My childhood was spent in rural East Anglia: the 1950s and early 60s when the post-war push for food production encouraged arable farmers to invest in bigger machines to harvest bigger crops; and bigger fields meant the removal of hedges. ‘Grubbing out’, thus contributing to the ‘prairification of Suffolk’, while denuding Norfolk of almost half its hedges. By 1970 it was estimated that a quarter of hedgerows in England and Wales had been dug out. 4,500 miles-worth! 2,000 miles from the arable lands of East Anglia.
By 1950 my father, abandoning the rented farm he’d tenanted since his father’s death, had left his native Norfolk, moving, in somewhat reduced circumstances, to my mother’s Suffolk village. Now a farm labourer by day and a Special Constable several hours a week, he would don his policeman’s uniform to patrol the village, on foot or by pedal-power. I don’t know if any arrests were, but like to think any youthful misdemeanours, discovered or reported, were met by a knock on the door and a few words to the miscreant’s parents.
Leafing through the little Observer Books of my childhood, the 1952 editions on Butterflies, Wild Flowers and Birds I still own, as well as trawling my memory, the habitat reduction and loss is terrifying. Thanks to deliberately planting for wildlife, I observed several different types of butterflies in my garden this year, though not in the numbers of 10, or even 5 years ago – and definitely not the variety seen back then. Similarly with bird populations (38 million lost from our skies in last 50 years), the skylarks, lapwings, the turtle doves no longer heard. Likewise, the numerous roadside wildflowers I would pass on my way to school, now, thanks to changes in agriculture since the 1950s: insecticide spraying and overfertilization, severely depleted, non-native species outnumbering native plants.
Further from home, I recently saw the US-made documentary Common Ground. A film which, while painting a bleak picture with regard to the over industrialisation of the vast uni-cropped fields of North America – farming on a gigantic scale, with barely a hedge in sight – ends on a hopeful note. It’s mission: to save the world’s soils and produce more nutrient-dense food, by way of rewilding and regenerative practices. If, that is, the large agri-business corporations let them!
COP29 not long over, one wonders where we will be come the next one. Already the UK has seen substantial CC-related flooding. In Spain this year floods killed 230 people. In Italy in 2023 mud slides took 14 lives. But, lest we forget, the 2022 Pakistani floods killed 1,744 and the 2020 S Asian floods (6 countries, including Pakistan) 6, 511! Do poorer populations, those who do not jet about consuming the world, who barely leave their home village, who do not greedily consume energy sources, matter less than white Europeans? $300 billion annually has been pledged at Baku. Here’s hoping the pledgers cough up. Because the rich world has a mountain of work to do, before that mountain comes sliding down on all of us.
By 1970 my parents had moved from the Council House that had been my home for 13 years to a small detached house, with views across the fields to a nearby farm. No longer labouring for a pittance my father, now working shifts, day and night, at a nearby ICI factory, had also given up his special constable duties. The local constabulary, however, same knocking on his door, hoping to use my parent’s sitting room, to stake out, I believe the term is, their neighbour, opposite, who ran a small haulage company. A totally honest and fair-minded man, who looked upon this neighbour as a friend he himself trusted, my father refused to oblige them. My mother related this to me on a weekend visit soon after, I applauding him for it. Though how he, or I, would have fared under the Stasi, heaven knows.
Time for more fairness in the world. Time the rich robbers, the havers and takers, became the Robin Hood’s, redistributing those billions to where they are most needed. As well as rewilding more land, planting more hedgerows – and more trees that might, just might grow up to become the leafy ancient forests of the future.
Published in ENVIRONMENT: Essence & Issue (Pig Iron Press 1992 USA)
An anthology of essays, prose, poetry, artwork and cartoons – sadly, just as relevant today.
COMMON GROUND: directed by Josh Tickell and Rebecca Harrell-Tickell
www.rspb.org.uk /The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk / the Woodland Trust
www.nationaltrust.org.uk / the National Trust
www.butterfly-conservation.org / Butterfly Conservation
www.soilassociation.org / Soil Association