review on the shelf
n By Mark Metcalf
The lie of the land, by Guy Shrubshole, published by William Collins (RRP £22)
This book reveals that a PR campaign started back in the 1980s has convinced the public that landowners, comprising many beneficiaries of Norman barons from 1066, are responsible countryside stewards. But the reality is that many of their practices are damaging the environment, rural communities, animal welfare and food production.
Alarmingly, these landowners are heavily subsidised and politicians and public bodies fear holding them to account.
In response, bestselling author Guy Shrubsole, calls for practical interventions to the management of the countryside for both the people and environment.
In England, just one per cent of the population owns half the land. Yet arguments to change property rights, replacing it with a legal duty of stewardship for public accountability, occupy the fringes of political discourse.
It is contended that land needs to be owned to be looked after.
Shrubsole highlights this lie with examples of damage to land. Some are ancient. The Cambridgeshire peat soil fens supply one third of England’s fresh vegetables. Drained around 400 years ago they continue sinking with the Holme Fen approaching three metres below sea level as the peat drains causing CO2 to form in massive quantities.
Remaining peat will be washed away over the next 30 to 100 years, ending vital food cultivation unless there is a switch to wetter farming with vegetable harvesting transferred elsewhere across East Anglia.
Peat is also being destroyed to permit grouse shooting on subsidised upland estates. During heavy downpours this causes large escapes of water downhill, causing flooding of homes and businesses.
In Scotland, grouse shooting has recently begun at Langholm when over 10,000 acres of ancient wood pasture and windswept hills owned by the Duke of Buccleuch was bought by the local community with support from the Scottish Land Fund, which has enabled many similar buyouts elsewhere. Already young trees are naturally regenerating the Langholm hillsides.
The Scottish land reform movement continues organising for collective land ownership.
Shrubsole urges the new Labour government to back similar initiatives in England. He knows there will be opposition with even small plans to reintroduce the native British beaver, whose building of leaky dams slows water flow downstream, drawing the ire of the landowning establishment.
The book concludes with ten urgent changes to be fought for including banning moorland burning, a community right to buy land in England, the establishment of a Public Nature Estate, making polluting landowners pay a carbon land tax, making national parks serve the interests of nature and the continuing opening up of data on land.
Invite Shrubsole to your meeting as this is a book worth discussing.
38 uniteLANDWORKER Winter 2024
Alamy
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