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  • Published: 7 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241991831
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

Rooted

Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution




Rooted charts a quiet revolution taking place in our fields, barns and hedgerows, led by a new generation of farmers on a path of powerful change.

Sarah Langford had left her country roots behind to live and work in the city as a barrister. But when she found herself back in the countryside, gravitating towards an agricultural life she never thought would be hers, she saw her fellow farmers dealing with very different problems to those who had come before. A hostile press and public, together with Brexit, climate change and environmental pressures had combined to create a burden that many farmers felt had become impossible to bear.

Having found herself unexpectedly in charge of a Suffolk farm, Sarah tells the story of the people she met who taught her what it means to be a farmer. An authentic, beautifully written portrait of twenty-first century farming life, her book puts a powerful case: that the task of restoring our earth and ensuring a sustainable future lies in the hands of those who live closest to the land.

  • Published: 7 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241991831
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

About the author

Sarah Langford

Sarah Langford has been a practising barrister since 2006, both in London and around the country, principally in criminal and family law. She studied English at the University of the West of England. She worked as a barmaid, legal secretary and note-taking clerk before completing a law conversion, in which she gained a distinction. She was awarded a scholarship from Gray's Inn of Court and went on to train as a barrister. She lives with her husband and two small boys in London and Suffolk.

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Praise for Rooted

Heartbreaking and hopeful, this story of a farming revival has never been more important. It opened my eyes and touched my soul

Esther Freud

A magical book of wonderful stories about how farmers think and the challenges they face. It demonstrates that farmers across the country are passionate about producing food and caring for the land. A triumph

Jake Fiennes, author of Land Healer

Sarah Langford's book on farming is really a book about healing. All of life and death is here: family, politics, nature, climate, history, humanity. Rooted is a beautifully written, powerful reminder of where we've gone wrong, what is at stake, and how we can change. I loved it.

Christie Watson, bestselling author of The Language of Kindness

Rooted is a brave thing: a book that prods into the ever-widening gulf between the binaries we increasingly use to examine the world. As conversations about what we eat and where it comes from reach fever-pitch, Sarah Langford's clear-eyed, inquisitive and passionate plea for farmers and farming offers a vital understanding when it has never been so needed. I hope everyone reads it.

Alice Vincent, author of Rootbound

Moving, startling, uplifting, galvanising and unsettling, this plainly beautiful book is one of those rare few that changes how you see the world around you: the shape of fields seen from a train, the vegetables in a supermarket chiller cabinet, the earth beneath your feet and falling through your fingers.

Ella Risbridger, author of Midnight Chicken and The Year of Miracles

An eloquent and personal insight into the terrible human as well as environmental cost of cheap food and an inspiring account of the people working to heal our relationship with our habitat and ourselves. Urgent, necessary and moving.

Ben Rawlence, author of The Treeline

A fine book: heartfelt, honest and hopeful. Sarah has the knowledge and skill to help people better understand where their food comes from and why we should all care.

Helen Rebanks

Moving, intimate, tender and searing, this is a gem of a book with deep roots and fresh green shoots.

Tamsin Calidas, author of I Am An Island

A timely and optimistic book, ostensibly about why we need farming to produce food, but more deeply about how farming is done, or could be done. Refreshingly authentic, Rooted gives us a hopeful sense of a regenerative future

Juliet Blaxland, author of The Easternmost House and The Easternmost Sky

Rooted offers us an honest look at the farming life today. It is not an easy way to make a living, but through Langford's personal story - and those of who she meets - we appreciate how it offers a connection with the land, and a firmer sense of our place in the world. Raw, earthy and inspiring.

Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

A beautifully written, incredibly timely book addressing not just where our food comes from and why this matters so much, but also fundamental questions relating to our relationship with the land, and the definition of home.

Clover Stroud, author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights

Evocative and resonant. These are stories that need to be told.

Andy Cato, Groove Armada and Wildfarmed

Absorbing, compassionate [and] galvanising.

Guardian

Enthralling ... An unignorable call to understand the challenges facing not only farming but the Earth itself.

Spectator

Poetically written and filled with compelling data about modern-day farming

Vogue

Langford writes so movingly of the countryside and its effect on her heart and her family.

TLS

More than a memoir; Langford manages to contain and convey the whole scale of the coming agricultural revolution.

Daily Telegraph

A refreshing perspective on a overwhelmingly masculine world

Financial Times

Where Rooted ploughs its own shining furrow in its humanity ... but also the gathered, inspirational stories of farmers trying to do better and greener.

John Lewis-Stempel