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As highlighted in The Guardian, new data collated for the book found that there are now more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with some holding as many as a million animals. These large-scale intensive units prevent animals from expressing their natural behaviours. Hope for the future In this beautifully written book Philip Lymbery describes how intensive agriculture harms the environment and inflicts suffering on sentient animals. But after visiting with and talking to those on the front line – scientists, farmers and food providers, he is able to show that there are sustainable alternatives. And that they are working. There is indeed hope for the future of our planet, and each one of us can play a part. I urge you to read Sixty Harvests Left." As UK farming changes, there are calls for reform. The Scrap Factory Farming campaign is taking a case to the European court of human rights, alleging that the government is failing to protect the public from climate change and the threat of future pandemics from factory farming.
The event, attended by several of high-profile supporters and influential journalists, celebrated the powerful new book which follows the successful release of Farmageddon and Dead Zone. He shines a light on the dark side of food production. He opens doors and our eyes to the reality of our global food system. People will often argue that while extreme headlines may be untruthful, they are worth it if they force people to take action. I don’t buy it. It can be damaging in many ways.
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From the United Kingdom to Italy, from Brazil to the Gambia to the USA, Philip Lymbery, the internationally acclaimed author of Farmageddon, goes behind the scenes of industrial farming and confronts 'Big Agriculture', where mega-farms, chemicals and animal cages are sweeping the countryside and jeopardising the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the nature that we treasure. Beautifully crafted. A compelling, excoriating account of industrial farming – how it is driving the climate and biodiversity emergencies, while also undermining our health. Full of insights and encounters with pioneers of new ways of farming, Sixty Harvests Left is a call to action – to change our world from the ground up. A vitally necessary book.” Sixty Harvests Left describes how, far from being ‘a necessary evil’, factory farming is threatening the very survival of our planet and that ending the industrialisation of the countryside is key to saving our children’s future. Everything is linked together A report written by Peter Melchett for the organisation , published in December shortly after his death, said that while CA minimised soil disturbance, reduced erosion and increased organic matter, by itself it was not guaranteed to increase biodiversity or the amount of atmospheric carbon that farmland can absorb and hold.
There are guys in the US who have been doing this for 30 years and their soil is so fertile, they have got so much going on in the ground, that you do not need to apply anything.” A spokesperson for the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) said the vast majority of beef and dairy cattle in the UK were “grazing outdoors throughout the year for as long as the weather conditions permit”. The method involves more planning, but the benefits its advocates claim are remarkable – from plummeting costs on machinery and labour to a drastic reduction in fertiliser and chemicals. This in turn leads to a huge increase in insects, birds and wildlife, as well as fewer floods and more resilient crops during droughts. Sixty Harvests Left is a book about urgency, but also hope,” said Philip at the launch event. “The solutions are just waiting for us to take them down and save ourselves.” Get your copy now Soils are at risk from erosion by wind and water, made worse by the loss of natural features such as hedgerows and trees; from heavy agricultural machinery; from over-grazing, climate change and intensive agriculture. Poor soils also lead to problems with water supplies, and can affect air quality as fertilisers produce ammonia which reacts with other gases to form particles that harm the lungs. As much as 3m tonnes of topsoil are lost in the UK each year, while restoring lost soils can take centuries.
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Campaigners at the conference welcomed the government’s intentions, but called on ministers to ensure that the wording of the agriculture bill goes beyond vague aspirations to encode clear measures and responsibilities, on regulators, farmers, industries and public bodies. Industrial scale animal farming produces cheap meat but at a high environmental cost. "Factory farming is a cruel and wasteful process ... Animals reared in this way eat vast quantities of grain and waste most of its value in its conversion to meat. In this way, we waste crops enough to feed an extra 4 billion people." Lymbery doesn't dwell here on the cruelties of intensive farming but clearly that's another factor. "Long-hidden behind a veil of closed-door secrecy, misleading labelling and opaque government handouts, factory farming will come to be seen as the cruellest folly of our times. Like the slave trade, we will wonder how we let it happen."
There is a groundswell of interest in this, a terrific opportunity,” said Rebecca Pow MP, parliamentary private secretary to Michael Gove. Pow was brought up on a farm and worked as a journalist specialising in the environment, food and farming before becoming an MP in 2015, and she has been an energising force around the issue of soil and sustainable farming in parliament. “I voted remain,” she said yesterday. “But nevertheless, there is an opportunity here that we wouldn’t have had before.” This sounds promising, but what does ‘conservation’ actually mean? What practices should we put in place? There are four interventions we should consider according to Evans et al. 7 In summary, in this the third in a trilogy following on from Dead Zone (2017) and Farmageddon (2014), Philip Lymbery examines the reasons behind the increasing loss of soil, detailing its historical antecedents (Libya and the American mid-west dustbowl of the 1930s) and current trajectories. In the east of England fens we are losing one inch of soil per year, and, globally, such trends may result in only 5 per cent of farmland being left by the 2050s.
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The picture is an undeniably bleak one. But Sixty Harvests Left presents readers with hope and solutions – the regenerative farming systems and the people behind them that work. These are visionary practices that respect our soil, wild and farmed animals and that will ultimately lead to a better future of our children.
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