Land of Plenty: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE FIELDS AND FOODS OF MODERN BRITAIN
By: Charlie Pye Smith
Golden fields, ripening apples, lowing cattle: our idea of the landscape has been shaped by agriculture, as has the land itself. But in a fast-changing world, how does the great British countryside continue to provide the food we eat?
In Land of Plenty Charlie Pye-Smith travels the length and breadth of these isles to explore the little-understood world of British agriculture. From ultramodern indoor dairy units producing millions of litres of milk a year to small, old-fashioned farms making cheese with twenty or thirty cows, and from landowners whose families have farmed the same fields for centuries to tenants who have just joined the industry, Pye-Smith investigates the timeless connection between land and people in the twenty-first century.
Revealing the dairy industry in Somerset and Gloucestershire; beef in the Scottish Borders; sheep in North Yorkshire; pigs and poultry in East Anglia and Hampshire; vegetables in Norfolk; and fruit in Essex and the West Country, Land of Plenty is a colourful and rewarding travelogue that gets to the very heart of modern British life.
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Thorough and at times remarkable
- Clive Aslet, The Times -
His story is full of hope and trepidation
- Tom Fort, Literary Review -
Captures the spirit of the English countryside . . . with memorable characters, surprising statistics and incisive reflections by this most gentle of authors
- Country Life