The COUNTRY LIFE manifesto
1 Come down to earth
An incredible variety of topography and geology is crammed into this small island, from the sandy heathlands of Surrey to the corn belts of East Anglia, for which we should daily give thanks. However, this means that it simply isn’t feasible to grow everything everywhere, nor is it possible to have all species everywhere. Therefore, in any audit of the land, we need to be less squeamish about productivity, more pragmatic about livestock’s role in the natural cycle and less romantic about rewilding/wilding, which, although it can achieve eye-catching individual results, doesn’t help species to expand if done in isolation. The GWCT’s Farmer Cluster initiative should be the model.
2 Reduce the bollard count
Road builders in this country seem to take a perverse satisfaction in blocking off vast swathes of road, for months and months, in which absolutely no work is being done. Meanwhile, traffic crawls, emissions rise and national productivity slows because hours are being wasted in jams. Contractors should be penalised and bonuses removed for missing deadlines in the same way that water companies are fined for leaks, although there is an argument that those are far too lenient.
3 Relocate the renewables
The word ‘farm’ should never have been bracketed with solar panels and wind turbines. Yes, they are important components of the energy jigsaw, but, if humanly
