The Farm - Richard Benson

If anybody had told me I would enjoy reading a book about the effect of changing consumer demands and habits, the growth of large supermarket chains and the effects of these factors on British farmers and the countryside, I would have been very sceptical. But, whilst Richard Benson’s book delivers a very clear message on these themes, it is very different because it is his own personal and very moving account of the fate of his farming family, told in a very engaging manner with great humour and brilliant observation. Benson’s family worked on the land in the West Yorkshire for generations but he never took to farming being clumsy when it came to farm ...

Where it came from I really don’t know, but I do remember hearing, as a child, that one would “never meet a poor farmer”. So, when in the nineteen eighties I heard that the suicide rate among farmers was fast increasing I couldn’t understand what farmers had to be so down about. Of course, now older and wiser, I understand better what has happened to British farmers in the last twenty years or so. In “The Farm” Richard Benson tells the story of his family and how they have suffered like many farming families. Richard decided to go to university and study English rather than joining his father on the farm (he never really took to any aspect of farming) but his ...