Rev Walter Atwood reviews a book by Philip Lymbery

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781526619341
Number of pages: 384

The last two sentences of the preface of this book read:-

 "This book is about the opportunities that exist for a rebirth of the countryside. Our future depends on a thriving ecosystem and that starts with soil."

That took me back to the second chapter of Genesis where we can read about God putting the man into the garden to till and keep it.

From the very beginning the human race has had a very close relationship with the soil. We are dependent upon it for the vast majority of the food we require to keep us fed and alive. Like those other two essentials to our survival, clean water and air, we, the human race, have abused it. We have treated soil like dirt and not the previous commodity that it is.

The God given task we have is to care for this planet for his sake and the sake of the future generations that will come after us.

The book demonstrates clearly the over the last century, in particular, we have abused the soil to such an extent that it is becoming less able to support us. The continuing degradation of the soil is making it less able to capture and store carbon. We are damaging and losing soil faster than it can be created and in so doing we are releasing carbon it has stored for decades, even centuries, into the atmosphere

This sounds like a depressing book to read. This is not the case. Like Rachel Carson's book 'Silent Spring', which 'Sixty Harvest Left' ought to rank alongside, it has hope at its heart. They both call for humankind to change their relationship with the planet and how they treat it.

Because of this parts of the book have a feeling of being a call to repentance and changing our ways and returning to the ordained way of caring for the planet and producing food.  

We can change the way our food is produced, becoming much less reliant on artificial fertilisers. These are produced by the petro-chemical industry and they are destroying the soil. We also need to be much less reliant on factory farming, with its over reliance on anti-biotics and returning to the more traditional ways of farming. The argument that there should a return to mixed farming, with crop rotation, leaving fields fallow for periods of time took me back 70 years to my primary school days and learning about Anglo-Saxon village life, social history. This may not sound like progress but where it has been tried almost immediately soil degradation has stopped and the process of soil regeneration has begun. Signs of hope.

This book makes for a challenging read whether we are, omnivores, vegetarians or vegans. What and how much we eat is important but equally, perhaps more importantly, how that food is produced will determine the type of world we leave behind.

'Sixty Harvests Left' is a very readable book that will challenge the reader. It is a twenty-five century social commentary on the first couple of chapters of Genesis and needs to be studied.