William Gibbs

"It’s not about the place. I honestly mean that"

Section MS12, Riccardo Badano

Keywords: borders, book, food, environment

What does it mean to have a relationship with the land anymore?   In modern agriculture, the person is increasingly physically and emotionally removed from the land, unrooted. Through unforgiving financial systems and the logic of an ever-advancing precision agriculture, the importance of place appears to have become little more than a nostalgic remnant, now replaced by the homogenising effect of fast-paced logistical assemblages and digitalisation. Through conversations conducted with people intimately involved in the work of one dairy farm - farmers, land-owners and migrant workers - It’s not about the place. I honestly mean that interrogates notions of place-making, rootedness and property. By providing the reader with an alternative way of mapping and interpreting the land, the book opens up the reality of the contemporary farming industry to a broader public through the experiences of those whose place it is. In so doing, it portrays the all too often romanticised, bucolic British countryside, offering a more complex insight into land relations, place and belonging.