Eco Comment – Six Inches of Soil; A Response

On the 8th December 2023 I wrote an Eco Comment about COP28 which was taking place in Dubai. I was unaware that a new film was being premiered there and that it’s first UK screening was happening at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on 4th January 2024. The film producer, Claire Mackenzie, said that the film allows us to “disseminate the important message … that we can produce food in harmony with nature through regenerative farming within an agroecological system. The film provides a voice for British farmers, food producers and campaigners and we hope to see food and agriculture higher on the agenda than in previous years.” (8point9.com December 01 2023) 

This week, thanks to the efforts and determination of the Cathedral Office staff, we showed the film in the cathedral. The film tells the story of three young farmers practising regenerative agriculture and ‘standing up against the industrial system and transforming the way they produce food – to heal the soil, benefit our health and provide for local communities.’ (sixinchesofsoil.org) 

It starts from the premise that ‘Six inches of Soil feeds 8 billion people.’ However Jeremy Purseglove in his book ‘Working with Nature’ tells us that ‘2.2 million tons of topsoil is lost from the land each year in the UK.’ Will this film shed any light on this startling statistic? 

Over the next 96 minutes the film tells how the three farmers and growers are trying to combat the issues around soil health and the effects of climate change. All three are new to the industry. One, prior to COVID, was a successful sports photographer who found herself with no work so returned home to her 11th generation arable and sheep farm being run by her father. The second chooses to become a small scale vegetable farmer who has given herself a year with no salary to start this new venture and thirdly a relatively new farmer and his wife who rears pasture-fed beef cattle.  

With a mix of animation, live footage of farmland and countryside, we are given a whistlestop history of how our lives have been lived alongside the land. From the early hunter gatherers and early settlements, through land ownership issues and the enclosure acts, through the industrial revolution to now and the barriers to new entrants to farming. 

On the way we learn many facts …  

• Without soil there is no life. 
• Ammonia was used in the first world war as fertiliser to increase food production. 
• The top 6” of UK soil stores 10 billion tonnes of carbon. 
• Clovers are a legume and fix nitrogen in the soil. 
• The four main crops grown currently in the world are: rice, wheat, soy and maize. 
• Supermarkets control 95% of our food and 9 supermarkets provide 94.5% of UK food. 
• (We also learn that they declined to participate in the making of the film.) 
• Herbal lays protect soil and maintain living roots. 
• Soils can be repaired within three years. 

Along the way we get a picture of the lives, trials, tribulations and joys of the three would be farmers/growers. There are snippets from interviews with, amongst others, Satish Kumar of the Schumacher College, Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain and Mike Berners-Lee, the author of How Bad are Bananas and There is no Planet B, all telling us why good quality soil is so important to the production – but ultimately the taste – of our food. 

The film is a story of hard gruelling work, in all weathers, 365 days a year. It tells that so many farmers have a second job because they don’t earn enough to live. It tells us also that farmers and growers are resilient. They are not stuck in their ways. They are open to new ideas and try new crops along with the old ways that their forbears exemplified. The weather is a non-negotiable feature of their life. Climate change is affecting their crop yields. Kindness to the animals and the land pays off in better tasting products, but that you have to face reality if you farm livestock when you eventually take them to slaughter. (This was probably the most emotional moment in the film and most likely to convince anyone that they should cease to eat meat.)  

The film closes on a very positive note. All three young people are on the road to success thanks to the partnerships and financial support they have found along the way. A real feel-good ending. 

We in the cathedral were fortunate in that we had an invited local farmer. In the course of a Q&A Farmer Robert Copley, whilst not exactly bursting our bubble, pointed out that ‘farming regeneratively’ has been around for a good few years and that we ‘the general public’ can’t in the nicest possible way blame the farmers and/or the supermarkets for all of our food woes. We must, as a nation, recognise that good food costs money and that we in the UK tend to only spend 10% of our income on food whilst other countries spend around 20%. Many people think nothing of spending £7 on a coffee and a cake but demur paying £6 for really good quality sausages from readily-identified local meat producers. If we want to have good food, we should vote with our feet and shop for local products where we can see exactly what ingredients are in the product and where it has come from. We are fortunate in that Yorkshire has some amazing food products there for the asking. 

Katy Merrington, the gardener responsible for the Hepworth Gallery Garden, had also been invited to attend and gave her response to the film by agreeing that no matter what you’re growing you have to nurture it. Good soil is vital to good growth. Most of us have a garden of some description and that nature will only do so much – the rest is up to us.   

 Sue Morgan
Eco Group