Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution

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Moving, startling, uplifting, galvanising and unsettling, this plainly beautiful book is one of those rare few that changes how you see the world around you: the shape of fields seen from a train, the vegetables in a supermarket chiller cabinet, the earth beneath your feet and falling through your fingers." More than a memoir; Langford manages to contain and convey the whole scale of the coming agricultural revolution. Daily Telegraph A beautifully written, incredibly timely book' - Clover Stroud, author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights Moving, startling, uplifting, galvanising and unsettling, this plainly beautiful book is one of those rare few that changes how you see the world around you ' - Ella Risbridger, author of The Year of Miracles

Rooted by Sarah Langford; Regenesis by George Monbiot reviews Rooted by Sarah Langford; Regenesis by George Monbiot reviews

A timely and optimistic book, ostensibly about why we need farming to produce food, but more deeply about how farming is done, or could be done. Refreshingly authentic, Rooted gives us a hopeful sense of a regenerative future" Sarah Langford used her education to leave the farm for work and life in London. The same went for her husband. 83% of The population in the UK are urbanites now. Because of job situations Langford and her husband and small children returned to a family farm in what was to be a temporary situation. It soon became a passion and we get to see her awakening. Monbiot is not a farmer, which frees him to have an outsider’s perspective. At the same time, he gives little consideration to the cultural side of farming, the realities of rewilding and its impact on rural populations. He criticises “conventional organic farming” and “foodies”, which do not feel like the most important enemies. The ideas that we should eat “less and better” meat or that food should be more expensive are vividly challenged in the passages where he meets users of food banks.

This book broke my heart at times but also contained humour and such poignant insights into the criminal justice system.' A timely and optimistic book, ostensibly about why we need farming to produce food, but more deeply about how farming is done, or could be done. Refreshingly authentic, Rooted gives us a hopeful sense of a regenerative future Juliet Blaxland, author of The Easternmost House and The Easternmost Sky Published in the UK since 1935, Geographical is the official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).

Rooted by Sarah Langford; Regenesis by George Monbiot reviews

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. Rooted is a brave thing: a book that prods into the ever-widening gulf between the binaries we increasingly use to examine the world. As conversations about what we eat and where it comes from reach fever-pitch, Sarah Langford's clear-eyed, inquisitive and passionate plea for farmers and farming offers a vital understanding when it has never been so needed. I hope everyone reads it." An authentic, beautifully written portrait of 21st Century farming, this deeply personal account puts a powerful case: that the task of restoring our earth and ensuring a sustainable future both for our food and ourselves, lies in the hands of those who live closest to the land. 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? Moving, intimate, tender and searing, this is a gem of a book with deep roots and fresh green shoots. Tamsin Calidas, author of I Am An Island

In Rooted, Sarah weaves her own story around those who taught her what it means to be a farmer. She shines a light on the human side of modern farming, and shows how land connects us all, not only in terms of global sustainability but in our relationships with our physical and mental health, our communities and our planet. Enthralling [...] An unignorable call to understand the challenges facing not only farming but the Earth itself." I think it’s for a lot of the reasons that you’ve just said, and it’s clear through the farmers’ stories you’ve told in the book, that agriculture is an aging industry. D o you think there’s a main cause for many young farmers not staying? Rooted shows how agriculture has swung from one idea to another and how farmers are often battered and caught in a terrible bind. Langford interviews a number of contemporary farmers and tells their stories. I cringe at thought

In Your Defence - Penguin Books UK In Your Defence - Penguin Books UK

After gaining a degree in English Literature at a not-very-prestigious university, I worked as a barmaid, legal secretary and note-taking clerk before completing a law conversion course. Thanks to a scholarship from Gray's Inn Of Court I was able to take my Bar Vocational Course. I qualified as a barrister in 2005.Heartbreaking and hopeful, this story of a farming revival has never been more important. It opened my eyes and touched my soul Esther Freud In 2017 my husband, son and baby moved by accident from London to the Suffolk countryside. We expected to stay for six months. In the end, we stayed for two years, taking on the running of his small family farm. Our story is woven around the stories of other farmers I met in my secondnarrative non-fiction book, Rooted: Stories of Life, Land, and a Farming Revolution published July 2022 by Viking ( Penguin Random House). Part-memoir, part narrative account of a selection of farmers from around the country, it seeks to shine a light on the world of farming at a critical point in the future of the countryside. Moving, intimate, tender and searing, this is a gem of a book with deep roots and fresh green shoots."