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Farmer and author James Rebanks: ‘I hate the word rewilding – it’s been
weaponised’<br><br>
<a href="https://tlio.org.uk/rewilding-britain-timeline-cover-for-private-equitys-global-enclosures-by-stealth-and-pantheism/" eudora="autourl">
https://tlio.org.uk/rewilding-britain-timeline-cover-for-private-equitys-global-enclosures-by-stealth-and-pantheism/<br>
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</a>
<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/06/james-rebanks-interview-farmer-author-defra/" eudora="autourl">
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/06/james-rebanks-interview-farmer-author-defra/<br>
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</a>Ahead of the publication of his third book, he talks about turning
down Defra, his fears for UK farming and a life-changing trip to
Norway<br><br>
It has been a hectic few months for farmer and author James Rebanks, what
with his family’s farm in the Lake District to tend, as well as a
much-anticipated new book, the follow up to his prize-winning
best-sellers The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral. To add to the
pressure, over the summer he received an invitation from the new
government asking him to sit on the board of directors of the Department
for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the ministry responsible
for the nation’s agriculture. <br><br>
<img src="cid:7.0.1.0.1.20241106000837.10b7fb38@cultureshop.org.uk.0" width=311 height=500 alt="Emacs!">
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<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315745/the-place-of-tides-by-rebanks-james/9780241426937" eudora="autourl">
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315745/the-place-of-tides-by-rebanks-james/9780241426937<br>
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</a>No wonder, then, that when we meet on his farm, tucked away in a
vibrantly green Cumbrian valley in Gowbarrow Fell, 1,100 feet up in the
hills between Keswick and Penrith, 50-year-old Rebanks is running rather
than walking as he shows me its 500 acres where they keep Herdwick sheep
and Galloway cows. <br><br>
“I turned Defra down,” he says. “Mostly because of my fundamental
problems with Defra about budget.” <br><br>
For much of our time together, the straight-talking, personable Rebanks
is all smiles and jokes. At school, he recalls, before he left at 16 with
just two GCSEs, “I was rough round the edges, and only good at making
people laugh.” <br><br>
But when he talks about farm budgets he is deadly serious. It is a
measure of just how deep he believes the crisis in farming to
be.<br><br>
With Brexit, the £2.4 billion in subsidies based on acreage paid to
British farmers by the EU under the old Common Agricultural Policy are in
the process of being replaced by Defra with a system that instead rewards
good environmental stewardship. Rebanks wholeheartedly approves of the
direction of travel, “but we haven’t delivered on the new deal and
farmers can’t go on living on air”.<br><br>
They are telling him, he reports, that because of delays, shelf-loads of
bureaucracy and general “ineptitude”, the ministry is effectively
standing by while their old-style subsidy payments are tapered off,
without giving farmers access to the promised new funding for nature that
is meant to replace them. “Some farmers have lost as much as 38 per cent
of their income. They can’t get on the new scheme unless they have a
Natural England adviser prepared to treat them seriously enough to
process their application and there aren’t enough advisers,” he says.
<br><br>
In such a chaotic situation, he has been one of the lucky ones. His money
has come through, but overall he labels the transformation as a
“tragedy”. “There are literally hundreds and thousands of farmers wanting
to do amazing things for nature on their land who are being turned away,”
he says. <br><br>
To add insult to injury, in his eyes, Defra recently announced a £358
million underspend in the agricultural budget over the last three years.
“That sounds to anyone not in farming as if farmers don’t want that
money, aren’t trying to claim it. That is not at all what is
happening.”<br><br>
His refusal of the Defra offer is beginning to make more sense. In his
own case he can point out around the farm how the new funds are being
used: to put back hedgerows to reverse an alarming drop in bio-diversity
in the countryside; to restore rivers to their old meandering courses to
reduce the risk of flooding in towns and cities downstream; and to
replant lost species like betony in his pastures that “do remarkable
things for degraded soil”. But far too many farmers are not able to get
on with the job that needs doing and which they want to do because of a
logjam at the top. <br><br>
That should matter to all of us, he insists. “Insufficient capacity in
Defra means we are not buying enough of the nature that we need. We are
miles away from doing what we need to do to mend rural Britain.”<br><br>
It quickly becomes clear, as Rebanks races ahead, that he is as
passionate about the acres he farms – he stands in a line of
“dog-and-stick” Cumbrian Hill farmers stretching back 600 years – as he
is about just how vital such family farms are. “We need more small
farmers but at the moment we are losing them.”<br><br>
Economics are driving them to the wall at the same time science is
suggesting they are crucial to our collective future. “The best farming,
the evidence shows, is quite human-intensive, less mechanical, less
mono-cultural vast fields of one thing. Our diet and our landscape need
much more of a patchwork.”<br><br>
Rebanks grew up on his farm, working as soon as he could walk alongside
his father and his grandfather (the heroes of his first two books). That
has given him a profound respect for tradition that sits sometimes
awkwardly alongside his belief that farming has to adapt to the crisis in
nature and to climate change.<br><br>
Many of the improvements he is making on the farm fit broadly under the
banner of rewilding. “I don’t like the word rewilding and the
permutations of it. If rewilding means, do we need more nature in our
landscape, I absolutely own it.”<br><br>
Other uses, though, annoy him. “My problem is the word is weaponised and
then you have rewilders saying: ‘Your farm takes up too much room, James,
that’s space we want for the wild.’ I get it, but I’m not going anywhere,
and neither can I because I have to pay my bills.”<br><br>
He continues: “What really bugs me about rewilding is when it simply
becomes greenwashing. If you are a government not following through on
your promises to transform 70 to 80 per cent of the countryside to make
it better, you do some token rewilding bits here and there, flagship
projects you can take people round.”<br><br>
Farming can be a fraught business. “There are,” Rebanks reflects, trying
to be more diplomatic, “people on both sides of this debate playing
culture wars, and I am in the middle.” And, he adds, getting caught in
the crossfire, because of the public profile his books and numerous
public appearances have given him (which, of course, is why Defra wants
him on board). <br><br>
“I believe in compromise, but the current situation leads to grumpy
farmers who no longer trust government or environmentalists, and a whole
new breed of rabble rousers who know exactly how to play to their own
tribe,” he says. <br><br>
Rebanks is sometimes referred to as “Britain’s best-known farmer”, but
surely that crown belongs to Jeremy Clarkson? “He is massively helpful,”
Rebanks says, “whether you like him or not. I’m not a petrol head but
he’s got people seeing how insane the economics of farming are. I’ve had
more non-farmers approach me to talk about farming because of Clarkson’s
Farm than anything else that has happened in the last 15 years.”
<br><br>
The sins Rebanks attributes to Defra happened under Conservative
ministers. Does he think the incoming Labour team might do better?
<br><br>
He has just come back, he tells me, from attending a fringe meeting at
this autumn’s Labour party conference. “I’ve never done anything like
that before in my life. I’ve never been to anything political.” He is not
even a member of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU). <br><br>
Yet the farming minister, Daniel Zeichner, who has also been praised in
these pages earlier this year by Tom Bradshaw, current president of the
NFU, has visited the Rebanks’ farm not once but twice.
<br><br>
“He’s saying the right things. I’m absolutely confident he believes in a
compromise between farming and nature, but I am not absolutely confident
that he is going to in an argument with the Treasury on the right amount
of money so we have the nature we need.”<br><br>
If he doesn’t in Rachel Reeves’ forthcoming budget, what will be the
consequence? “Instead of a gain of nature as has been planned, I think we
are going to have a loss of nature. If you short change the spend, we all
lose. It is very simple,” says Rebanks.<br><br>
His passion for restoring nature is what took him to Norway for his new
book, The Place of Tides, to a remote, uninhabited rocky island on the
edge of the coastal shelf in the Vega archipelago, a Unesco World
Heritage Site. He spent 10 weeks there working alongside two elderly
women, Anna and Ingrid. Each spring they are single-handedly reviving a
long-standing tradition of protecting nesting eider ducks, and harvesting
their feathers once they leave their nests for duvets. <br><br>
It feels like a bit of a departure from the very English setting and
subject matter of his two previous books. “I went there,” he explains,
“to get away from people, from history, to step out of all the stuff that
worries me in the world.”<br><br>
The trip also came four years after the death of his father, Tom, from
cancer. Their relationship hadn’t always been easy, especially in his
late teens when he left school and they were working side by side on the
farm. <br><br>
“At the time it was getting a bit desperate financially, he was getting a
bit nasty, I was getting a bit uppity. There were some nasty fights.”
<br><br>
It was only in retrospect, he says, that he realised that taking himself
off to a remote Norwegian island was a form of grieving. “In the years
before I went there, I’d lost my dad, my aunties and all that older
generation that anchored me, but on the island I found myself with people
who were like them.”<br><br>
He remembers shaking Anna’s hand for the first time. “I got a chill. Her
hands felt like my grandmother’s hands, boney, sinewy, working-class
hands. She was my people. She didn’t give a toss about my books.”
<br><br>
He makes it sound as though he had reached a crisis point in his life,
yet inside his Cumbrian farmhouse, an old barn that he has been able to
extend with the significant royalties from his books to better
accommodate his growing family of four, Molly, Bea, Isaac and Tom, aged
from seven to 18, the atmosphere is unmistakably one of warmth and love
and life. <br><br>
His two sons are just home from school, his mother-in-law is helping with
the school-run, while Bea, who works on the farm and wants to follow in
his footsteps, pops in and out. Missing is Rebanks’ wife, Helen, who in
2023 published her own book, The Farmer’s Wife, which followed her
husband’s into the best-sellers’ charts. <br><br>
Are they setting themselves up to become the real-life Phil and Jill
Archer for the nation? He smiles. “I’ve only ever listened to The Archers
for half an episode. That was enough”.<br><br>
His wife is currently on a trip to London to see a stage dramatisation of
her book. Will there be similar adaptations of his books? “I must have
been asked about 20 times to be in a documentary about my life and I’ve
turned them all down. I don’t like being recognised any more than I am.”
<br><br>
Helen came from another farming family and grew up close by. “She was the
swotty, academic farmer’s daughter, determined to get out of the small
town we had gone to school in. We met when I was 21 and she was
17.”<br><br>
He credits her with awakening ambition in him after a misspent,
“rough-round-the-edges” youth, encouraging him to go to night school to
get his A-levels, and landing a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, to
read history.<br><br>
“I didn’t like it,” he recalls of his university days. “I had a vague,
chippy and I now realise completely pointless hatred of whoever ‘them’
was, as if everyone at Oxford was one thing and I had to beat them. I
could have enjoyed it more.”<br><br>
It didn’t stop him getting a double first. His initial plan had been to
use Oxford as a stepping stone to get a job that would pay him enough to
save the farm. <br><br>
Instead, he returned after graduating to work on the farm, but it had
given him the courage in his spare time to attempt to realise an ambition
to write that he had developed while reading his way through the novels
on his “obsessively bookish” mother’s shelves. It is a habit he still
makes time to indulge in, having just finished the Booker Prize shortlist
(Percival Everett’s James is his top tip). <br><br>
The Place of Tides, marks quite a shift in his writing, more novel than
memoir, realised in rhythmic, poetic language. But it is familiar
territory, namely his struggle to balance the timeless with the timely,
tradition with the changes that need to be made for a changing
future.<br><br>
He first caught a glimpse of Anna on a 2012 visit to Norway. To make ends
meet he had taken on some consultancy work on sustainability for Unesco.
“I got 40 minutes off the coast, looked back at this panorama of
mountains and rocks and sea and thought: ‘This might be the best place
I’ve ever, ever been.’”<br><br>
It’s quite a compliment for someone who believes his farm in the Lake
District is the place he always wants to live. But something else caught
his eye that day. <br><br>
“These quiet, unheralded women were working out there with the eider
ducks and I was curious. I remember thinking at the time: ‘I wonder if
anyone else has written about this?’”<br><br>
The challenge of finding a subject for his third book revived the memory.
“I was probably a little bit dazed and confused after the first two
books,” he concedes. “All sorts of weird things come out of success.” His
second book, English Pastoral, won the Wainwright Prize for nature
writing and was – like his debut, The Shepherd’s Life, translated into
more than a dozen languages.<br><br>
With his family’s blessing, he returned to spend the duck season with
Anna and Ingrid. Anna comes from a long line of men and women who have
done this work, stretching all the way back to a great, great grandfather
in 1852. Nowadays, though, the tradition is teetering on the edge of
extinction. <br><br>
“I went there to get away from my worries about the future, but it was
there. The sea is broken [by overfishing that has decimated the local
fishing industry]. The people are getting old...”<br><br>
From his trip to Norway he has brought back a variety of things. “It was
the first time I had spent time in a place dominated by women, with
women’s rules. I had to really think about that, embarrassingly, for the
first time in my life.”<br><br>
And on the farm? “I came back determined to mend home as Anna was
determined to mend her island and its ecosystem. On the farm, we had been
doing our bit, but we have definitely gone up a gear.”<br><br>
He believes they are doing “the best farming we have ever done. We might
now be one of the most progressive farms in Britain on transforming our
soil. We have 15 worms per spade-full, when our neighbours have four. We
need more worms in the soil.”<br><br>
Not, he adds, that the day-to-day headaches of hill-farming ever go away.
<br><br>
“One of the biggest problems for anyone who farms around here is dogs
off-lead that attack sheep. If we walk up the fell now where my sheep
are, I can guarantee that there will be at least three people walking
with their dogs off-lead, despite the signs telling them not to. They
have an amazing sense of entitlement.”<br><br>
What does he do when he catches them? “I give them a stern telling off.
My dad would have said their dogs should be shot.”<br><br>
Another medium-term cloud on the horizon is one that hovers over many
family farms – succession. How will he sort it out with four children?
<br><br>
He shakes his head. “I haven’t got a clue what the perfect succession
looks like when the capital value of land is wildly higher than its
agricultural value because it is a tax dodge for corporates and pension
funds.”<br><br>
I can’t help thinking that whatever his reservations, accepting a seat
round the Defra table would enable this articulate and thoughtful man at
least a chance to impact on government policy in such matters. But then
he has been burnt once already. In 2018 he resigned shortly after joining
a Defra panel set up by then Secretary of State, Michael Gove, after
environmentalists complained it had too many farmers on it.<br><br>
Isn’t he actually both – farmer and environmentalist? “Yes,” he replies
with a laugh. “And I need to show that there is a place for farmers like
me in the environment of the future, and that we can deliver multiple
things from the same piece of land.” <br><br>
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks is published by Allen Lane on October
17 at £22<br><br>
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<br><br>
<br><br>
<h1><b>See King Charles III's $25 billion Real Estate
Portfolio</b></h1>Giovana Gelhoren May 4, 2023, <br><br>
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2023/05/04/inside-king-charles-iiis-25-billion-real-estate-empire/" eudora="autourl">
https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2023/05/04/inside-king-charles-iiis-25-billion-real-estate-empire/<br>
<br>
</a>As the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom,
<a href="https://www.sheknows.com/tags/king-charles-iii/">King Charles
III</a> is the owner of many opulent royal residences across Britain.
After
<a href="https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/slideshow/2221482/queen-elizabeth-ii-dress-hat-collection/">
Queen Elizabeth II</a> passed away in September 2022, Charles officially
became the King in a lavish 2023 coronation and thus took over duties and
properties previously owned by his mother.<br><br>
According to a deep dive into the properties from
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2022/10/21/inside-king-charles-iiis-25-billion-real-estate-empire/?sh=7995704641ec">
<i>Forbes</a></i>, Charles now owns seven palaces, 10 castles, 12 homes,
56 holiday cottages and 14 ancient ruins. The elaborate real estate
portfolio is known as the Duchy of Lancaster estate, a private and
ancient estate owned by the reigning sovereign. The estate has been
passed down to the next King or Queen for over 750 years.<br><br>
As if that deal wasn’t already sweet enough, Charles wasn’t required to
pay inheritance tax on the luxurious real estate due to a rule introduced
by the UK government in 1993. Per
<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/charles-doesnt-have-to-pay-inheritance-tax-750-million-estate-2022-9">
<i>Business Insider</a></i>, the rule doesn’t require the Royal Family to
pay the same tax as other UK citizens to prevent the royal family’s
assets being wiped out if two monarchs were to die in a short period of
time.<br><br>
Properties include massive estates that are known across the globe, such
as Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, but there are also some lesser
known properties that have been in the family for generations.<br><br>
Though one might think that larger and more expensive is better, Charles
disagrees. A source recently told the
<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11323027/King-Charles-WONT-Buckingham-Palace-fit-purpose-modern-world.html">
<i>Daily Mail </a></i>that the royal might be thinking of breaking royal
protocol by
<a href="https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/2643134/king-charles-new-home-buckingham-palace/">
not moving to Buckingham Palace</a> at the end of its renovation in 2027
(the Palace is worth an estimated $4.9 billion, per <i>Forbes</i>). “I
know he is no fan of ‘the big house,’ as he calls the palace,” the source
said. “He doesn’t see it as a viable future home or a house that’s fit
for purpose in the modern world.” The source continued, “He feels that
its upkeep, both from a cost and environmental perspective, is not
sustainable.”<br><br>
Thus, the King seemingly spends most of his time in other properties and
we have all the details about where they are. Below you’ll see some
of Charles’ most extravagant and opulent estates, palaces and
cottages!<br><br>
<br>
<font size=5>How King Charles and Prince William's royal estates earn
millions in rent from taxpayers<br><br>
</font>Sat 02 Nov 2024<br><br>
<a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-king-charles-prince-williams-34022693" eudora="autourl">
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-king-charles-prince-williams-34022693<br>
<br>
</a>The two most senior royals make £50m a year from their inherited
estates – as revealed by a bombshell new Mirror and Channel 4 Dispatches
investigation<br><br>
The two royal Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, owned by Prince William
and King Charles III, earn millions of pounds in rent from the
taxpayer.<br><br>
Details of how the two most senior members of the Royal Family make £50m
a year from their inherited estates can be revealed for the first
time.<br><br>
It owns the coastline from Barrow-in-Furness to the River Mersey and five
leases reveal the Duchy will received at least £28m from power cables
crossing this land.<br><br>
A Duchy of Cornwall spokesperson it was “a private estate with a
commercial imperative”.<br><br>
The Duchy of Lancaster said it “operates as a commercial company” and
that “while His Majesty The King takes a close interest in the work of
the Duchy, the day-to-day management of the portfolio is the
responsibility of the Council and executive team”.<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
<font size=5>King Charles doesn't have to pay inheritance tax on the
Queen's private estate worth more than $750 million<br><br>
</font>Jyoti Mann Sep 11, 2022,<br><br>
<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/charles-doesnt-have-to-pay-inheritance-tax-750-million-estate-2022-9?op=1" eudora="autourl">
https://www.businessinsider.com/charles-doesnt-have-to-pay-inheritance-tax-750-million-estate-2022-9?op=1<br>
<br>
</a> King Charles has inherited the Duchy of Lancaster
estate valued at more than $750 million.<br>
He will not have to pay inheritance tax on the estate
due to a rule approved in 1993.<br>
The duchy generated income of $27 million for the
Queen last year, financial records show.<br><br>
King Charles will not have to pay inheritance tax on the Duchy of
Lancaster estate he inherited from the Queen due to a rule allowing
assets to be passed from one sovereign to another.<br><br>
Charles automatically inherited the estate, the monarch's primary source
of income, while his eldest son, Prince William, inherited the Duchy of
Cornwall estate - valued at more than $1 billion - from his father.
<br><br>
The new king will avoid inheritance tax on the estate worth more than
$750 million due to a rule introduced by the UK government in 1993 to
guard against the royal family's assets being wiped out if two monarchs
were to die in a short period of time, i News reported.<br><br>
The provision was first exercised in 2002 when the Queen Mother passed on
an estate worth about $80 million to the Queen including a collection of
Faberge eggs.<br><br>
The clause means that, to help protect its assets, members of the royal
family do not have to pay the 40% levy on property valued at more than
£325,000 ($377,000) that non-royal UK residents do.<br><br>
The Lancaster estate generated revenue of £24 million ($27 million) last
year, its financial records state, and the King is now entitled to its
income.<br>
Advertisement<br><br>
It had assets worth more than £650 million ($754 million) at the end of
March this year, the duchy's website states. A law passed in 1702 forbids
the monarch from selling any of the assets.<br><br>
The Queen began voluntarily paying income and capital gains tax on the
estate in 1993 and Charles may decide to follow suit. <br><br>
The Duchy of Lancaster estate, founded in the 13th century, consists of
"commercial, agricultural and residential" properties,
including a portfolio of financial investments, according to its
website.<br><br>
Its five rural units, or Surveys, cover about 18,000 hectares of land in
England and Wales.<br><br>
The Foreshore Survey covers about 36,000 hectares (one hectare is equal
to about two and a half acres) from the river Mersey, on which the city
of Liverpool is built, to Barrow-in-Furness in the north of England. It
also consists of the Minerals Survey, comprising limestone and sandstone
quarries from south Wales to North Yorkshire.<br><br>
However, most of its income comes from the Urban Survey, which includes
extensive commercial property interests in central London such as the
Savoy Hotel. <br><br>
The Balmoral and Sandringham residences are owned by the royal family,
while most of the other properties they use including Buckingham Palace
and Windsor Castle are part of the Crown Estate. <br><br>
The Duchy of Lancaster was contacted for comment. <br><br>
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