“Charles Massy has written a definitive masterpiece that takes its place along with the writings of Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Masanobu Fukuoka, Humberto Maturana, and Michael Pollan. No work has more brilliantly defined regenerative agriculture and the breadth of its restorative impact upon human health, biodiversity, climate, and ecological intelligence." --Paul Hawken In Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health. It is the story of how a grassroots revolution—a true underground insurgency—can save the planet, help reduce and reverse climate change, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food. Using his personal experience as a touchstone—from an unknowing, chemical-using farmer with dead soils to a radical ecologist farmer carefully regenerating a 2000-hectare property to a state of natural health—Massy tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. With evocative stories, he shows how other innovative and courageous farmers are finding a new way. At stake is not only a revolution in human health and in our communities, but the very survival of the planet. For farmers, backyard gardeners, food buyers, health workers, policy makers, and public leaders alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward and a powerful and moving paean of hope. It’s not too late to regenerate the earth. Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our planet, and our health.

"Originally published in 2017 as Call of the Reed Warbler: a new argiculture, a new earth by Univeristy of Queensland Press"--Title page verso.

Fully updated and featuring a new author's note addressing recent, major progress in regenerative agriculture. Call of the Reed Warbler will change the way we farm, eat and think about food. In this groundbreaking book Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health. Using his personal farming experience as a touchstone, he tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. He shows how innovative farmers are finding a new way, regenerating their land and witnessing astounding transformations. Evocatively, he captures what it truly means to live in connection with the land. For farmer, backyard gardener, food buyer, health worker, policy maker and public leader alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a clear vision of a sustainable future for our food supply, our landscape, our health and our Earth. It offers hope and a powerful affirmation of our potential for change. Now is the time for a grassroots revolution.

The 10-billion-dollar collapse of the wool industry is considered one of Australia's biggest business disasters, and for the first time, the shocking true story behind this colossal collapse is revealed. Spanning 170 years from the birth of the industry in 1840 and its boom during the 1950s through its unraveling from 1980 to 1991, this is a searing account of greed, political corruption, and heavy-handed protectionism. As it uncovers the never-before-seen archival sources, government and board papers, and private correspondence and shares exclusive interviews with key whistle blowers, this narrative unveils the gripping true story of government corruption in a seemingly untouchable industry.

Pregnant after rape, seventeen-year-old Josephina Hansen is exiled from her family home in Kiel in the north of Germany. She finds refuge with her sister's Danish family in S&ønderborg, then in Hamburg with a philanthropic businessman and, later, a radical journalist and his sister. In 1880 the worsening political situation forces this makeshift family into exile &– and a new life in a small farming settlement in the Kaitieke valley in New Zealand.Accompanying Josephina on the journey is an ancient sewing sampler given to her by her grandmother. In its lovingly stitched pictures she finds a way of mapping the world she has come from &– and that is traversed by the birds of her childhood, the Rohrs&änger or reed warblers, which migrate yearly from the salt marshes near her home to &‘somewhere nice and warm where the oranges grow'.Josephina's story is framed by the reunion of Frank and Beth, descendants of two of her three children by different fathers. It is Beth's discovery of the reason for the disappearance from the family story of Josephina's third child that unlocks memory and meaning from the intricately stitched story of the migrating reed warblers.The Reed Warbler is a beautiful and rich family saga that weaves together the lives of six generations, overseen, as Josephina's son Wolf would observe at a family reunion in 1915, by &‘Ma with that glint in her eye'.

Bradypterus, Locustella, Hippolais, Cettia.

'A love letter to Mother Earth and entertaining must-read that goes to the heart of our survival' Charles Massy. 'A love letter to Mother Earth and entertaining must-read that goes to the heart of our survival' Charles Massy, author of Call of the Reed Warbler. Perfect for fans of Wilding by Isabella Tree. What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves. Soil is the unlikely story of our most maligned resource as swashbuckling hero. A saga of bombs, ice ages and civilisations falling. Of ancient hunger, modern sicknesses and gastronomic delight. It features poison gas, climate collapse and a mind-blowing explanation of how rain is formed. For too long, we've not only neglected the land beneath us, we've squandered and debased it, by over-clearing, over-grazing and over-ploughing. But if we want our food to nourish us, and to ensure our planet's long-term health, we need to understand how soil works - how it's made, how it's lost, and how it can be repaired. In this ode to the thin veneer of Earth that gifts us life, commentator and farmer Matthew Evans shows us that what we do in our backyards, on our farms, and what we put on our dinner tables really matters, and can be a source of hope. Isn't it time we stopped treating the ground beneath our feet like dirt?