Why We Do What We Do

Here at Littleton Farm, we believe that nature-friendly farming is very much part of the solution to our planet’s recovery.

This land is in our care and we want to return it to full functionality, and by that we mean land, soil, teaming with biology that is fully able to meet its own needs without requiring engineered chemicals to short circuit the process. 

The research I’ve done since moving to the farm, while barely scratching the surface, has revealed a fascinating world of beautiful and barely knowable complexity.

Nature is often described as needing our assistance. We hear how soil *needs* artificial fertilizers to grow grass, how herbicide is *necessary* to kill weeds, pesticides to kill bugs, fungicide to kill fungi, etc.

Well, from what I’ve read and seen, it doesn’t need our well-meaning micro-managing, it just needs a reasonably free rein to get on with what it does best - to make sure that our planet is covered with life. 

Our tendency as humans is to simplify things, to reduce them to component parts so we can better understand and control them.

However, nature is a complex system. Complex systems don’t respond well to reductionism: they are unpredictable and greater than the sum of their parts. 

A different approach is evolving, one that considers the whole system - the land, the animals and plants, their humans and the local community. In many ways it is a reversion to skills farmers deployed in the past but augmented by modern technologies (hello electric fencing). It is a system that uses animal behaviour and rest periods between grazing to build the soil and improve ecosystem function.

There are a growing number of farmers out there who are demonstrating what can be done when nature, and not humans, is allowed to take the lead. As livestock farmers we are lucky: livestock farming is, and has no reason not to be, a nature-friendly farming practice.

These forage-only systems produce delicious, flavourful meat, that is nutrient dense, contains the longer chain omega-3 fatty acids that our bodies need as well as other beneficial compounds.

Animals, insects, plants and fungi evolved together, and their relationships are key to nature’s resilience. This stuff is fascinating, nature is amazing and everything really is connected! 

Hope you don’t mind us banging on about it! ;-)