Description
Alternative agriculture is a movement that seeks to create sustainable methods of farming that are not reliant on large-scale agriculture. The author discusses the history of alternative agriculture in England, from the Black Death to the present day, and highlights the parallels between current problems and earlier periods in English history. Alternative agriculture solutions can be found in the experience of past farmers, and the movement is gaining in popularity.
People like to believe in a past golden age of "traditional" English countryside, before large farms, machinery, and the destruction of hedgerows changed the landscape forever. Yet crops from the past like flax, hemp, rapeseed, and woad are gradually reappearing in the "modern" countryside. Thirsk reveals how the forces which drive the current interest in alternative forms of agriculture--a glut of mainstream meat and cereal crops, changing patterns of diet, the needs of medicine--have striking parallels with earlier periods of English history, emphasizing that solutions to current problems can still be found in the hard-won experience of people in the past.
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