Writing in a postscript to his classic book “The Fat of the Land” in 1974, self-sufficiency guru John Seymour proposed of his smallholding at Fachongle Isaf, “If there were enough people on it — enough hands — I believe that our seventy acres could produce a dozen times as much food as it did before.”
Quite soon after this, in defiance of his wife Sally who had previously urged him “Oh no – we don’t want to start some bloody community!” Seymour had drawn in young back-to-the-landers to live with them in Wales and help. Ann assumes the role of foreman, Paul takes over the pigs, Anushka drifts into looking after the dairy, and Eddie (a vegetarian) takes over the house gardens. Seymour himself notes “…somehow everybody crawls out of bed very early in the morning for the milking (except me – I meditate – in a horizontal position).” Perhaps he was scheming, as he was wont, on the imminent future? As he writes, “We must start preparing now for the collapse of the technocracy. We must build the framework now that will be ready to receive the people who will one day flee from the decaying cities and clamour for their birthright — their fair share of their own country.”
That catastrophe hasn’t happened yet, thank goodness, but if we heed the warning of author Chris Smaje in “A Small Farm Future” (2020), just as John Seymour advocated fifty years ago, a robust response to both climate change and food security lies in downscaling industrial agriculture and its massive monocultures to smaller “mixed” farms. To increase yield in those circumstances, as Seymour explains, goes hand-in-hand with the need for more skilled agricultural workers. The techniques of industrial agriculture have meant that, by the combination of heavy machinery and prodigious use of chemical fertilisers, very little labour is required. A single farmer can often manage 1,000 acres on his own. But at what cost to our ecology, nutrition, social cohesion, and sanity?
Genuinely free-range chickens on Sustainable Food Trust supremo Patrick Holden’s farmIt was this situation into which the WWOOF organisation first germinated. In an interview for SEED magazine, Sue Coppard noted of organic farms, “it occurred to me—correctly—that such places might be more inclined to use unskilled labor than a big, commercial farm.” Patrick Rivers, another once well-known self-sufficiency advocate, and contemporary of John Seymour’s, writes in his book, “Living on a little land” (1978): “Some years ago a lass called Sue Coppard started a small revolution. Sue wanted to escape the restrictive boredom of weekends in the city, not merely to flop, but to balance the work of her head with the work of her hands.” Rivers described of his own smallholding how he and his wife Shirley, “…could never have achieved what we have without the help of scores of “WWOOFers” who have come to us – most of them for weekends, some for stretches of several weeks… I can recall none who have not shared our views on living more simply, and on the need to bring about a gentle revolution by setting an example.”
For the past few years, I have been writing and researching a book entitled “The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture” [see below] For the book I interviewed many first-generation farmers who, inspired by their experiences at the end of the sixties, went back to the land to farm. The likes of Eliot Coleman, Sustainable Trust supremo Patrick Holden, and Permaculture co-originator David Holmgren, like many of the willing workers of WWOOF, did not come from the countryside or farming families. One and all responded to an impulse to get out in nature and work the soil.
One of my interviewees, another veteran of the back-to-the-land movement, Dave Chapman of America’s Real Organic Project noted, “The other thing… is that when I did start to farm — and I was gardening before I was farming — I loved it. I loved the smell of the soil. I love working in that way with my body. I loved watching plants grow. It was all pretty much, you know, as they say, as much fun as you could have with your clothes on.” Certainly, there was less money to be made, but as John Seymour described his own rural labour, in a possibly exaggerated way, “If I were to work in an advertising agency I would want my labour to be assessed not at ten shillings or a pound an hour, but at a million pounds an hour.”
Patrick Rivers adds that, “Besides helping both farmer and learner, WWOOF plays a small but valuable role in bridging the gap between city and countryside and reviving interest in the land.” This connection which WWOOF offers people living in the cities to the land is even more precious to us today in 2025. The gap Rivers refers to is now more like a chasm. In 1962 the American theorist Murray Bookchin could write, “The city man, to be sure, does not need to be reminded that good soil is important for successful farming. He recognises the necessity for conservation and careful management of the land. But his knowledge of food cultivation — its techniques, problems, and prospects — is limited.” Today it is only possible to imagine a mere fraction of city dwellers having even this awareness. The thoroughly misguided institution, and the recent collapse of the urban hydroponic infrastructure [watch a video about this here] plainly unsustainable to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of vegetable production – clearly reveals how little understanding of the precepts to which Bookchin refers to are grasped by city dwellers.
I came away from writing the book “The Garden” with a feeling that the encouragement of people living in cities to understand the importance, the sanctity even, of organic food production is vital for the future of sustainable agriculture. Yes, in the best case scenario, that would involve people volunteering for WWOOF and actively participating – but equally, as was advised by pioneering organic scientist Sir Albert Howard, urbanites such as myself can do our bit by buying organic food, and gardening organically, if only on our window-ledges.
Well, we hope you enjoyed reading this article by Matthew Ingram. His book The Garden comes out on 8th April and has some really good endorsements; here’s one by Charles Dowding (author of No Dig) “Matthew Ingram has not only investigated a huge amount of material and talked to many people, he also has an ability to bring it all together in a way that makes sense and is fun to read.”