[Here’s a link to other forays around my map.]

[kofi]

You join me today, at the start of another grid square exploration, on my knees, in a butcher’s shop, taking a photograph of a piece of meat. Welcome! Why am I taking such a humdrum photograph when just a few feet away a butcher, dressed in a blue and white apron, is wielding a long curved knife to carve a huge side of beef? That would be a far better photograph and, even better, the opening to a conversation and a story. The answer is shyness. There must be hundreds of times when I have wanted to take a photograph but been too shy to ask, or wanted to begin a chat but been too chicken to begin. This has made me cross so often in my time learning photography. It’s not as though I have any desire to make anyone look bad. I don’t want to be brazen like Bruce Gilden and don’t feel comfortable being as caustic as Martin Parr. I just enjoy trying to be perceptive like Elliott Erwitt or waiting for the decisive moment like Henri Cartier-Bresson. (These photographers, by the way, are all Magnum photographers, whose archives are a delight, a treasure trove, and an inspiration. “Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually” said Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In 1947, following the aftermath of the Second World War, four pioneering photographers founded a now legendary alliance. Combining an extraordinary range of individual styles into one powerful collaboration, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger and David Seymour started, over a celebratory bottle of champagne, the most important artists’ cooperative ever created: The Magnum Photos agency.

Magnum Photos represents some of the world’s most renowned photographers, maintaining its founding ideals and idiosyncratic mix of journalist, artist and storyteller. Their photographers share a vision to chronicle world events, people, places and culture with a powerful narrative that defies convention, shatters the status quo, redefines history and transforms lives.)

Anyway, there I am, a happy vegan, taking boring photos and buying a box of meat. Let me explain myself…

Why am I buying meat if I’m vegan? My kids still choose to eat meat. They remain convinced that lentil-based meals should be eyed with great suspicion and accompanied with loud, disgusted sound effects.

I became vegan because of the catastrophic environmental impact of industrial farming. I certainly do not think that all meat eating is bad for the planet. Where farmland is not suitable for growing plants for people to eat there is an important role for livestock in regenerative agriculture, pasture for life-standard grazing, carbon sequestering grasslands, rotational farming (and fertilising) and increasing biodiversity (all these are basically the farming techniques used worldwide before Fritz Haber revolutionised fertiliser. For aeons yields were limited by the amount of nitrogen available to crops in the soil. Farmers could improve things by planting nitrogen fixing plants such as clover or soybeans. But other than that their only hope to improve a field was to walk around in a thunder storm with a long metal pole and hope to get your field zapped by lightning… 

And so, for thousands of years, there was a cap on productivity yields. Meat was an expensive treat (because it is so much less efficient to produce than crops) and there appeared to be a cap on the maximum sustainable human population.

Enter Fritz Haber, the man who figured out how to take nitrogen from the air (there are 4000 trillion tons to get stuck into), convert it into fertiliser, and feed the world. The challenge of capturing nitrogen was its strong trivalent bonds. The element’s free floating atoms clung to each other fiercely. An energy source powerful enough to separate them seemed impossible to produce. Countries were forced to scrounge for the main sources of nitrogen at that time: seaweed, manure, and guano. These were such prized commodities that fortunes were made shipping bird and bat guano to Europe. In 1864, Spain and a Chillean-Peruvian alliance went to war over control of caves filled with guano, and in 1879 Chile and Peru went to war over the rights to these same precious piles of bird and bat shit. Chile’s victory in the war grew their national treasury by 900%.

At the start of the 20th century Fritz Haber figured out how to break nitrogen’s bonds. After forcing air into a huge iron tank under extreme heat and pressure, he added hydrogen into the tank. This pried the nitrogen atoms apart as they each bonded with three hydrogen atoms, forming ammonia. Out of the tank dripped liquid fertilizer. He’d done it. The nitrogen had been pulled from the air and could be put into the ground to grow food. In 1909, he unveiled his discovery to the world.

100 million tons of synthetic fertilizer is created each year by this method. For nearly all of the 7 billion people on earth, including you, half of the nitrogen in your body comes from the Haber method. It is perhaps the greatest scientific discovery in history. It stopped wars, fed children, and led to our modern age.

Haber was a saint, a hero, and a Nobel Prize winner! A pity then, that he did not stop there… For at the outset of World War 1 the immensely patriotic Haber volunteered for duty by letter to the war department. He knew he could help. Chemically, the same amount of energy that it took to separate the nitrogen atoms was released when they slammed back together. In his letter, he explained to his superiors that by reversing the chemical reation he used to grow life, he could make explosives. Haber’s discovery and the vast ammonia factories he masterminded helped extend the war by three years. 

However, a steady supply of explosive shells would not lead to Germany’s victory. The Allied forces had the same weaponry and far more soldiers. So Haber made another suggestion. The ammonia he distilled from the air could be added to chlorine to make an asphyxiating gas. In desperation for a way to break the stalemate, the German high command acceded to his request. Haber was the inventor of poisoned gas warfare.

Haber’s wife Clara, a pacifist, was appalled by her husband’s research. The explosives he was manufacturing were horrific enough, but his work on poison gas had already killed German troops in test runs. She had come out in public opposition of his work, condemning this perversion of the ideals of science as

“…a sign of barbarity, corrupting the very discipline which ought to bring new insights into life.”

Fritz Haber had responded by accusing her of making treasonous statements against the Fatherland. According to Haber

“During peacetime, a scientist belongs to the world, but during war time, he belongs to his country.”

Haber was also a friend of Einstein, and helped Einstein and his wife navigate a long and resentful divorce. Einstein was famously opposed to the First World War, but in the Second World War he urged the American government to begin research into the nuclear weapons that his papers on quantum physics had inadvertently opened the door towards. He had no desire for nuclear conflict, but greatly preferred to see the weapons in America, rather than Nazi hands.

In other words, good ideas can have bad, unintended consequences. And that has certainly been the case with fertiliser and the farming industry it resulted in. I could write and write about the cheap food made possible by industrial farming all around the country, but I’ll stick to saying this: it is cruel and it is catastrophic for nature and the climate. Unless you are willing to overlook the disastrous impact of cheap food (particularly meat and dairy) on the planet, there’s no justification for buying it. Yes, this might mean you cannot to eat meat as often as you have come to expect. So be it. That was how things were for thousands of years when nature was doing just fine. The average U.S. and U.K. citizen must consume 90 percent less beef and 60 percent less dairy if we are to turn around climate chaos.

Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” And also, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

Farmers often didn’t know enough to make informed ecological decisions effectively or couldn’t see how they could survive financially if they made themselves less efficient than other farmers by opting out of modernization. When machines were bought, the farmer was simply updating or upgrading his gear. He didn’t buy them with wildlife in mind. They weren’t designed, engineered or sold with wildlife in mind, either – the tractor designer, engineer or salesperson hadn’t a clue that what they were creating might have these unintended consequences. The supermarket that demanded food be produced in ways that required this degree of mechanical efficiency didn’t have a clue either. The whole system was so fragmented and specialized that most people working within it were either ignorant of its unintended effects or, worse, lost in a kind of magical optimism that somehow nature would be OK. There were profoundly important questions about the potential effects of each new technology which it was nobody’s job to ask or answer.

This landscape was created by the cult of supermarkets and cheap food. The people in those shops seem not to know, or care much, about how unsustainable their food production is.

The share of British household income spent on food and drink has declined from about 35 per cent of the average household budget in the 1950s to about 10 per cent today (though poorer people spend a greater share of their income on food and drink, say 15 per cent). The money we once spent on food has been freed up to spend on housing, leisure activities, consumer goods like cars, mobile phones, clothes, books and computers, or on things like mortgages or rent, and on foreign holidays that few could afford a generation or two ago.

Which leads me to today’s farm shop, and the starting point for exploring my grid square. All the meat sold here is rated ‘Pasture for Life’, which as far as my non-expert eyes can tell, is the best measure we have for “farming that isn’t screwing up the planet”.

The Pasture-Fed Livestock Association champions the virtues of pastoral farming, providing a distinct identity for systems where animals eat only grass and forage crops their entire life. Food produced this way is much tastier and healthier for humans to eat than meat from animals fed grain.

Some meat and dairy in the UK is already sold as ‘Grass-Fed’. However, this term can be used to describe products from animals that, as well as grazing, have also eaten cereals, manufactured feeds or by-products from food manufacturing.

The carbon footprint of grass farms is significantly lower than that of farms where cereal crops are grown to feed animals. Grassland helps capture and store carbon so less is released into the air to harm the atmosphere. Grazing animals return nutrients and organic matter back to the ground as they deposit their dung, ensuring the soil remains healthy and fertile.

Pasture farmers sow legumes such as white and red clover, which help other grasses and plants grow without the need for chemical-based fertilisers, which can make the soil acidic and unhealthy, are expensive and made from non-renewable sources of energy. Pasture farms are alive with wildlife including many flowers, insects, birds and mammals.

Pasture for Life specifically prohibits feeding soya to animals, much of which has been grown on land cleared of native tropical forest. So, Pasture for Life farmers do not contribute to the destruction of precious resources elsewhere in the world.

Anyway, I left the farm shop and headed out to explore my grid square, on foot today. It was a beautiful, still, cold morning. Autumn has gone, Winter has moved in. The first of December and the year rolling round.  I heard a squirrel chatter, a lone buzzard and -as always- the thrum of a motorway. Apart from that I had the holloway to myself, though its very existence was proof of footsteps galore passing this way over the years. Various mechanisms have been proposed for how holloways may have been formed, including erosion by water or traffic; the digging of embankments to assist with the herding of livestock; and the digging of double banks to mark the boundaries of estates. Tangles of spooky roots gaped from the strata of the banks. Fungi grew in the damp leaf litter. I spotted a cluster of King Alfred’s Cakes (a name easily remembered once learned) growing on a rotting log. Named after the king’s famously poor baking skills (Children are taught the story where Alfred is on the run from the Vikings, taking refuge in the home of a peasant woman in Somerset in the year 878. She asks him to watch her cakes – small loaves of bread – baking by the fire, but distracted by his problems, he lets the cakes burn and is roundly scolded by the woman.), King Alfred’s cakes are a fungus that looks like hard, roundish lumps of coal stuck to the surface of decaying wood. The older they get, the darker they become. They don’t rot away quickly but can remain on deadwood for years. You can spot them in deciduous woodland in groups on dead and decaying wood, especially fallen beech and ash branches. Mature specimens of King Alfred’s cakes are useful as tinder for fire lighting. They burn slowly, much like a charcoal briquette, but with a particularly pungent smoke.

This morning I made the foolish mistake of opening my emails before coming out. I sit to slurp coffee beneath a majestic beech tree, so huge it has shaded out any nearby trees. And thoughts of emails overshadow my enjoyment of this peaceful morning. A message from my accountant asking if I want to “apply for a job retention grant from the government due to the decrease in turnover this year”. But I’m one of the lucky ones in this godforsaken year. Although my income has plummeted, I’m still absolutely fine. So my musings here are not about the plummeting of cash but rather the plummeting of motivation to hustle, to chase, to win. And that’s probably why I’m sitting on my own in a wood with no whoomph to do anything except sit here and enjoy this morning and this place. Without a doubt my priorities have changed this year, demanding a major change in my direction. But I’m not yet sure what that direction will be. Maybe this tree will teach me something. I have a go on the swing, then keep walking.

Marked on my map is a solitary building in the woods, right on the corner of my grid square. It takes me a minute to find, so derelict is it. All that is left are some chunks of flint masonry, and they have almost been swallowed by creepers, moss, and saplings. Not exactly the rediscovery of Tikal from the jungle, but I enjoyed scrambling around trying to decipher clues. There was an old hand pump, with a pipe running down into a deep hole. So perhaps this used to be someone’s home. Google tells me that the pump is an Excelsior No.5 reciprocating pump and has been in production from 1919 until today. This humble Ozymandias reminded me not to fret too much about the worries of my day.

To keep to the margins of my square I had to leave the woodland path, and bash my way downhill through birch saplings, tangled privet, nettles, and vines. It felt like my own small version of the Barkley Marathons. How there came to be a lightbulb lying on a patch of moss in there I have no idea! Eventually I burst out of the chaos into a field planted with winter crops. I was pleased to see there was a margin of fallow land all around the field.

Just a metre wide grass strip between the outer edge of the hedge and the crop edge can benefit wildlife in many ways. A tussocky grass strip against a short, thick hedge provides an ideal habitat for ground-nesting bird species such as grey partridges, whitethroats and yellowhammers. Corn buntings may use the same kind of strip alongside hedgeless field boundaries.

Small mammal populations, such as voles and harvest mice, are able to build up in wide grass margins, providing ideal hunting habitat for barn owls and kestrels. Wide margins away from roadsides can reduce the risk of barn owls being killed by road traffic. As if to prove this I encountered a fox deep in thought. I stood stock still and it was several seconds before the fox noticed me. Then it froze, eyeballing me from 20 yards, as we dared each other to make the first move. Perhaps because there is no Covid-related drop-off in work rate for foxes, my furry friend cracked first and dashed into the safety of the hedge. I could happily have stood and stared all day.

My biggest hope when perusing today’s grid square on the map had been for the opportunity of a winter dip in a large flooded quarry. Alas, the entire lake was barricaded by 8-foot high fencing, curved and topped with barbed wire. Signs every few yards warned of Lake Safety, Danger Deep Water, No Swimming, No Unauthorised Fishing. You need to be cautious when swimming in old quarries, and, as always, check there is a suitable and easily-accessible entry and exit point before you get in. Quarries by their nature have steep sides. They are often very deep, and it’s easy for weak or non-swimmers to stumble out of their depth.

Today’s grid square didn’t take me past an entrance to this fenced-off expanse of water. But later Googling told me that I could actually have swum there, so long as I followed lots of rules, paid £30 for an induction course and then £7.50 for my dip. That’s not my kind out outdoor swimming. Nor would I be allowed to stroll around the lake: “access is only permitted to those who have pre-booked activities.” Because the lake is privately owned, I’ll have to miss out on “70 acres of natural, crystal clear, fresh water with 3km water frontage and its natural source constantly flowing to give its unique azure blue colour.” My less-curmudgeonly side thinks that it is a fantastic regeneration project for an old cement quarry and a sign of the growing appetite for people to swim, SUP and canoe in beautiful places. This project is going to make me think often about the different issues involved in land access arguments.

I trudged stoically around my square, searching for nature, but almost everywhere I was forced either onto roads or sandwiched on footpaths squeezed between fences. I was hoping to get into a large area of woodland where old pits have naturally scrubbed over. But I had to make do with a peek down through a fence at a spot where someone had lobbed a TV and a raw chicken into the bushes.

Feeling segregated from nature I had to make do with a curiosity into the world of man. Amongst the KFC cartons and Monster cans on the pavements I saw a discarded prescription box of Tadalafil (Tadalafil is a medicine used to treat erection problems. Many men do not have any side effects from tadalafil, while some have mild side effects. These may include headaches, back pain, muscle aches, pain in your arms and legs, facial flushes, stuffy nose, and indigestion. Check with your doctor before taking tadalafil if you have a curved penis.) I have never drunk Monster, but the cans litter many school bus stops. Whilst the brand sponsors many athletes in outdoor sports, it has been called “a prolific problem that’s hurting kids,” with around 13 percent of British children averaging a daily caffeine intake equal to 14 espresso shots. One child sued Monster, saying his habit of drinking six cans a day led to a stroke, and another was diagnosed with stage four kidney disease he blamed on his 10-year-long habit of drinking around four cans a day.

Sellotaped to lamp posts I saw adverts for a circus, a cat missing for 18 months, a music day with a “barn dance in a barn”, a London tattooist, Slimming World (your slimming success starts here), and an angry note propped up against a discarded dog poo bag. I decided that it was time to cut my losses and concede defeat on a grid square where 60% of its open space was completely sealed off.