Backyard Farm Co-op

Getting more people working on the land isn’t only good for those people in terms of their health and wellbeing. It’s good for people around them — and for the earth itself. More people living on, and off, the land means a livelier rural scene. Local farmers are on call to stem floods, tow cars or lend machinery to the village fair. They use the village amenities, the shop, the post office and the pub, where people chat and form communities. Families living on the land and populating villages provide customers to the church’s round of funerals, christenings and marriages, as well as harvest suppers.

Smaller farms may be more efficient — or not; the only evidence is that efficient farms are more efficient than inefficient ones, regardless of size. Mary Durling, a smallholder in Dorset, points out that her range of lamb and vegetables sell locally. ‘I’m producing a mix, not concentrating on one crop that needs to be shipped to a distant distribution centre,’ she observes. Small farmers can keep more of their profit and eat more of their own produce.

Direct selling to the public helps them keep the value of what they produce, but the wider benefits are legion. In market towns with a thriving food scene, the farmers educate their customers; they advocate for their way of doing things, demystify the process and the product and give urbanites a glimpse of what the countryside produces — and how.

No-dig gardening allows natural relationships between organisms to flourish and preserves the overall structure of the soil, leading to improved plant growth. Digging your garden can break up the fungal threads in the soil, meaning that your plants don’t benefit from these helpful organisms. Closed loop agriculture is farming practice that recycles all nutrients and organic matter material back to the soil that it grew in. This forms part of an agricultural practice that preserves the nutrient and carbon levels within the soil and allows farming to be carried out on a sustainable basis.

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