Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
020 Rewilding with Lord Somerleyton
86 Plays5 years ago
GUEST: HUGH CROSSLEY OF SOMERLEYTON, FRITTON LAKE AND WILD EAST FOUNDATION
- https://www.frittonlake.co.uk/
- https://www.instagram.com/frittonlake/
- https://www.facebook.com/frittonlake/
- https://www.somerleyton.co.uk/
- https://wildeast.co.uk/
- https://www.facebook.com/wildeastuk
- https://www.instagram.com/wildeastuk/
HOST: MATT MORLEY OF BIOFIT NATURAL HEALTH & FITNESS AND BIOFILICO WELLNESS INTERIORS
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Green and Healthy Places
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to episode 20 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the world of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality. Today, I'm in the east of England, talking to Hugh Crossley, the fourth baron summerlyton.
00:00:28
Speaker
as well as being a large landowner, Hugh is a passionate advocate of eco-restoration, the co-founder of the Wild East Foundation and also owner of Friton Lake and Nature Centric members Holiday Club on his own estate.
Wild East Mission and Nature Corridors
00:00:43
Speaker
We discuss the Wild East rewilding mission, the role of expanded nature corridors through the landscape in reducing dependence on agricultural chemicals
00:00:53
Speaker
The challenges of scaling up regenerative farming techniques and how citizens are actively contributing a slice of their own gardens to the Wild East Mission.
00:01:03
Speaker
terms of Friton Lake we look at how he enables human nature connection through everything from log cabin retreats, wildlife safaris around their own farmland, foraging and birdsong experiences, even the prospect of an on-site nature gym to complement the existing wild swimming, stand-up paddling, trail running and triathlon training options. Ultimately though,
00:01:28
Speaker
This is a conversation about what Hugh Lord Somerton calls the age of salvation, a society-wide reset of how we live, eat, think and consume. It's about a relationship with nature based on coexistence rather than dominance of us over her. There is surely no more powerful expression of my own green and healthy places concept than this one.
00:01:54
Speaker
So I invite you to step back, think big for a moment, and above all, listen through to the end for the full expression of this fascinating concept. If you enjoy this episode, please consider subscribing for more regular updates. You have all the websites and social media links in the show notes. Now it's over to Lord Somleyton to talk rewilding.
00:02:17
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us today. It's a real pleasure to have you here with us. I thought we could start by just talking a little bit about the hospitality offer at Shritten Lake, because it seems it's inherently connected with nature. You have a range of hospitality, so accommodation options
Friton Lake's Sustainable Hospitality
00:02:36
Speaker
there. How have you gone about creating that? Quite a diverse selection of accommodation options.
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, I think in a sense, you're totally right. I mean, the draw of Britain, even if it wasn't so overt, for more than 100 years, really, in different ways, has been the tourist and hospitality offering has been connected to the natural beauty of Friton Lake. And I suppose back then, there wasn't the climate emergency and there wasn't the eco-catastrophe and biodiversity loss.
00:03:11
Speaker
But so people weren't maybe conscious so much of as they are now in the reason for coming being being a nature based reason to reconnect. But but actually, you know, in fact, it's the same the same thing kind of repackage for
00:03:27
Speaker
21st century. But we, I mean, to answer your question, we struck out in 2003, four, two, and got a consent for, you know, what really was log cabin homes, which are owned by, you know, we sell it on a, on a license, and that community has sort of grown over time. And, but it's only really, I have to say, in the last sort of
00:03:49
Speaker
It's been in my mind for a while, but the last four to five years that that's sort of maturing into a very clear thing.
Rebranding Traditional Activities
00:03:56
Speaker
And the three hooks that we kind of talk about are absolutely food and hospitality. We want people to be well looked after in all the traditional ways that good hospitality does. But then there's the sport and recreation, which is how we connected in particular. And the wrapper is this wonderful thousand acre
00:04:16
Speaker
wild land reserve that we've created which is you know in a way always been there but has been officially created with sort of new meaning in the last sort of 18 months. It strikes me that there is an element of putting a slightly different twist on some things that have been with us for a long time. I mean you mentioned the idea of wild swimming which is effectively going for a dip in the lake but
00:04:42
Speaker
you know it's almost as if we've needed we because we've become so many of us certainly living in cities have become so detached from that it's almost as if we're having to to rediscover it and often in that process it gets given a slightly different name or it gets sort of almost branded in a sense but you've become you're really playing quite a sort of central part in that from what I can see within within the UK I'm really out there at the forefront of
00:05:06
Speaker
promoting this greater connection to nature. Has that always been there and was it obvious to do that or was it very much led on a personal mission basis?
00:05:16
Speaker
Well, I suppose if I kind of belong to that category I was speaking to before, you know, I grew up there and took it for granted completely. But wild swimming, therefore, was just what we did. And to a certain extent, you could argue that I know it's a word that until very recently is belong belong exclusively to Africa. But going on safari to a degree with my father was
00:05:38
Speaker
you know what we did also, but as you say, the relevance of it has been repackaged and the urgency around that, both for the mental health, for people feeling the need to connect, but also together with the emergency. So the realization that we've kind of brought ourselves to the brink. So, I mean, you're right, it is a rebrand. And in one sense, I'm very proud of being part of that rebrand and trying to
00:06:09
Speaker
help people with that connection and to make it more defined and more obvious. On the other hand, I was talking to my old farm manager not long ago and getting very excited about some of our regenerative farming things and he listened for a bit and then he sort of winked at me and said, he said, I'll tell you what, Huey, that's just farming like we used to. And so the point you're saying is absolutely right.
00:06:31
Speaker
It's always been there. It's just we haven't really tapped it. But I think having said that, the one thing that, for me, it was completely missing until I read around the subject more and looked at the Dutch model in Usvada Plaza, but also the return of wolves to Yellowstone and the sort of idea, the understanding around the trophic cascade, how everything connects.
Rewilding Efforts and Ecosystems
00:06:52
Speaker
I suppose the thing that was missing is when I was there in my youth and certainly faced value and joined the natural beauty and the floral diversity to a degree, the missing thing was really animals. Because there were no very little deer in those days, but all the, you know, the old farming where everyone had, everything was grazed to a degree, a lesser or greater degree.
00:07:16
Speaker
in a very localised way was missing so that the area around the lake the thing that's been missing is it's had it's got the wonderful trees it's got the water in the water it's got sort of fairly ancient species like pike but around it in the hinterland and the arable land we've let go but also in the woodland there hasn't been this sort of suite of grazing animals or predators so it becomes one thing and in fact it's
00:07:40
Speaker
beautiful but probably as monocultural as as some of the crops in the fields around you know just pine trees with bracken underneath and
00:07:48
Speaker
I suppose it's a big, I've been on that journey as well. So it wasn't that long ago that I was happy just to see that as perfect, but didn't realise that it was silent, all the things that are missing. And so bringing that back to life and doing it with new members and people coming on holiday who are as well read now as
00:08:11
Speaker
I have called up with me. Everyone knows about wilding now, so you have to be on your game when you're on a safari to not get caught out. It's an interesting concept, the idea of if one takes what one sees around us in terms of
00:08:28
Speaker
you know, a natural park, for example, as well, it's always been that way. Whereas in fact, when you, when you dig into it, it often hasn't been that way, or it's only been that way for 50 odd years, or it's actually, those trees were planted, they're incredibly neatly formed in rows, and you start sort of scratching the surface, and you realize we're actually, it wasn't quite like that before, or the diversity of species, plant species or animal species is far reduced compared to how it perhaps three or four generations
00:08:57
Speaker
the go, but it's not immediately obvious. So how do you sort of encourage that type of thinking? Obviously, there's some guests who perhaps probably come to you by that stage because they're advocates themselves or they already converted, but it's quite a subtle point, isn't it? You're really sort of
00:09:14
Speaker
trying to encourage someone to step out, step back a little bit and to rethink what they consider to be, well, that's nature. Because often it's a nature that we've crafted or moulded to some extent over the last 50 or 100 years. Whereas you're really saying, well, actually, gosh, we need to go back a bit further than that. Would that be fair?
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. I think we're very good at, you know, we're vain species and very conscious of our own self importance. And I'm not criticizing that that's just a reality. And we don't like to, you know, went with a big battleground about say, rewilding the kind of parts of Wales, the upland of Wales, which is, was forest, you know,
00:09:56
Speaker
has been denuded by over and overgrazed by sheep and the argument against is well that's our culture you know the human culture well like the mining the culture of miners it was smashed by you know in the in the days of Thatcher and the sort of you know the big loss was not so much the coal but the communities that's and the way of life and so I think one has to be very sensitive to that in in the hill country
00:10:20
Speaker
in Wales there's some people who work incredibly hard to with on a very meager existence but it's in their soul but it's only you know at the most a thousand years old but really in only a couple of hundred years old as you say and and so getting people to stretch that and think that and really accept the fact that it's not a judgment against us being good or bad but
00:10:43
Speaker
you know, nature with us in it has been going on for tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years before and realizing that those farmland birds that we think can only survive in farmland, actually surviving perfectly well before we were farming, they've adapted to fit into the farm landscape.
Perceptions and Management of Nature
00:11:02
Speaker
And it's only really in the last 50 years where excess chemicals and the reduction of scrub and those things have crashed. They haven't been able to continue to adapt.
00:11:12
Speaker
So yeah, it's difficult, but you're basically having to reappraise and adjust one's entire attitude towards countryside management and the culture that goes with that for being tidy and neat. I think we've become very tidy and neat. I always say to people when I'm on a Zoom about this kind of thing is it probably goes back, if we were honest, when we were terrified of
00:11:41
Speaker
the state of nature we were living in a landscape of fear and that we cleared ground mainly because we were living in fear it gave us an opportunity to escape and that the flymo and the and the strimmer and the pushing back of nature the edge of nature is almost a sort of accidental hangover of this sort of
00:12:00
Speaker
primeval fear of the landscape and we need to kind of somehow shake it off and realize that we don't need to be fearful anymore. We just got to let nature have not complete control but allow it to have much more self-willed management than we've been used to. I think we felt we had to control. It was almost our proof that we were the top gun. And I think we're now realizing that actually
00:12:29
Speaker
proving that we're top gun is being able to not control and to let go, you know, a bit like having kids and allowing them grow up. It's the same kind of idea, but with nature. So that's that segue is quite nicely into the idea of when you have that when you change the dynamic between
00:12:48
Speaker
civilization as it is today and nature, then that sort of greater respect for nature or perhaps a previous version of that gives you a pretty clear direction in terms of how you need to treat it and therefore it gives you a sense of sustainability, recycling, reusing.
Sustainable Practices at Friton Lake
00:13:05
Speaker
doing as little harm as possible. And you've integrated that into the concept there at Friton Lake. So how does that sort of manifest itself? What kind of things have you had to rethink or adapt in terms of how you operate the business in order not to do any unnecessary harm in terms of plastic waste or something like that? What sort of policies have you found successful and how have you integrated that?
00:13:31
Speaker
Well, so I'm the first to admit that with with my team, my my employee team, which is if you like one part of the waste or the problem or potentially the potential problem.
00:13:43
Speaker
and as in using too much power or creating too much waste or not recycling properly or not thinking frankly about it, how important it is, has been and remains a sort of challenge. Part of that is just where I am and as an area it's sort of generally behind the curve in most sort of trends.
00:14:06
Speaker
And then there's another group, which is the owners of the cabins. And I have to say to a man, I would say they've come here because they are respectful and want to live in a more sustainable way and to contribute towards or be involved with eco restoration in the broader sense. And naturally, so when you say to them, please don't bring waste onto site.
00:14:29
Speaker
as much as you can that's first you know I think refuse if you take the refuse reuse recycle they're the they're the winning ones the bit the difficult ones and my team and not to criticize them they're getting there now but it has been you know 18 months of you know and I think I compare it slightly to health and safety in the sense that I remember my dad rather embarrassed in a meeting having to talk about health and safety maybe in late 80s or whenever it was as a sort of rather new thing that was foisted upon that generation
00:14:57
Speaker
And actually now, then, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 years later, it just is on every agenda and every meeting. It's just normal. And so the normalization of of putting nature and sustainability at the heart of all your decision making just is going to take time to normalize because it's been anything but.
00:15:17
Speaker
And I found the most challenging part here is the holiday makers because they've got a very, well, not necessarily, they're not taking a long term stake in your business in the way that an owner is. And sometimes the staff, particularly the seasonal and junior staff who just haven't grown up in that environment. And so it's really, you know, even making them realize why it matters is quite a challenge. But having said that, you know, we now
00:15:45
Speaker
have a very, you know, I wouldn't say it's quite the European standard of a kind of European, I'm thinking of ski resorts, you know, which have been like this for two decades, but where every, you know, and European airports where there's all the different bins, we have got all the different bins, and we are beginning to, you know, be really reasonably tough on what people bring to site.
00:16:04
Speaker
We've been looking at ways of pricing our menu around waste. It's quite a controversial thing, but a lot of people, there's a lot of food waste in restaurants and food has become so cheap. One of the successes, a bittersweet success of modern farming and food production is food's got so cheap that we're happy to throw it away, which is like a crazy sort of offshoot of the success of farming systems.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, so so I think we are probably I would say halfway through that cycle and and then pushing people away from their cars, getting to leap drop and, you know, I wouldn't say we were there yet at the front of that. But I think, you know, I think by the by the end of this year and looking into 2022 where we feel we should be at a point where we can be where our bark, if you like, or our bite is a match or what we say online and what you know, what actually happens, I hope will be
00:16:59
Speaker
you know, in line with each other. I'm a bit ahead naturally and so don't suffer that, I find it hard sometimes to suffer the,
00:17:08
Speaker
So we recycle all off. We've got a great guy locally who takes all our food waste and turns it into energy. But sometimes you're looking in there and they're little sachets of, you know, from someone to catch up because COVID actually has been very difficult for that because no one's allowed to touch anything. So you have to, anyway. So we're definitely getting there.
Community Support in Sustainability
00:17:28
Speaker
But as a group of people, my owners are both pushing me, particularly the new brand, the new breed of owners and indeed members.
00:17:36
Speaker
Because they're coming from a slightly different place, and are further ahead naturally than this area is is that so they're just wondering why why what's going on here kind of thing. It's really useful to have that, you know, constructive judgment, you know, coming in from from some of my, you know, owners and members. I'm sure if you were coming down regularly you'd be in that group.
00:18:00
Speaker
You know, I was just thinking that. I mean, you mentioned the word inconsistencies and, you know, recognizing one's own inconsistencies. Once you start along that path, you know, it probably took me three, four, five years to really iron out those inconsistencies in terms of, you know, I started through exercise. It was exercising outdoors in nature, a kind of rejection of the typical indoor gym that I just wasn't keen on. And that was my way in.
00:18:24
Speaker
and from there it then got into a what am I eating and how much plastic am I bringing into the house and do I want to use fossil fuels if I need to get from A to B or is there another way for me to get from A to B and it's sort of it just snowballs and you just catch yourself with those inconsistencies but doing it solo having a community as it seems like you're effectively providing there which is which was certainly lacking in my case and you just have to sort of work it out and you're trying to sort of you know you read your books and
00:18:51
Speaker
read up on the themes. But it is a process when we're moving. It's a complete lifestyle change if one hasn't grown up around that. So I think, yeah, it's a big task to deliver it at a business level. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, the other thing that we've been doing, which is, again, where it gets more complicated and you need kind of more, well, you need the senior management probably, but also
00:19:17
Speaker
real thought is like the purchase of a log cabin for example is you know looking at your supply chain is that person adhering to the sort of principles that you would adhere to obviously sustainable timber is is pretty much a universal thing now but but not always and and uh and they're obviously made in a very um they're very they're made to be very well insulated so they don't need to draw much power to be warm which is another easy win but when you start to examine that
00:19:45
Speaker
fully as in Daniel Food Supply Train and other areas of the business that you're buying stuff in. You just think, okay, I need some clay for the clay tennis court to start then thinking, well, hang on, where's the clay coming from? And it's not always something you can cure, but what you can cure is thinking about it. And as you say, once you're analyzing it and it becomes normal,
00:20:08
Speaker
You accept that it can't be 100% all the time, there will be compromises, but you haven't lost the opportunity to examine those decisions, is the really key part.
00:20:20
Speaker
So just sort of widening the discussion a little bit to how once you have someone with you staying, whether they're visiting for a day, a weekend or longer, then the interactions then with nature.
Engaging Visitors at Friton Lake
00:20:33
Speaker
You've mentioned the idea of being able to swim in a lake, but beyond that, what other type of activities can people get up to whilst they're there? I know you're a trail runner yourself.
00:20:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, so I mean, I suppose in a kind of sort of sport and recreation envelope, so to speak, we last year we weren't able to do these things, but we've got a sort of series of different sort of experiences that are kind of led activities. So a full-blown safari, we've got a
00:21:05
Speaker
actually thinking about it and probably not the most sustainable vehicle in the world, but it's an old Austrian military vehicle, but to take people around so they can see both what we're doing, why we're doing it, and that's a kind of half-day thing, which, you know, is a sort of the main way of understanding the story around what is in the end a relatively small wilding project and the processes connected to that and the whys and the wherefores.
00:21:31
Speaker
We've also got a water one which is sort of shorter but lake based but and then we do the same sort of thing on paddle boards as well just for those who want to go under their own steam and then and then on a some more local kind of child friendly level there's kind of foraging and birdsong walks it just within so so you know within an hour of where they're staying so not having to go too far
00:21:56
Speaker
The two things that I'm wanting to bring in that I haven't yet, last year was obviously a bit of a duffier. I follow someone in, I think they're in Africa somewhere, but they're called eco-restoration camps. But I think that notionally, you go to this wonderful place, but while you're there, you help contribute time to doing something, whatever that is.
00:22:18
Speaker
I mean, it's quite difficult. But obviously, if it's livestock based, then there's a sort of slight aspect of possible danger for people who are inexperienced. But what we're looking at trying to do is maybe a trail run around the lake, but a stop point where they meet a ranger and then spend an hour doing something. For us, the big thing is the big enemy, if you like, is rhododendron, which was put in by the Victorians. And it's not invasive.
00:22:47
Speaker
non-native species that we've been clearing and eradicating slowly. But it's a very easy thing because people can just pull the little seedlings when they come back without back injuries and without putting themselves in any danger. And we've got a few other ideas, but the fun things, you know, fence repairs might be one, but moving stock is another. It's just a sort of hazardous aspect that one needs to think about.
00:23:14
Speaker
And then we've created the last one is just on the in with it's new this year we created a.
00:23:19
Speaker
A small area, we're calling it a model farm, but basically what we're trying to do is most people won't want to spend the time spending a half day or even a whole day tour going around the whole place. So we're kind of putting in a micro farm with some old varieties of cereals to show people, kind of tell people that story of some of the stuff we could still be eating and growing that we've stopped growing. We grow basically one crop, I mean one or two crops when we used to grow in the 18th century a lot more.
00:23:46
Speaker
like spelt and pulses and beans and but also the wildlife corridors that we put in to the farm to try and buffer give nature a better buffer and so that is just a very localized you know three acre site just so we can keep you know because we're just very aware from last year that
00:24:05
Speaker
most people will do something that's small scale and within maybe an hour's activity and then they're really dedicated or want to come out on a big adventure and you kind of need to provide for both. So we're trying we want to leave them each person with a you know and foraging is another one that's easy in that sense you don't have to go very far and they can take it back to the kitchen and cook it but
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah, they're the kind of main connections really. I think from a lot of my members being able to go quietly on their own at five o'clock in the morning or even eight o'clock at night in low light on a paddleboard or on a swim following the edges of the lake.
00:24:48
Speaker
quietly probably is more enriching because they get the kind of soulful enrichment that as well as you know what they see and it's kind of what I would do I mean it's a bit selfish and self-centered but it's sort of being able to do that is a new thing for us because being a club it allows for a far greater degree of autonomy than when it was a just a day attraction.
00:25:14
Speaker
So we've got to get into this then, the idea of, because you've got the eco-restoration project that is happening, it's almost like a test bed on site at Fridden Lake, and then there's the far wider project which is your wildeese
Wild East and Friton Lake Connection
00:25:26
Speaker
foundation. So
00:25:27
Speaker
How do the two connect? You're applying similar philosophies to both. One is at a far, far larger scale and one is on your own land, but applying the same worldview or the same interpretation. I think that's basically right. I think my dad used to say to me that an estate is a little bit like a mini microcosm of a community. You've got a village with
00:25:52
Speaker
farmland and some business and a church and in a small way it's a little mini kind of state of its own. And I suppose you're right, so while these really was three sort of middle-aged eco-anxious farmers who were all doing quite a lot off their own bats and had been for some time, as with me, Ollie and Argus are all
00:26:15
Speaker
you know, I think sort of natural rather than sort of conservation minded people. So wilding was a sort of natural next step for us. But we kind of realize that the conserving nature, which has been the sort of the policy for the last 50 years, really, 60, 70 years, probably back to the 50s, when the Wildlife Trust bought these little bits of land dotted around the country to conserve something, a fragment of something that used to be everywhere.
00:26:44
Speaker
And I'm not judging that, but the reality is there's a book that talks about England being an island of islands. You've got these tiny islands of conservation, but they simply aren't enough for any recovery, a sustainable recovery in populations of pretty much anything from
00:27:02
Speaker
you know, birds to insects to mammals and so on. So, you know, we're all, you know, around 50 and realize that we could carry on our own patches feeling good about what we were doing. But actually nature recovery is if the government talks about
00:27:17
Speaker
nature recovery networks which is a sort of natural England study of the connectivity of rivers and old landscapes and how we might reimagine them then actually you need with that to overlay that with what you might call a human nature recovery network because
00:27:34
Speaker
The crash in nature is mirrored by a crash in people's interest and basic knowledge in it.
Youth and Nature Reconnection
00:27:41
Speaker
And the challenge, I think, for us all, our generation or mine anyway, is that we can do lots of good, but the risk is the same mistakes get repeated because the people beneath us, the younger generations,
00:27:52
Speaker
Just have no connection and so you can't how can you save and well? I think that's a jack kusto's he coined his phrase about You know you you know you love what you know or you I can't was actually how it goes But you you know you treasure it and then you'll try and save it but if you don't if you don't have any sense of what's missing if you're a child today and your bird table used to be thronging with
00:28:19
Speaker
10 times as many species and 10 times the volume of species of those things, roughly. But now it's just the odd bird. You're probably happy with the odd bird, but you can't reimagine that. And I think that's the real kind of challenge. And while these was really a call to arms for our region to say, look, we are the heaviest, the most heavily farmed region of the UK. It's on the face of it flat and features. We don't have mountains and drama in our landscape, but
00:28:47
Speaker
So if nature, if we can make nature recovery a kind of brand and a normal, a normal and the new normal out here, then it actually can happen anywhere. And that was really how it started. So yes, I use, I'm absolutely right, you're actually at Fridden Lake specifically, but the wider estate, I sort of definitely see as a sort of,
00:29:06
Speaker
template, a microcosm, a micro template of what could be on a wider scale in this region. And therefore it does, you know, we're on show now because while this has got some quite good media and, you know, I'm very aware suddenly that, you know, I mean, my farm is by name is perfect. We've only recently got into regenerative agriculture, but
00:29:28
Speaker
Being on that journey, a bit like the sustainability story we were talking about before, and beginning to examine those decisions that you're taking is absolutely the first important step, then it becomes normal.
Regenerative Farming Principles
00:29:40
Speaker
regenerative farming then I think it's probably worth just zeroing in on that a little bit so that we really get our heads around it. So would it be fair to say it's effectively about trying to put more back in than you take out of the soil? But how does one do that? What are the changes that you have to implement?
00:29:58
Speaker
OK, so if you think that up till very recently, and still in most farms, the drug essentially to create crop is chemicals. So we fell out of love with using nature to fertilize and enrich the ground.
00:30:24
Speaker
It was sort of after the war, but really the 60s and 70s was the real acceleration of that kind of happened. And we use a fraction of the chemicals now that we did then, but we still use them a lot. And the full circle really is not only is that causing biodiversity collapse, catastrophic loss of nature,
00:30:46
Speaker
But also, we're beginning to realise that in a good farming system, looking back in the old ways of using nature to help you farm is now being re-recognised as actually a good thing. So therefore, the four principles really are
00:31:10
Speaker
Disturbing the soil as little as possible is sort of number one. So either no-till or min-till farming is kind of the sort of holy grail of that. Now, it is not possible to do that with things like potatoes, because obviously at the moment potatoes have grown subterranean in the ground, so you can't really do that. So every time you pass, make a pass on a field in a tractor, the tractor is burning carbon, obviously.
00:31:35
Speaker
And when you open the soil through plowing and cultivation, you are releasing carbon. So it's kind of new knowledge of this. But also you're destroying the microbiology and the structure of the soil. So no till is preferable. So you can do that with wheat and grain, beans, you know, oilseed, ripe peas, but not so much with potatoes.
00:31:58
Speaker
and sugar beet and things like that so there's a compromise there the second one is keeping the field green all year round so you remember probably from your childhood is it was pretty normal to see acres and acres and acres of brown fields through the winter and now increasingly if you're into regenerative farming you would behind the combine at the end of whatever crop you've grown you'd immediately sow
00:32:20
Speaker
a sort of restorative mix which will be a mixture of legumes and maybe oil radish and depends on what you're doing and late pollinators so good for nature putting goodness back into the soil and keeping it green which means you don't get erosion so you don't lose your top soil which is you know you've seen kill it kiss the ground so
00:32:40
Speaker
So that's the other one. If you have livestock, where you have livestock, moving them through the farming system, so they're renewing the soil, but also they're outside until they're living a high welfare and naturalistic life. And then all of that should lead to the fourth one, which is reduction in chemicals, because you're using nature to replace the chemicals. Whereas a generation ago, we were doing exactly the opposite. So that's kind of the family.
00:33:05
Speaker
of things and if you can add into that the widening of or the enrichment of the kind of nature corridors so hedges through the farm landscape so essentially if you imagine at the moment they're all minis if you're looking at cars and we can turn them all into double-decker buses well they double-decker bus will house a lot more nature than a mini and that nature
00:33:30
Speaker
it will help manage the, so if you've got, you know, insect life, we can help manage the aphids and things that attack crops for you rather than it having to be done by a fungal spray. And people at the beginning, that will only work, you know, at the edge of the field out towards the middle, not in the real middle because of the, but it's really wonderful that people suddenly realizing, my God, you know, these things are doing, it can do it for us. So yeah, so that's kind of it in a nutshell.
00:33:58
Speaker
So you need that scale then in order to do enough of the many, many different sort of, to cover enough of the basis, if you like. But then can that model of agriculture, can that scale in itself or does it depend on a fundamental change in our relationship with, for example, meat?
00:34:18
Speaker
and the things that we eat, because often the way you're describing the animals moving around, that suggests you've got a lot more space than perhaps sort of heavily intensive farming and agriculture typically would suggest. So how can it grow? How can it... Yeah, well, I think... So I've got a neighbour who's a regenerative farmer and he is heavy land and so it's not good for putting animals out in the winter.
00:34:44
Speaker
just because it just turns to, you know, like the First World War trenches. So that's, so he's a real purist. So he does, he hardly touches his ground at all. It's incredible. I mean, when you dig into his soil for a foot down, it's just teeming with life. And he has very good crop results from almost very, you know, very low inputs as in chemical inputs.
00:35:06
Speaker
and we have more mixed farms so we've got very light land which is not very good for growing anything so unless you can irrigate a crop like sugar beet or sorry potatoes or onions that's where the value comes in but it's so but we can put animals out through the winter because it's basically sand and they can live outdoors on that sort of ground and do good through the winter so there's always a little bit of compromise but in terms of the scale you're quite right if you think of
00:35:33
Speaker
So the wild east as a region is about 1.2 million hectares in area, and about 1 million of that is farmed, as in, you know. And if you think that 40, I mean, you can argue the toss, but somewhere between 45 and 50% of that is growing feedstock. So food for animals that are living primarily indoors to feed our addiction to cheap meat. Well, absolutely, if you're gonna be,
00:36:02
Speaker
farming for nature and actually for our health. It's a very beautiful and very obvious now, a virtuous circle, is that we can give land up for nature if we reduce our meat consumption because half of our land is growing cheap food for meat to grow protein.
00:36:24
Speaker
And if we then consider that because it's become so cheap, people have got, you know, I think in the 1970s, about a third of one's house, the average household income was spent on food and that's about 10%. Now there are some very, there's some statistics in there, you know, some very impoverished areas where actually that doesn't work quite, but just taking as averages.
00:36:45
Speaker
Well, that's wonderful. You could argue that's a success, but it's come at catastrophic costs for biodiversity. And I would argue our human health. We've addicted to a high sugar, high protein diet, which is killing the earth, but actually killing us. And I hate to bring it up, but Britain was a
00:37:05
Speaker
one of the worst in America, victims of COVID because of that obesity problem, which is coming off that diet. And I think it's absolutely right we should be talking about that. And we're working with the University of Essex on a model, which is taking your point about the reduction of meat. I think if we were able to look into the future and look what success looks like, our children, when they're, it's only my children, when they're my age, I think it will have collapsed anyway. I think it's coming because of beyond meat culture, but because of sea change.
00:37:35
Speaker
But we're trying to do a model for the wild east region. If we had only outdoor animals living either on wild systems, you know, like versions of Friton Lake, or on arable systems in the way that I described in a regenerative farming.
00:37:49
Speaker
how much meat, if we didn't export or import, could we eat as a region, purely self-sustaining animals in one of those two systems. Anyway, we haven't got the answer yet, but it will be a tiny fraction of what we're doing now. People laugh at it, but it's a really good place to start because I bet by the time when
00:38:07
Speaker
2070, that will be pretty normal. It's not going to survive because it's horrendous. On a very personal level, it's a horrendous business. To think that we kill a billion chickens in this country and throw, therefore, 300 million of them away in waste, that's not good for anything. It's not good for the chickens. It's certainly not good for us.
00:38:29
Speaker
and it's killing biodiversity. So I think it's kind of coming down the track and my farming system here is completely underpinned on that basis. I'm happy to admit it's a middle-class eco-anxious business at the moment, where your meat comes from, whether it's high welfare, but it has to become everybody's concern because that's how you reduce meat intake. The awareness has got to be through the
00:38:58
Speaker
all consumers, not just the top of the tree. So I think you're right. So if you take those two big, and also the other big factor, of course, is that we, particularly in Britain, North Sea, we've been fighting over our North Sea fish. Well, we don't eat any of it. It all goes to Europe. I mean, the irony is we have a very limited fish diet. We're very unadventurous with fish.
00:39:21
Speaker
Our biggest fish import is prawns coming from, God knows where, Asia somewhere. And we import 45% of the food we eat in this country, a lot of it from the EU, fruit and vegetables. So we're nothing like, say, self-sustainable anyway. So if you're accepting there's a global economy around food, there's also that bit of what food system is that food coming from.
Challenges of Sustainable Living
00:39:47
Speaker
It's all very well going to
00:39:49
Speaker
to a vegan diet, but if you look at some of the monocropping in South America to support soya, for example, is equally as catastrophic as beef in a different way.
00:40:05
Speaker
It's a very common dilemma and in fact it's almost pretty much anything we decide to look under the hood of. There's always compromises to be made and I felt it myself at a certain point in that journey, that sort of transition, lifestyle transition that we mentioned earlier. There were times where I felt a sort of paralysis
00:40:26
Speaker
Because you just, you almost couldn't, in some way we were having a negative impact on the world around us. It was almost unavoidable and that created this sort of sense of
00:40:36
Speaker
of anxiety and I almost couldn't do anything. And that also isn't a positive sensation. So that with sort of almost an acceptance, assuming the responsibility on one level, but accepting that at the same time, we still need to get on with our lives and do what we do. But there are better choices that we can all make. And it's usually, there's multiple, multiple choices every single day. It doesn't stop with choosing your diet.
00:41:02
Speaker
It's then how you move around, what transport you use, and it just goes on and on. It's a whole series of decisions and it doesn't stop.
00:41:12
Speaker
No, no, I think I think, you know, also that that's right. And I think the challenge, therefore, and the job of Wild East as a brand, as a story, as a movement is is really the single thing. It's about, I suppose, culture and changing culture through education. And what we what we need as a planet, as a species, and in this case, as a region, is a reset so that, you know,
00:41:38
Speaker
going to health food shops and being very discerning about what you buy is not kind of for the few, but for the many. And it's actually the normalization of this into our society, you know, the choices rather than the, you know, I think Mark Carney put it very well on his brief lectures. I think he said, you know, we need to decide, do we want the Amazon, the life-giving global life support system that the Amazon is, or do we want the Amazon of everything now, as in consumer Amazon,
00:42:07
Speaker
and okay I'm not saying Amazon's all bad either but the it is a stark choice and I think the problem we've got to uncouple ourselves from particularly in in the American and British sort of ultra capitalist societies is is it's all very well to you know this carbon offsetting thing is is actually about money and I don't mind the monetization I think that's part of the solution big business
00:42:31
Speaker
contributing towards nature recovery is, but it's got to, it can't just be that. It's got to come at grassroots, school and in the home level of changes. And instead of, you know, my dad's generation would have kind of probably called these people kind of hippies, sandal wearing hippies, you know, guffs who just talking about, oh yeah, we're all gonna live in, wear hemp clothes and live in a cave. And that's how it's gonna be.
00:42:57
Speaker
It is actually, yes, that's not going to how it's going to be, but but somewhere in the middle is this responsible, you know, socially responsible, eco responsible lifestyle, which doesn't mean, you know, we have to whip ourselves and, and, and, and not have positions. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't mean that, but it just means actually a big correction. And I think
00:43:21
Speaker
It's a real, a huge challenge. And if you think that for all of my life, you know, thinking of back to the 80s and when I, I mean, this as a child, all the, you know, you know, and all those American films, you know, consumerism and, and, and it was in film, let alone, you know, the progress of consumerism is as well-documented through film as well as, and that's a reflection of, and to unpick that to being, okay, well, look, we've taken this too far. We need to,
00:43:49
Speaker
is challenging because people are very, very self-centered, very used to thinking you can have pretty much anything you want now. And a lot more society can afford that kind of thinking now. And for all of us, for you, for me, it's a difficult thing to tear away yourself from this idea that maybe I'm going to go out of this country once a year because it's more responsible to do it rather than four times a year. Well, you know, for people of us who are relatively often, that's big.
00:44:15
Speaker
big ask actually but also the changing the food habits and I think it's a real challenge and what what's really missing for me is if you think of the hundreds and hundreds and billions billions of pounds spent on food marketing and and in fact all merchandise marketing is and the tiny amount that goes into the kind of course correct that we need as in
00:44:38
Speaker
I think that one of the missing things is big advertising budgets coming from somewhere that infiltrate our lives around the sort of Attenborough line of coexistence and compromise.
Cultural Shifts and Pandemic Insights
00:44:48
Speaker
So it becomes, you know, we've proved we can do it. The government did it like that with COVID. They shut us all down. We all went home.
00:44:54
Speaker
and completely changed where we live. So we did it because we're selfish and it was self-saving or sacrifice to save the self. And that's admirable. I'm not saying that's wrong, but we need to extend that generosity to the way we, to the planet, to the rest of the things on the planet. And then we won't have COVID-19 and the crises like that.
00:45:19
Speaker
If we can, I think that's for me, I suppose a good way to sort of not end is that when I think of progress and think of, you know, when we first came out of Africa and all the way through to now, and then, you know, for me, the big, big backstep coming out of the European Union, because for me, it was just a sense of human integration across the globe. I think that's a generally positive thing.
00:45:43
Speaker
And the age of salvation, which is kind of what we're talking about, we need to be in, is I think using our intellectual maturity as a species to actually make space is the new gospel, really, the new way, as opposed to the period of dominion, which has occupied our time probably since we came out of Africa and exterminated all other human races, and then most other megafauna and all that stuff, right up to
00:46:10
Speaker
say the year 2000, I think now is this adjustment towards salvation. I think there's no threat to us now. We're in complete control so we can now use our intellect and moral response superiority and sensitivity to allow for the rest of nature to coexist in a way we've up till now been basically frightened of it and always wanted to beat it, push it back, exterminate it, manage it.
00:46:35
Speaker
farm it is now to be able to let it reintegrate. So you have to slow down to let, you know, like in Africa, India, there's animals integrated with traffic and it's normal. I mean, I think they're way ahead of us, not behind us, but they're ahead of us. Anyway. It's really meaningful stuff.
Scaling Conservation Efforts
00:46:54
Speaker
And I think it's just
00:46:57
Speaker
It's great to see the way that you've created, as you mentioned, this almost sort of a microcosm on one scale, but then have managed to scale up at an amazing rate, this sort of 1.25 million hectares. And suddenly it's almost an entire region that you're able to touch and connect with. And I think
00:47:14
Speaker
There is, the change you're talking about is societal-wide, and it's only by achieving scale that we can really hope to think, the individual warriors, it's going to take a long time. The way to speed things up is doing exactly what you're doing, which is finding a way to scale up, because you have a bigger voice, you have more impact, you have more chances to connect with more people. I think that's, yeah, that's, it's just, it's what, we need more of that.
00:47:43
Speaker
Any more of that across the board? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I hope, you know, it's an early day's journey with Wild East. But I think, you know, that that someone talked about it being very nicely actually the democratization of nature and recovery. I mean, that's very flattering. And I guess I'll be honest enough to say it's not quite it's a brilliant term that we didn't come up with. And it feels right now we got the map of dreams. But the idea that, you know, someone with a 10 foot garden or backyard
00:48:12
Speaker
can have a stake and a relevance to nature recovery in the actions they take in a small as much as I can on a bigger scale. And the reason we, you know, I think they're both, of course, I've got more scale and therefore, theoretically might have more impact. But the fact is, is that we're the same because we've both taken a step to doing things differently.
00:48:33
Speaker
and letting nature back in to their backyard is absolutely as relevant because that's the start of those societal changes, you know, those choices that you've been through and that everyone needs to go through, but it's going to be interesting to see how far we can, you know, take it over the next few years. I wish you the very, very best of luck. I think there's a lot at stake, so you're shivering the responsibility with amorable
00:48:58
Speaker
confidence which is it's great to see so yeah really congratulations on what you've achieved so far and best of luck for what's coming. How can people connect? How can they experience what you have on offer? How can they contribute or help or even just follow along on an educational and communication level for Wild East? Yeah well so Wild East has got a fairly lively Instagram and Facebook feed
00:49:22
Speaker
So that's one easy way, by all means, if someone's more deeply interested then joining our mailing list is great. And if you live, if you happen to be listening and you happen to be living in either Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertz, Essex, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, which is kind of the wildest region, which is the Lynx,
00:49:42
Speaker
defined by the links is outlined rather than the county then we'd love to get a pledge you know pledge part of your garden the 20% that's that's what we're about really and if it's more touristic then yeah of course coming coming down to visit and I hope that includes you coming down to visit Friton Lake and sucking it up on a more intimate level would be would be wonderful we look forward to welcoming anyone who wants to come. Well we'll make sure all the all the notes and relevant links go into the show notes so thank you once again for your time.
00:50:12
Speaker
Yeah, okay, thanks Matt. Very nice to talk to you.