WOODSTON farm on the Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire borders is the subject of John Lewis-Stempel’s book and it explores the transformation in farming methods, with each new technological change of use from animal horns, flint, bronze and iron radically altering the way people lived on the land.

The Romans farmed intensively to feed more people but most villages and paths or rights of way across the country date back to the Anglo-Saxon strip-farming period, while during Tudor and Stuart times much sheep farming held sway. The enclosure of land in the 18th and 19th centuries drove people away to the cities and the industrial revolution.

Much of the most destructive activity in terms of biodiversity has occurred since WWII. The rush to grow more during the war led to the ripping-up of hedgerows and the earth was drenched with pesticides and herbicides, resulting in the loss of so many birds, mammals and plants.

With all the ringing authenticity of a naturalist farmer truly connected to the land, the author contrasts how much more conducive it is to biodiversity to manually scythe an area rather than run a combine harvester, with all attendant destruction, over it.

Lewis-Stempel values farming but only done the right way. So he has stuck with his 1950s Ferguson tractor, rather than move to a computer-driven modern vehicle, thus cutting the direct link to the land.

He has some criticism for what he describes as tree-planting “mania” and wants the need to produce more in order to feed the world to be taken into the planting equation. And #meatfree he describes as “ludicrously anti-ecological,” citing how his managing a wood for four years and allowing cow and pigs to roam massively increased biodiversity.

In conclusion, he draws interesting parallels between the handling of the foot-and-mouth crisis in 2001 with Covid today. Government turned to some of the same behavioural scientists at Imperial College then as it has today with Covid. Then, as now, the real answer was vaccination.

Woodston offers a real insight into how things have developed down the centuries in agriculture and where things have gone wrong. A step back in a number of instances could help put things right for the future.

Published by Transworld, £20.