Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside

Product Information

Land Healer'. What a fabulous title for a book! By having a foot in several camps, it may be that Fiennes can be a healer in more ways than one. Already, as described here, he is making changes that are restoring nature and biodiversity in North Norfolk. But also, by being able to inhabit both sides of a deepening divide, he may also help to heal the conversation. What I love about this monument is that it’s all about agriculture and food. ‘Small in size …’ refers to sheep, but to me it refers to bumble bees or butterflies or toads – and ‘Live and let live’ – that’s the biodiversity crisis. We need to share. We need to share this planet with everything that’s in it rather than trying to remove it or destroy it.’ Geese flying over new wetlands at Holkham National Nature Reserve (Image: Archant 2022) Wetland Transformations It was hard to leave Raveningham – ‘I’d been there for 24 years, and it was comfortable and familiar. I was divorced and living alone but I would be moving away from my children. It was a very emotional moment telling Nicholas I was leaving because he’d put his trust in me and allowed me to do what I did. But, three and a half years later, here I am.’ Fiennes sets out to turn his North Norfolk farm into a case study of best practice, demonstrating that, with longer cycles of crop rotation, appropriate and more diverse planting in the off season, a sympathetic and intelligent approach to drainage management and hedge husbandry, significant increases (sometimes more than doubling) in wildlife diversity can be recorded in as little as one year.

A powerful call to arms, this fascinating book makes a clear case to put farming at the heart of the restoration of our countryside" I would have liked an index and some references, but you can’t have everything in a book and this book delivers a great deal. We are a small independent production team who share a passion for the natural world. We believe in the power of films and stories to change hearts and minds. Our team includes experienced documentary filmmakers, scientists, farmers, food and environmental campaigners.

Sign up to our mailing list

Ultimately, hitting our funding target means we can deliver a better film experience for you. One that brings us all closer to igniting the public conversation around food and farming and driving the changes that are critical for our future on this planet. Fiennes tells some good stories and some striking ones. Finding many poisoned Brown Hares (many years ago) in a field which had recently sprayed is a story which hits home strongly, particularly because Fiennes points to the spray operator cut off from nature in his (or her) cab listening to music on headphones as being (but these are my words) as cut off from the consequences of his actions as the townie 50 miles away in a busy street. Holkham employs two full-time nature wardens. There’s Paul, and there’s also Andy, who is self-taught ‘and has an unhealthy relationship with spoonbills and herons – he’s out there seven days a week just looking at them, and he only recognises spiders by their Latin names.’ But wild game shooting is a different matter, and he loved it at Raveningham. ‘Everything made sense. Agri-environment had just started; I was looking to improve conditions for ground-nesting birds – overflowing hedges and grassy banks. I would spend hours walking and observing – I used to just go into the woods and sit and listen. The woods tell you what’s going on.’

But at Holkham, where it had been declining steadily since 2005, its population has risen dramatically in the last three breeding seasons, from 140 breeding pairs in 2018, up to 260 in 2021.

Heartbreaking and hopeful, this story of a farming revival has never been more important. It opened my eyes and touched my soul.'- Esther Freud I do however see that within all this there are some ideas which can be taken from Fiennes’ work at Holkham. His ability to judge where small changes could lead to big differences is the one real positive which I come away with. On some former arable land, including those visible from the busy coastal car park at Lady Anne's Drive, dry fields have been recreated into thriving wetlands, building bunds on old drainage channels and installing simple mechanisms to control the water, along with existing sluices.