured is very helpful for rewilding novices, with confusing jargon demystified and competing theories explained. The authors also make sure to cover the most common case studies, so you’re not left feeling embarrassed when someone brings up the Oostvaardersplassen in casual conversation. With Ben’s history working in Natural History TV, there’s a strong sense of story here with some astonishing statistics thrown in to emphasise quite how badly we need a conservation rethink. This is an inspiring read, though, with the final section giving a real sense of hope and building concrete ideas for the future. It’s a book I always recommend to nature enthusiasts who want an introduction to rewilding. 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.

Rooted by Sarah Langford | Waterstones

Sarah Langford's book on farming is really a book about healing. All of life and death is here: family, politics, nature, climate, history, humanity. Rooted is a beautifully written, powerful reminder of where we've gone wrong, what is at stake, and how we can change. I loved it." We Are the Ark– Pioneer gardening rewilder, Mary Reynolds brings her warm and enigmatic style of rewilding to a wider audience in this captivating illustrated edition. Her thoughts align closely with my own on rewilding gardens, so I look forward to reading this one. More than a memoir; Langford manages to contain and convey the whole scale of the coming agricultural revolution. Daily Telegraph A fine book: heartfelt, honest and hopeful. Sarah has the knowledge and skill to help people better understand where their food comes from and why we should all care." Enthralling [...] An unignorable call to understand the challenges facing not only farming but the Earth itself."

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Sarah is understanding of why we are where we are, but also doesn't accept the status quo. Knowing Suffolk quite well, I felt a connection to the land she describes and loved her overriding optimism. I loved this, "...change is also infectious. It is catching. All it takes is someone brave enough to start and soon the ideas will roll out to their neighbours, and their neighbours, outwards in waves until there is nobody left to say 'that won't work here', because it already has." What is one thing that you’ve taken from your conversations with farmers that you think will stay with you as you continue experimenting on your farm? 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. 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.