Shepherd James Rebanks tends a flock of Herdwick sheep on a family-owned farm in the Lake District in northern England.

He learned traditional farming ways from his grandfather; a man with a profound connection with his land.

An OE in Australia introduced Rebanks to industrial farming practices, which he applied to his own farm in the 1990s.

After a while he realised that he was in fact damaging the land, soil and local wildlife.

So he started the laborious process of restoring features like hedgerows, pastures, meadows, and dry stone walls- and hasn’t looked back. He’s now a self declared ‘old fashioned farmer’

Following the success of his first book The Shepherd’s Life, Rebanks’ new one is called English Pastoral: An Inheritance.

Rebanks wants a counterrevolution to industrial farming and believes we have become slaves to consumerism and strangers to the field. He joined Kim Hill to discuss his ideas.

“This book is about the last 20 years where I’ve realised that almost everything an economist would’ve told me to do on my land would’ve made it worse for nature – would make the soil worse, would mean there’s less biodiversity, less birds, less insects.

“Actually, copying the America post-war model of agriculture is destroying my community, it’s destroying the land and ruining rivers and other things. I’m really honest and blunt and I think it’s time for us farmers to be quite grown up about this, not be too defensive, listen carefully about what’s being said about what we’ve done and what we’re part of, and start to be part of the solution.”

Rebanks’ family farm comprises 125 acres of hilly land and he says he thought it was perfect when it came into his inheritance. However, when he invited ecologists onto the land they pointed out all the ways it had changed for the worse and how that affected the local ecosystem.

“I found that an interesting challenge because I’m proud to be a farmer, I’m proud of the things that we do, but there’s a new challenge now. We’ve got to feed a lot of people and we’ve got to be cognisant of the fact there’s climate change and there’s huge loss of biodiversity around the world. That makes for a really difficult challenge for farmers, but the more I’m learning, the more I’m excited by that because I think there’s amazing things we can do.”

If I’m sounding a bit like a farmer that’s turned into a bit of an environmentalist, that’s because I sort of have.

He says that farmers get a lot of blame for biodiversity loss but the pressure from large corporations such as food retailers means they often don’t like the practices they use – they just need to use them to stay afloat.

“They’re under enormous financial pressure and that comes back to the rest of us, that isn’t something that you can just pin on farmers, that’s something that needs to be thought through properly by societies. We need to ask ourselves what sort of farming do we want.”

The breakdown of communication between those who work the land and the so-called “urban liberal” is a disaster for society, Rebanks says.

“I know why it happens. If you’re not a farmer, all you’re hearing is bad news; birds are disappearing, insects are disappearing, soil is ruined – this bad news piles up and you think ‘what are these people on the land doing, they’re lunatics’.”

Conversely, Rebanks says farmers find that rich given those people both want cheap and easily available food while berating farmers for not being enlightened land stewards.

“There’s loads of room there for people to have a sort of culture war and to attack each other on social media, but that isn’t going to do anybody any good. What we really need to do is work together.”

Much of the work required to get farms more ecologically sound, such as rebuilding hedgerows and rebedding streams, is difficult and inefficient, but Rebanks says that’s the cost of doing good work.

“If you like efficiency I would urge you to go to the American Midwest and delight in the wonder that is the most efficient farming in the world. If you can’t see any problems with how that’s worked out in the American Midwest, then you’ve stumbled upon a wonderful solution.

“I think you know, like I do, that that’s actually a disaster. It’s some of the least sustainable farming on Earth. They’re losing soil – that’s why the Mississippi runs brown – in some places they’ve lost several feet of topsoil. There’s been huge biodiversity loss, they’ve poisoned all of their water and have had to spend vast amounts of money to even have drinking water in the towns. I could go on and on with reasons why that’s not a good or sound farming system.”

He says that system of farming also requires less farmers and has destroyed communities around the Midwest. Defending that method of farming, he says, plays right into the hands of huge corporations and machine manufacturers.

“If I’m sounding a bit like a farmer that’s turned into a bit of an environmentalist, that’s because I sort of have. The truth is, the environmentalists are right about a lot of this stuff and we better get our heads around it.”

Rebanks concedes there are a lot of grumpy right wing farmers who will disagree with what he’s saying, but on the flip side a lot of the younger generation understand that farmers need to get this right going into the future and win back the trust of the public.

“The way to do that is by being more sensible about this.”

He argues that farmers should be given subsidies by the government that go directly toward assisting them in making their farms more ecologically sound, rather than toward production.

“In the imperfect position Britain finds itself in at the moment, I would support continuation of subsidies but spend them much more wisely and in the public interest.”

Rebanks says farming is more than just business and production and people need to embrace what it really means to live on the land and become part of the solution.

“It’s where you put down your roots, it’s the place that you love and the place that represents your values and your culture. I think it’s a thing we can fight back from the forces that are trashing the world.”