Conservationist Isabella Tree: 鈥楾he planet is on fire鈥�
Conservationist Isabella Tree says reserving land for nature is as vital as producing food
Conservationist Isabella Tree warns 鈥榯he planet is on fire鈥� and 鈥榣and that can be productive for nature is as important as food because the two are completely intertwined鈥�.
Speaking to the 麻豆约拍鈥檚 HARDtalk programme, Tree acknowledged that there will always be a need for agricultural land used for food production, but land for nature is also vital. 鈥榃e need to clean our air, we need to clean our water, we need to bring back biodiversity, and we need to sequester carbon,鈥� she said.
When asked by Stephen Sackur about her priorities in using the land on her estate in southern England for nature rather than food production, particularly in a time of rising food prices, the author said: 鈥榃e are producing enough food. We don鈥檛 need more area for food production. But we need to think much more cleverly about how we produce food and how we鈥檙e going to sustain those systems.鈥�
Two decades ago, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell decided to stop farming at their Knepp Estate in West Sussex and instead let nature take over, stopping cultivation and removing fences to allow animals to roam free. The process - known as 鈥榬ewilding鈥� - has gained international attention. Tree said 鈥榳e cannot continue intensively farming as we are鈥�.we鈥檙e losing topsoil at massive rates. So we鈥檝e got to shift to a regenerative form of agriculture鈥�, which she described as 鈥榳orking with nature rather than against it鈥�.
