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[♪♪♪]
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[cows mooing and birds chirping]
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I always think this Devon landscape
is the most beautiful place on Earth.
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And to me this is a very special
farm, because it's where I grew up.
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And it's the only place
I've ever really called home.
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My name is Rebecca Hosking,
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and I'm from a long line of farmers.
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But it was the wildlife here,
more than the farming,
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that really fascinated me as a child.
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And this led me into a career
as a wildlife filmmaker.
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But now I'm back here to be a farmer,
and in very interesting times.
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An approaching energy crisis will
likely force a revolution in farming
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and change the British
countryside forever.
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It will affect what we eat,
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where it comes from,
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and even the alarming question
of whether there will be enough food
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to keep us fed.
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If our farm is to survive,
it will have to change.
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In this film I'm going to find out
how to make my family farm in Devon
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a farm that's fit for the future.
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I think when people find out
I was brought up
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on a small South Devon farm,
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they always think I must have had
the most amazing childhood ever.
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When I think back to when
I was brought up here,
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I just think of a load of
bloody hard work really.
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We were just small time farmers,
and with that is involved
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not much money,
and a lot of hard work,
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to the point that
it's almost drudgery.
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Dad often describes farmers
as glorified lavatory attendants.
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And my family, like many farming families
I think up and down the country,
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wanted something better
for their children,
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and I was actively encouraged
to get out of farming,
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go and find a job,
go and make a decent living.
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So that's what I did.
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And while I was away pursuing my career,
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my dad and my uncle Phil
carried on, as ever,
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farming in a pretty traditional way.
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But now it's time
for me to come back.
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-The thing is, both Phil and I now, we--
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I was going to say we're several
years beyond retiring age,
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and should have retired,
and most farmers have done that,
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but we've kept the farm going and, um...
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kept it going as long as we can,
trying to keep it as we found it,
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as we sort of inherited it.
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You know, I'm delighted to think
somebody will take it on now
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and keep it going, hopefully.
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But it's not going to be easy, because
of pressures of all sorts of things--
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food shortages, oil prices going up--
it's not going to be easy at all.
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-Many would say, "Just sell it."
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"That would make more money in a heartbeat
than a lifetime of working the land."
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But how can I turn my back
on somewhere so beautiful,
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and a place that made me who I am?
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However, making a living,
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while continuing to preserve all
the wildlife on the farm, as Dad has done,
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is going to be a major challenge.
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The inconvenient truth is that this farm,
despite being a haven for wildlife,
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is no more sustainable than any other.
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All the farms I know,
including organic ones,
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are utterly dependent
on fossil fuel, particularly oil.
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This dependence is dangerous
for two reasons.
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Climate change we all know about,
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but there is also growing evidence
that the oil we need
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may soon be in short supply.
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Last year's fuel prices hit us badly,
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and for me it was a bit of
a wake-up call.
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I recently learned that
those crippling fuel prices
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may be just a tiny taster
of what's to come
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as world oil production
begins to decline.
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If there's any truth to this matter,
then this will be my biggest challenge
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in keeping our farm going
into the near future.
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So I decided to track down
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one of the world's most respected
authorities on the subject.
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After a distinguished 40-year career
as a geologist in the oil industry,
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he continues his research from
a small village in the west of Ireland.
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To Dr Colin Campbell, the facts
about our oil supply are simple.
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-Despite searching the world
with all the advances
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in technology, and knowledge,
and incentive and everything,
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we've been finding less
and less for 40 years,
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and in 1981 was a kind
of turning point,
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when we started using more
than we found in new fields,
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as we started sucking down what
had been found in the past.
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Eating into our inheritance,
you could say.
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So I don't think there's really
any serious doubt
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that we're close
to this turning point.
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A sort of turning point
for mankind, you could say,
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when this critical energy
for agriculture in particular,
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--which means food,
which means people--
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is heading on down.
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And there's a huge debate raging
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of exactly the date and the height
of the peak of production.
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And really I think
this misses the point.
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It doesn't matter whether it's this
year, next year, five years out.
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What matters is the vision
that after this peak
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you have a decline
of only 2% or 3% a year,
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but, there's a huge difference
between climbing for 150 years
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and descending for 150 years.
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-What Colin is saying is this decline
will mean fuel shortages
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and prolonged economic turmoil.
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I tend to agree with him.
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It doesn't matter whether
it's two years or ten years away,
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the impact it will have on pretty much
every part of our lives is huge.
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But for me the biggest concern
is how it will affect farming--
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which means our food.
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I don't think most people
have given it much thought
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how much fossil fuel
goes into our everyday food.
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I just bought this garage sandwich
just before we got on board,
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and I'm going to pull it apart
and go through all the ingredients.
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I'll start with the bread.
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So somewhere in the world some
farmer has had to plant the cereal.
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First off, he's using
a diesel-run tractor,
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So he has to plough the field,
then harrow the field,
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then he has to drill the seeds
into the earth.
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And then to get the cereal to grow, he's
probably had to add a load of chemicals
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to protect the crop--fungicides, herbicides,
insecticides--all made from oil.
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And for the nutrients,
chemical fertilizers.
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And at the moment,
most of the farmers' fertilizer
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is derived from natural gas.
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Once the cereal has ripened,
it needs to be harvested.
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Then the grain is dried
using big heaters,
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and then it's driven, using
even more diesel, to be processed.
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And it isn't some little granny
in a corner shop doing this.
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This is huge industrial buckets
making this kind of bread.
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So then we move on to the inside
and ham obviously comes from a pig,
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and that's even more energy hungry,
because pigs are fed on grain.
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And one pig can eat nearly
half a ton of the stuff.
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And then, just to add to it,
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we've got a little token,
very sad piece of salad in there,
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which was either shipped in, flown in,
or grown in a heated greenhouse.
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Once again--huge amount of energy.
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All of these ingredients were either
cooked or cooled, or both,
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and driven mile after mile
in a refrigerated lorry
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before they were assembled
into a sandwich.
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Basically, this sandwich, like most
of the food that we're eating today,
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is absolutely dripping in oil.
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And the way that our
food production is today,
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if we didn't have places like this,
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then in this country
we'd pretty much starve.
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My visit to Ireland has given me
a lot to think about.
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Even on our little farm,
without fossil fuel energy,
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farming and food production
will grind to a halt pretty quickly,
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and we would be left with,
well, a nature reserve.
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And nature reserves
don't feed people.
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This is such a serious issue,
I'm guessing the rest of the farming world
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must be as concerned as I am.
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Perhaps some of them have
some ideas on how to move forward.
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A major Soil Association conference
on the future of British farming
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seems like a good place to start.
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-We may all think we're immune here
because we can nip along to Tesco Metro
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whenever we like in the middle
of the night and buy something.
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That whole system is in jeopardy.
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-How are you going to feed Britain?
How are you going to feed London?
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-Forty percent of the world's production
comes from the 500 or so
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giant oil fields,
half billion barrel oilfields...
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-They're certainly worried.
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And from what I'm hearing,
the energy problem seems, well, imminent.
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-It will hit us by 2013, at the latest--
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not just as an oil crisis--
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but actually as an oil
and indeed energy famine.
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-Farmers are going to have to move
from using ancient sunlight--
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using oil and gas--
to using current sunlight.
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-And that seems to me the most enormous
challenge that agriculture has ever faced,
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certainly since the Industrial Revolution,
because we have so little time to do it.
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-If we can get government to be part
of that, so much the better,
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but if government won't be part of that,
then we have to do it without them.
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-These are the new fundamentals
on which the food system
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is going to have to be based
or else we are buggered.
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The farmers' conference made it
clear to me there are no easy answers.
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If our farms and machinery
are so energy-hungry,
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what are the options without oil?
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Alternative energies are coming on
leaps and bounds nowadays.
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Which one is likely to fit the bill?
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Over in California
at the Post Carbon Institute,
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there is a man who has advised
business, industry, and governments
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on how to cope with oil depletion.
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Richard Heinberg kindly agreed
to talk to me via the internet.
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I mean, surely with wind and solar
and nuclear, we could use all of this
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and the depletion of oil
really isn't a problem?
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-We've waited too long to develop
alternative energy sources
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and there's also the likelihood that
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even all of these alternative
energy sources put together
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won't be able to power
industrial societies
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in the way that we've been
accustomed to with fossil fuels.
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People have to understand
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that we've created a way of life
that's fundamentally unsustainable.
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And that doesn't mean that it's just,
you know, ecologically irresponsible,
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it means that it can't continue.
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-The scale of the challenge ahead
Richard is talking about
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becomes clear when
you look at bio-fuels.
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Oil seed rape is the most productive
bio-fuel crop in our climate.
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At Britain's current rate of oil use,
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a whole year's harvest from
a four-acre field like this
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would be used up in less
than one third of a second.
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That would be little help
to agriculture as it stands today.
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-Aside from transport--
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cars, trucks,
and airplanes--
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agriculture is the most
fossil fuel intensive industry.
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We use in the industrial world about
ten calories of fossil fuel energy
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for every calorie of food we produce.
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So this is an enormous problem
that we've created for ourselves.
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We have solved enormous problems
in agriculture before.
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-In the past 50 years,
agricultural technology
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has tripled crop yields and overcome
everything nature has thrown at us.
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But all of these advances
rely on abundant fossil fuel.
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In a sense, they have taken us
exactly in the wrong direction
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to deal with this new problem.
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Even the latest technologies,
like GM crops,
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regardless of the other arguments,
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are as utterly dependent
on fossil fuel as any other.
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So where does this leave us?
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-It's possible in fact that
food systems could collapse
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not just in the poor countries,
but also in the wealthy,
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current food exporting countries like
the United States, Canada, and Australia.
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And we're going to have to transform
our entire agricultural system
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very quickly if we're going to avert
a global food calamity.
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So, does this mean a return to horses,
carts and hand tools on our farm?
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I personally wouldn't know how to do this,
nor would most farmers today.
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The knowledge of how to farm
in this manner is all but gone.
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However, on the next door farm
is a woman
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who knows a thing or two about it.
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My dear old friend, Pearl.
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-'Ello darlins, you waitin' for tea?
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You little beggars.
[cow moos]
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-They're handsome looking.
-Oh, they are. They're sweet.
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Do you know what that's for?
-No idea.
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-Well, years ago
we used to make hayricks.
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-Right, yeah, and put all
the hay up to dry.
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-Out to dry. Well, then you'd go up
with your wagon, you see,
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and you'd want a wagon load of hay,
and you'd have to cut the hay across
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to take away a section
to put on the wagon,
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and that you have to go like this.
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-Oh, and literally cut like that?
-Yeah, like that.
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-Good old weight, though, isn't it?
-We weren't mice.
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I wasn't big, but boy I was strong.
The Lord gave me a lot of strength.
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-He certainly did, He gave
you all a lot of strength,
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and we don't realize how easy
we've got it now I think, do we?
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-You don't.
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-For those tasks too heavy
for people, there were horses,
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and Pearl was an
incredible horsewoman.
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Oh, Pearl, look at that! Wow.
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Look at those.
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And look at the...
-Yeah, that's my bridles.
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-How many have you got, Pearl?
-Well, we had, you see, three big Shires.
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-Of course you did.
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-When you had a horse and cart, well,
it often was too big a load for one,
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so you'd put down the fore harness,
and that horse had a collar, that on it,
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and two chains that came back
and hooked into the front of the cart.
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-So when you needed a bit more
extra horsepower, literally.
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-That's right, that one was there to pull.
-To get you up a hill.
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At best, Pearl had a two-horsepower
system to help her with the heavy work.
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Today, farmers' tractors
can be up to 400 horsepower.
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Trips off the tongue, doesn't it?
Four hundred horsepower.
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but think what it actually means:
four hundred horses.
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That's the power we get
from oil today.
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-Do you know, today's energy supply
is equivalent, in energy terms,
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to 22 billion slaves
working 'round the clock.
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So we're basically living with
this enormous stock of slaves
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working for us in the form of oil.
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But by the end of this century,
there ain't any more of them.
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And that's a huge change we're facing--
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affects just absolutely
every aspect of the modern world.
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-I often think how times have changed
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because, you see, we do all this work
just to keep our cows going,
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but now, a bit of silage, boy, and
it's all done mechanically,
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and you can go and sit down.
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-Your sons, if they had
to farm like you did,
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do you think they would do it now?
-No, I don't think they would.
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I think they have more sense.
But I was happy.
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This way of farming is something we
couldn't go back to even if we wanted to.
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When Pearl was young, there was ten times
as many farmers in this country
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and only half the number
of mouths to feed.
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Also, most British farmers today
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just don't have the physical
strength for hard manual labor.
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The average age of a farmer
in Britain now is 60.
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And even worse,
there's only 150,000 of them left.
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As an industry, British farming
has effectively been left to die.
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And in recent years, more and more
of our food is coming from abroad.
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-The UK is a net food importer
by a long shot,
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so this is a very perilous situation,
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because of course all of that import
has to come by way of fossil-fuelled
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vehicles of one kind or another,
whether ships or airplanes.
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And as fossil fuels again become
more scarce and expensive,
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that means that that food is going
to become more expensive
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and the whole system will start to
creak and groan around the edges.
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-Realistically, the only changes
I can make are right here.
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And even that isn't as
straightforward as it may seem.
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Ours is a traditional
livestock farm.
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Raising beef and lamb on pasture
may not look that fuel intensive,
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but there is one major problem.
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Bringing the cattle in in the winter
for beef farming or dairy farming
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is just part and parcel of what we do
in this country because of our climate.
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If we were to leave
them out on the land,
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it's actually bad for the pastures
because they carve up the grass
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and it hasn't got enough time
to recover for the next spring.
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And obviously with the cattle in the barn,
then they can't get to their grass.
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So we then have to bring their grass
to them in the form of this hay.
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And the hay harvest, by far,
is our biggest single use
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of machinery and fuel on this farm.
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This is why I was fascinated to hear
about a farm up in Shropshire
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run by Charlotte Hollins
and her brother Ben.
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Fordhall Farm is much
the same size as our farm,
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and like us, they raise
cattle and sheep.
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But at Fordhall, the cattle stay
out on the pasture all winter
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with little need for additional feed.
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I found it hard to believe,
but as a result,
-
the only machinery
they have is a quad bike.
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The secret to this
is underfoot: the grass.
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Even though we have hundreds
of species of wild grass in this country,
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most farmers only use four,
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which they buy in a bag
from a seed merchant.
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But not at Fordhall.
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-...and we've probably got almost
20 different species of grass here.
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Some are hardier than others, some
will grow quicker than others,
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and some have roots which go deeper down
in the soil and bring minerals up,
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and some have got much shallower roots
which help then protect the soil
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across the surface.
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If you come down and have a look
at the grasses here,
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you can see straight away that
you've got a great big tight structure
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there at the bottom.
-It's like Scottish Tweed.
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-Exactly. And even when you get
to the soil, it's so matted up with roots,
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it takes an awful lot of force
and effort to break through it.
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So it doesn't get trodden up
to a muddy mess straight away,
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and then the cows and the sheep
get the benefit of it,
-
and you get the benefit because you
don't have to buy so much feed in.
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We know, year on year,
it will work, there will be feed,
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we can produce beef,
we can produce lamb,
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and we can sell it,
and we can make a living.
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And whatever happens
to oil prices or anything else,
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we know we can keep going
on that system.
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-But these amazing grasses
didn't happen by chance.
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Charlotte and Ben's late father,
Arthur Hollins,
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was a bit of a local legend
and a farming visionary.
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-Dad started his way of farming
just after the war,
-
but he spent his whole lifetime
developing the system,
-
and it was only just before
he died in 2005,
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that he actually said,
"I'm happy with this," you know,
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"I think I've got the grasses right,
I'm happy with the pastures."
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The soils on our farm are completely
different to the ones here at Fordhall,
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so the grasses Arthur encouraged may
not suit our fields back in Devon.
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But that's not to say we couldn't try
something similar with other types of grass.
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Knowing which species to encourage
may be just a case of careful observation.
-
And that's exactly what
old Arthur had to do,
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because the pastures here
weren't always so rich.
-
-Dad was always a great observer,
and he came through the woodland.
-
and he saw how much was growing here,
especially during the summer months,
-
and he wasn't touching it.
But more importantly,
-
he wasn't paying for any of it
to grow, it was just doing it.
-
And he saw straightaway, in the top
few inches of leaf litter on the soil,
-
there was life, whether it be spiders,
or woodlice or centipedes.
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And then you go down a little bit
further and you start to see worms.
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But he couldn't see any of that
in his soil he was plowing and cultivating
-
year on year.
There was no sign of any life.
-
-It was dead.
-It was dead.
-
And he got to then learn about all the
millions of different bacteria and fungi
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that were also in the soil,
that keep it fertile, cycle the nutrients,
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that hold those nutrients in their bodies
and release them to the plants,
-
and they weren't in his soil.
-
-If you just look down, I mean,
this is classic woodland soil.
-
-Yeah.
-Look how rich this is.
-
-Exactly.
-And it's gorgeous, rich topsoil.
-
-I mean, even there, in that soil
you've got bits of twig, the bits of leaf,
-
that are slowly being
broken down to create soil.
-
And the worms and everything else
do that job for you.
-
They eat it, process it through their
bodies, and you end up with worm poo,
-
which is soil, which feeds the plants.
-
And without that life, you've got
nothing to feed the plants
-
to keep that system going.
-
Taking the lessons he learned
from the woodland,
-
Arthur realized that to rejuvenate
his fields, he would have to go against
-
one of the most fundamental
principles of agriculture.
-
-The biggest thing that Dad found
was damaging the soil
-
was actually exposing it to sunlight.
-
It was that overturning
through plowing.
-
And Dad always said it would be like
humans ripping off their skin,
-
you know, it's not nice.
And you know, you don't survive.
-
So why do it to the soil, and why kill
all those organisms in the soil,
-
that, at the end of the day,
are your best friends?
-
-Are you telling us not to plow?
-Yes.
-
-We've been plowing for 10,000 years.
It's what farmers do.
-
Not plowing is a pretty radical idea
for any farmer.
-
But looking at some old footage
from our farm,
-
the damage it causes
is now pretty obvious.
-
This is one of our fields
back in the 80s.
-
The life in the soil
is a feast for the birds.
-
After 20 years
of the same treatment...
-
no birds, the soil is dead.
-
Turning the soil has been part
of agriculture for millennia,
-
but I guess with muscle power alone,
the damage was slow to show.
-
With diesel power,
the destruction is much faster.
-
The only reason modern agriculture
can get away with killing the life
-
in the soil is through
another use of fossil fuel.
-
This time it's by turning
it into chemical fertilizer.
-
These granules contain three
essential plant nutrients.
-
Nitrates, phosphate, and potash.
-
Over 95% of all the food grown
in this country
-
is totally reliant
on synthetic fertilizer.
-
Without it, we'd be
in serious trouble.
-
-We've used fossil fuels, essentially,
-
to grow plants in soil
that is otherwise dead.
-
And that works, as long as we have
the cheap fossil fuels
-
with which to make
the nitrogen fertilizer,
-
and to transport all
the inputs, and so on.
-
But in the end, when we don't have
the cheap fossil fuels,
-
we're going to need
living soil once again.
-
And that living soil is something
that requires time and care to build,
-
it doesn't just happen overnight.
-
-This field is far more typical
for our farm.
-
It's called Orchid Meadow.
-
And it's never been plowed
or dosed with synthetic fertilizer,
-
yet it's clearly thriving.
-
It just does feel like the whole
thing's heaving with life.
-
There's so many flowers, but also on
a sunny day, the whole place comes alive.
-
And you've got the birds
in the trees, but it just buzzes--
-
the whole thing buzzes, and you've
just got so many insects.
-
If you step over this,
especially in an evening,
-
and you walk through this,
the insects come up in great big clouds.
-
And it's all built on the foundation
of healthy, living soil.
-
After seeing Fordhall Farm, I can see
by developing these pastures,
-
we could reduce
our dependence on oil.
-
But, no matter how good
the grasses are,
-
rearing cattle takes a lot of land.
-
Every study on the matter concludes
-
that if Britain is to become
more self-sufficient,
-
we need to eat less meat.
-
Now I'm realizing,
we'll probably have to diversify,
-
changing not just how we farm,
but what we farm.
-
And this where I get stuck.
-
Because I can see how you
can farm cattle without plowing,
-
and using natural fertility,
-
but how do you grow
everything else we need?
-
Well, it seems there are a number
of people around the world
-
who have already grappled
with this problem.
-
They've developed a system
known as permaculture.
-
Britain's leading expert
is Patrick Whitefield.
-
Permaculture seems to challenge
all the normal approaches to farming.
-
-You know, people often think
-
that there are two ways
of doing things.
-
One is by drudgery, and the other
is by chucking fossil fuel at it.
-
Now, permaculture is about
a third way of doing things,
-
and that is by design,
by conscious design.
-
-Basically, you're designing
the labor out,
-
or you're designing the need
for that energy out?
-
-Both.
-Okay.
-
So why does it take so much manpower
and energy to sustain farmland,
-
when you look at a natural ecosystem,
and we've got a wood behind us,
-
and that can just keep going?
-
-Because this inherently is not
what the landscape wants to do.
-
And if you leave
the landscape totally alone,
-
it would turn into something like that.
-
So that is the low energy option.
-
In the natural ecosystem,
there's no work--
-
well not by any humans--
there's no waste, and yet it's thriving.
-
You know, look at it.
-
[baby birds chirping]
-
-It's easy to forget Britain
used to be a forested island.
-
And so much of the energy
we expend in farming
-
is just to stop it reverting back.
-
But woodland has evolved
over millions of years
-
to be the most efficient
growing system in our climate.
-
In that respect,
I can understand its appeal
-
if you're trying to design
the best way to grow food.
-
But the obvious problem
for me is, well, we can't eat trees.
-
With all the greatest respect, a few wild
berries, you can't...it's not a cornfield.
-
-Course it isn't. Course it isn't.
No, no, no, it's insignificant.
-
What we've got to do
is to take the principles of this
-
and see how far we can bend them
towards something more edible.
-
-A food growing system based
on natural ecology
-
really appeals to my naturalist side,
-
but the farmer's daughter in me
needs a bit more convincing.
-
I suppose the big question is,
could permaculture feed Britain?
-
-Yeah, good question.
-
Although the first question
to ask actually is,
-
can the present methods
go on feeding Britain?
-
-Yeah, I suppose, yeah.
-Because actually, that is doubtful.
-
Well, no it's not.
In the long term, it's absolutely certain
-
that present methods can't, because
they're so entirely dependent
-
on energy, on fossil fuel energy.
-
So we haven't really got any choice,
other than to find something different.
-
-Last year, I may have dismissed
permaculture as not proper farming,
-
but with what I've learned
about the oil situation,
-
I'm keen to see it in practice.
-
A visit to a permaculture smallholding
in the mountains of Snowdonia
-
has given me the opportunity.
-
Now, the farmland I'm used to seeing
is clumps of trees surrounded by fields.
-
But this is the complete opposite,
-
a collection of small clearings
in a massive woodland.
-
It may not look like a farm,
but it clearly works.
-
For a few days work each week,
Chris Dixon and his wife Lynn
-
produce all the fruit,
veg, and meat they need
-
and the fuel to cook it.
-
But 20 years ago
when they arrived,
-
it was degraded,
marginal pasture land.
-
The first thing they did was let much
of the land return to its natural state.
-
Now the fertility
has returned to the land.
-
Observing the forest
as it regenerated
-
offered all the inspiration they needed
to design their smallholding.
-
But it is a woodland
still, and it is chaos.
-
-It is chaos, but chaos in this space
is very, very highly ordered.
-
Very highly structured. It's just that
we see it as untidy and a mess.
-
Nature doesn't see it
like that at all.
-
Every plant is doing something useful,
important, valuable on the site.
-
So, for example,
the gorse fixing nitrogen,
-
the bracken collecting potash,
that sort of thing.
-
They gave me the feeling that
every plant is important in some way.
-
-Everywhere you go
on the Dixons' smallholding
-
seems to be teeming with wildlife.
-
How important is the biodiversity--
so, we're hearing birds above us as well--
-
how important is all
of that to this system?
-
-Very important because
by encouraging the habitat for birds,
-
we're encouraging phosphate
cycling through the system.
-
So again, phosphates is another
of the sort of crucial plant nutrients,
-
-Yup.
-...every plant needs them,
-
and phosphates, you'll find in things
like insects and seed.
-
So the birds that eat
insects and seeds,
-
they're accumulating phosphates,
and the excess comes out in their dung.
-
So, up here in the mountains,
-
there's no need for sacks
of fossil fuel-derived nutrients.
-
It's all done by nature:
nitrate, potash, phosphate.
-
And no need, either,
for petroleum based pesticides.
-
-We use ducks, Khaki Campbells,
as slug control.
-
We've kept ducks for 22 years, and the
Khaki Campbells are the best slug-eaters.
-
-Oh, really, there's a big tip.
-And it can be very difficult to find
-
slugs in here during the summer,
which is great.
-
-Fantastic, yeah.
-
Chris's veg garden may look untidy
to a regular gardener,
-
but like in the woodland,
every plant is serving a purpose.
-
For example, some deter pests.
Some help drainage.
-
Some encourage bees for pollination.
-
And others have long roots
that pull up minerals deep from the soil.
-
The largest clearings in the woodland
are kept as pasture for the livestock.
-
But the animals here don't just eat grass,
they're benefiting from the trees as well.
-
Nutrient-rich willow, lime, and ash
are all used as fodder crops.
-
Feeding trees to animals,
-
this is something I would
never have thought of.
-
We don't have much
woodland on our farm,
-
but what we do have
are massive hedges,
-
and now I'm seeing them
in a different light.
-
Well, I've always thought
of a hedgerow as a land division
-
between two fields,
and I've always--
-
well, I suppose on this farm, thought
of it as a wildlife corridor as well,
-
but I've never actually
thought of it as a yielding crop.
-
But their potential even
just as a fodder crop is huge.
-
I've never noticed before
how much the cattle like eating ash.
-
And there is also
a wealth of fruits here,
-
and that's with doing
nothing at all.
-
With a bit of careful steering,
who knows how much a hedge could produce.
-
Ironically, I've learned hedgerows
could be much more productive
-
than the fields they enclose,
and require much less work.
-
You don't have to add anything,
it's self-maintaining,
-
you know, you're not having to tend it,
it's just there in abundance.
-
And why is it there in abundance?
Because it wants to grow here.
-
It's the natural food
that should be here.
-
The only difference is it's growing
upwards and not across.
-
Actually, by utilizing the full height
of trees and hedges,
-
you can squeeze a much higher yield
out of the same piece of land.
-
Turns out, just up the road from our farm
is the best example in Europe
-
of just how far you can take
this way of producing food.
-
Until now, I had no idea it existed.
-
The man behind this pioneering
system is Martin Crawford.
-
-This is a forest garden,
where there's a big diversity
-
of trees, and shrubs,
and other crops,
-
all growing together,
very carefully designed
-
so everything is working together,
-
to give many different yields
from the same space.
-
The trees are spaced very carefully
so that there's enough light
-
getting into the ground layers beneath,
-
so you can actually
grow something productive.
-
Forest gardens are one part
of permaculture
-
where design is clearly
inspired by nature.
-
Something that makes
a natural woodland so productive,
-
is it grows on many layers.
-
It's rather like having half a dozen
fields stacked on top of each other.
-
A forest garden imitates
each woodland layer,
-
but uses more edible
and desirable species.
-
This one down below
my feet here--is very low--
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it's called Nepalese raspberry.
-
It's a fantastic plant and it protects
the soil from winter rain.
-
-And it saves on weeding.
-Yes, so there's no weeding...
-
...to be done, you see.
-No.
-
The garden floor is covered
with fruit and veg,
-
and above them, the shrub layer is
equally abundant, if not a little unusual.
-
-One of several hawthorn species I've got.
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Massive thorns on it, but much
bigger fruits and much tastier fruits.
-
The other side of us is a mulberry.
-You never see mulberry bushes nowadays.
-
-You don't often see mulberries,
but they're really nice fruits,
-
and quite easy to grow, really.
-
Another big salad crop
from the forest garden are lime leaves.
-
And I use them as a base,
kind of a base ingredient, in a salad.
-
-Right.
-Like lettuce.
-
-Oh, okay, so they are
your replacement for lettuce?
-
-Yeah, yeah.
-Big lettuce, Martin. [laughing]
-
A bit higher up are the fruit trees,
-
like apples, pears, medlars,
plums, and quinces.
-
And then there's the canopy, where
those trees that aren't producing food
-
are serving other essential functions,
like cycling nutrients.
-
-...and the Italian Alders
are a very good example.
-
They're very fast growing, and supply
a lot of nitrogen to the plants around.
-
-And this is through the root system?
-
-It's through the leaf litter,
which is still quite high in nitrogen,
-
and the root system,
and also through beneficial fungi,
-
which link up everything under the ground,
and move nutrients around.
-
If there's a lot of nitrogen
in one place in the soil,
-
and a lack of nitrogen in the other,
the fungi will move it for you.
-
-Everything is here
for a reason, isn't it?
-
-Everything's here for a reason...
often multiple reasons.
-
So, behind us, the mint here--
-
this is horse mint, which is one
of the native British mints--
-
The main use for this mint
is actually to attract beneficial insects.
-
It's fantastic at attracting hoverflies,
-
which of course eat aphids,
amongst other things.
-
So, by having plants
that attract beneficial insects,
-
I don't get any pest problems.
-So no pesticides?
-
-That's right.
-Fantastic.
-
Martin has over 550 species
of plant in his forest garden.
-
Surely a growing system this complex
must require endless attention and work.
-
Over a whole year, it probably
averages out about a day a week.
-
-Right.
-A lot of that is harvesting.
-
-Right.
-In terms of maintenance...
-
well, say ten days a year.
-That's ridiculous.
-
Compared to running a farm,
that's virtually nothing.
-
But how much food does it produce?
-
-If you design it for maximum yield,
it can be very high.
-
This forest garden isn't designed
for maximum yield
-
'cause I'm experimenting a lot,
-
and I have a lot of unusual crops
I'm trying, and so on.
-
In terms of one designed
for maximum yield,
-
you would be able to feed probably
ten people an acre
-
on a maximum yield forest garden.
-Really? Okay.
-
That's roughly double
the amount of people
-
that we can currently feed
from an average acre
-
of conventional arable farmland.
-
It is an amazing low energy,
low maintenance system,
-
but what you can't grow
in a forest garden are cereal crops.
-
And we are rather addicted
to our high-carb diets.
-
But as oil gets more expensive
and farming begins to change,
-
it will become necessary for us to broaden
our diets and embrace new foods.
-
Down the road from his forest garden,
-
Martin has created
a four-acre nut orchard.
-
-It would help, enormously,
-
if we could move more towards nuts,
and less towards cereals,
-
because they are much more sustainable,
because they grow on trees.
-
In other parts of Europe, France
and Italy, there's a big tradition
-
of growing hazelnuts,
sweet chestnuts, walnuts.
-
An orchard crop
like a sweet chestnut,
-
it takes far less energy and maintenance
to grow than a field of wheat.
-
-Less energy and maintenance maybe,
-
but can the yield from nuts
really compare with a cereal crop?
-
-You're talking sweet chestnuts,
two tons an acre or something like that,
-
which is pretty much what you get
growing wheat organically.
-
And the composition of chestnut is
almost identical, actually, to that of rice.
-
And it's very similar to the other grains
in terms of calorific value.
-
-Even at this experimental stage,
Martin's nut orchard
-
and his forest garden have
a huge output for such a tiny acreage.
-
Back in Wales,
at the Dixons' equally small plot,
-
there is a similar story
of productivity.
-
-The whole site is seven acres,
-
which now, after 22 years of the natural
regeneration and the stuff we've done,
-
it's too much
for one family to harvest.
-
So, you know, really,
the smaller is better.
-
To me, this is the big difference
between farming and gardening.
-
So I'm not a farmer,
I would consider myself a gardener.
-
-Are you trying to say gardeners
are the way forward, rather then farmers?
-
-I wouldn't say that gardening
is better than farming,
-
gardening is different from farming.
-
But I would suggest that, as far as
I can tell from what I've done
-
in my own practical experience,
and from what I've tried to find out,
-
that gardening with hand tools
is more productive
-
and more energy efficient
than farming.
-
-It's the attention to detail
that a gardener can give to a small plot
-
that makes it so productive.
-
A veg garden with an experienced gardener
can produce up to five times more food
-
per square meter than a large farm.
-
Supermarkets reliant
on transportation,
-
and the industrial scale farms
that supply them,
-
are unlikely to survive
as oil declines.
-
But a host of veg plots,
allotments, and smallholdings
-
could easily make up for their loss.
But only if we have a lot more growers.
-
-The dominant demographic trend
of the 21st century,
-
I think, is going to be re-ruralisation.
-
That's not to say that the cities
will all disappear,
-
but the proportion of people
involved directly in food production
-
is going to increase.
-
Think back to the
Second World War, for example,
-
there was the Victory Garden movement,
where everyone was growing a garden plot
-
and something like 40% of fruit
and vegetables were being produced
-
from front yards and back yards
and vacant lots, and so on.
-
That's a model to imagine
and look back to.
-
-But we also will need
a lot more full-time farmers,
-
otherwise, what are we
going to be eating?
-
Feeding ourselves
as oil goes into decline
-
is clearly going to require
a national effort.
-
And, in an ideal world,
a bit of government leadership.
-
But for my part, weaning this farm
off fossil fuel is all I can do.
-
And the pioneers I've met recently
are a big inspiration.
-
Now I've learned to observe
the land, and work with it,
-
rather than fight against it.
-
I'm fascinated to find out
what species of grass we have,
-
and how I can improve our pastures.
-
And how we can make the most
out of our trees to benefit our cattle.
-
But also, I think we need to produce
more than just livestock.
-
Who knows? In a few years from now,
we might even have a forest garden here.
-
Although I'm not quite sure
what Dad would make of that.
-
But for any of these ideas to work,
-
it's essential to continue
preserving the farm's wildlife,
-
and work even harder
to encourage greater biodiversity.
-
Biodiversity is far more important
to us than I ever gave it credit for.
-
I just always thought it was pretty,
and it was, you know,
-
species we lived with.
-
Now I've learned
the big lesson that
-
it keeps us going, it
gives us food, it protects our food,
-
and it's crucial that we keep it.
-
I'm so grateful for what my uncle
and my dad have done on this farm,
-
because they've kept it all.
-
But there is still so much work
to be done here.
-
And what drives me to make our farm
a farm of the future
-
is the knowledge that I have
no other choice but to try.
-
Of all the people I met,
-
I think Dr. Colin Campbell
puts it best.
-
-What we can say now
without any shadow of doubt,
-
is that petroleum man is just about
extinct by the end of this century.
-
That poses the thorny, difficult question,
will 'Homo sapiens' be as wise
-
as his name implies,
and figure out a way to live without oil,
-
which is the bloodstream
of virtually everything?
-
And it seems to me,
the sooner we begin that transition
-
to a new, low-energy future,
the easier the task will be.
-
[♪♪♪]
