Simon Fairlie
United Kingdom
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Articles by Simon Fairlie
Meat: A Benign Extravagance - Book Reviews - Small Farmer's Journal
by Simon Fairlie published by Chelsea Green book review by Lynn R. Miller of Singing Horse Ranch Now that food issues have become cocktail party fare we are faced with the diminution of the polemics surrounding food issues.
Monbiotic Man
Regenesis starts harmlessly enough. In his first chapter George Monbiot illustrates the complexities of soil structure by describing what he sees when he looks at a sod dug up from his orchard through a 40x magnifying eyepiece. It is an elegant snapshot of the world beneath our feet that we always vaguely knew about, but rather took for granted until Merlin Sheldrake and others unveiled some of its mysteries.
Draft Animal Power vs. Biofuel Farming – Mother Earth News
In the census of horses conducted by the Board of Trade in 1920, there were 19,743 thoroughbreds in Britain, out of a total of 2,192,165 horses. More than two-thirds of all these were draught horses, of which 774, 934 were in active agricultural work, ploughing the bulk of the 4.5 million hectares under cultivation (about the same area as today).
Less waste and healthy diets: Life in the past
Food waste | Environment & ethics | Plastic There is some nostalgia within green circles for the 1940s, mainly because the war and subsequent rationing imposed a healthy diet (by modern standards) and very low tolerance of waste. But the forties were austere, and many Europeans spent the first half of the decade trying to kill one another, and the second half hungry.
Is There Life After Fert?
By Simon Fairlie, originally published by The Land Magazine March 24, 2022 In March 2021 the wholesale price of natural gas began to rise and increased exponentially until by mid September it was 550 percent higher than it had been six months previously. The UK’s leading manufacturer of nitrogen fertilisers, the US-owned firm CF, shut down its two factories because they could not operate economically at that price.
Going to Seed: Excerpt
By Simon Fairlie, originally published by Resilience.org February 14, 2022 The following excerpt is from Simon Fairlie’s new book Going to Seed: A Counterculture Memoir (Chelsea Green Publishing, February 2022) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher. The 1950s was arguably the decade that best matched a decent standard of living to a sustainable way of life.
Greed and Its Offsets
By Simon Fairlie, originally published by The Land Magazine July 16, 2021 Farmland shouldn’t be used to expiate the carbon guilt of the rich, argues Simon Fairlie. — Bill Gates’s recently published book on climate change tells us little that anyone who is averagely well read on the subject didn’t know anyway.1 As one might expect, he advocates technological fixes, most of which have been on the drawing board for a decade or two.
The Tragedy of Private Property - P2
Editor’s Note: Please read part 1 as this piece continues where we left off in the previous part. A somewhat different approach emerged during the English Revolution when Gerrard Winstanley and fellow diggers, in 1649, started cultivating land on St George’s Hill, Surrey, and proclaimed a free Commonwealth.
The Tragedy of Private Property - P2
Editor’s Note: Please read part 1 as this piece continues where we left off in the previous part. A somewhat different approach emerged during the English Revolution when Gerrard Winstanley and fellow diggers, in 1649, started cultivating land on St George’s Hill, Surrey, and proclaimed a free Commonwealth.
The Tragedy of Private Property - P1
Currently, in Britain, our “property-owning democracy,” nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06 per cent of the population, while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line1. Our popular media seems to give us the impression that our current enclosed land concentration has been here forever.
The Tragedy of Private Property - P1
Currently, in Britain, our “property-owning democracy,” nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06 per cent of the population, while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line . Our popular media seems to give us the impression that our current enclosed land concentration has been here forever.
Muscle or Machine? Draft Animal Power vs. Biofuel Farming
-Advertisement- Plowing with horses is more than a nostalgic farming method — it’s a time-tested way to complete heavy farm work that challenges tractors using biofuels. By Simon Fairlie | July 6, 2012 Plowing with horses is still one of the most common methods used on farms around the world.
Wear the Landscape: Review of Fibershed
By Simon Fairlie, originally published by The Land Magazine February 7, 2020 “Imagine living in a community where no one had a kitchen, and the closest refrigerator, stove, oven, and cooking pots and pans were all located overseas . . .
Quality not Quantity
By Simon Fairlie, originally published by The Land Magazine January 23, 2020 Simon Fairlie casts a sceptical eye over carbon-driven tree-planting proposals. Among the more unedifying moments during the recent general election was the spectacle of the five largest parties trying to outbid each other for the number of trees they aim to plant each year.
Eating The Platter Clean
By Simon Fairlie, originally published by The Land Magazine January 8, 2019 Raising livestock is not always an inefficient use of land, argues Simon Fairlie. A good half of the livestock industry must plead guilty to the charge of inefficiency. The industrial sector feeds chickens, pigs and beef cattle on grains and pulses which humans could eat.
Is eating meat ethical or sustainable? Interview with Simon Fairlie, author of ‘Meat: A Benign Extravagance’
We are sometimes approached by people asking why we provide information on vegetarianism, veganism and keeping animals. Isn’t that a bit incongruous? We don’t think it is, because we want to a) help reduce the overall amount of meat eaten, and b) help people to make a living from smallholding, which becomes a lot more difficult (although not impossible) without animals. We talk here with Simon Fairlie, editor of The Land magazine and author of Meat: A Benign Extravagance. Hi Simon.
May 1968 in the Countryside
“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.” These words, written by William Wordsworth about the French revolution, have an uncanny ring for many of us who fifty years ago saw uprisings roll across Europe and beyond. 1968 did indeed look like a new dawn, even viewed from the relative torpor of Great Britain.
Is Grass-fed Guilt-free? - Resilience
Please download pdf version to see supporting graphs figures and boxes. Dairy and beef farmers and consumers of their products are under attack from scientists and environmentalists who hold cattle responsible for high emissions of greenhouse gases, notably methane and nitrous oxide. Many graziers have resorted to one main line of defence: soil carbon sequestration.
Public Goods Mean Private Benefits - Resilience
A curious consensus has emerged in the debate about how farming should be supported if the UK leaves the European Union. With a few exceptions, everybody, from the Country Land and Business Association to the New Economics Foundation – including the Environment Secretary Michael Gove – is in favour of paying landowners to provide “public goods”.
UK Agriculture After Brexit - Resilience
Even if you are a staunch “remainer”, horrified at the zeal with which the UK is abandoning Europe, there are probably some features of membership which you will be happy to wave goodbye to. High on the list for many people is the Common Agricultural Policy and its system of disbursing agricultural subsidies through direct payments to landowners and farmers, calculated according to the area of land that they own or manage.
The Best Books on Eating Meat
You’ve just published a book called The Ethical Carnivore. What does it mean to be an ‘unethical carnivore?’ Well, to me, being an unethical carnivore means just stuffing your face with meat without caring where it comes from. Being an ethical carnivore means trying only to eat meat that you understand comes from a good source. I tried to define it in my book by saying that ethics is the effort to live a good life.
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