Skip to main content

Sarah Bearchell - Five Way Interview

Sarah Bearchell is a science writer and educator who has created educational activities for charities, learned societies and science centres, and who writes regularly for Aquila. The Future of Agriculture is her first book. 

Why science?

I’ve always been curious. When I was little, I used to make mud pies with different ingredients like stones, grass and sticks. When they had set into hard bricks, I would turn them out and see if they collapsed when I stood on them. It was a long-running and very unscientific investigation which resulted in joy and mess in equal measures. Formal science was the next step…which resulted in more joy and mess as I moved towards ecology, agriculture and horticulture! 

Why this book?

I’ve always wanted to write a proper book, and by that, I mean a book produced by a proper publisher, in hard copy, to be sold in a bookshop and be purchased (and hopefully read by!) people who I’ve never met.

One day, I saw a call-out for agricultural writers for a popular science book. It caught my eye because my academic background is in agricultural botany, but for the last ten years I’ve been writing about diverse science topics for children, so I didn’t feel like the best fit. But then the call appeared again, at a time when I was looking for a new project, so I contacted the series editor. 

He said I’d have some guidance, and it only needed to be 40,000 words, which didn’t feel particularly daunting having written a doctoral thesis. And I found myself thinking why not?

Well, there’s the arrogance of someone who has never written a book before! It has genuinely been one of the hardest work projects I’ve ever done. Agriculture is such a HUGE topic to fit in such a slim volume, and the research phase took me down some fascinating rabbit-holes. It was a real challenge to select the right examples to create a coherent story within the target length.

Should we attempt to make the UK more self-sufficient in food?

Yes! Without a doubt! We can all help towards this by reducing food waste, eating seasonal (rather than imported) food and by reducing the amount of meat and dairy we consume. That would free up land to grow plant-proteins, so we could produce more of our diet from the limited farmland we have available in the UK. 

We also need long-term planning at the government level, which supports both farmers and consumers as these changes happen. That must include accelerating the change to renewable energy to reduce electricity costs, which will make it cheaper to produce delicate salad crops in glasshouses and vertical farms. That would help to both reduce seasonal imports and enable us to grow more crops on less land. 

What’s next?

I normally write about science for children, families and teachers – with the emphasis on practical investigation. I love the challenge of developing activities which explore scientific concepts using everyday resources. I also write and present science shows for festivals, which are designed to be multisensory and participatory, so they work for everyone. It’s wonderful to experience other people’s engagement with science!

What’s exciting you at the moment?

University engineering departments! One of my children is planning to study engineering and I’m finding the departmental tours fascinating. It’s a path I might have taken had circumstances been different…and had my school’s biology teachers not been so incredibly brilliant (thanks, Miss Mappledoram and Mr Woodcock!).

These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics with Love – Mary Stopes-Roe *****

Admittedly it’s early days (this review is written in January), but this, for me, is the surprise hit of the year so far! I approached this book with trepidation, but found it absolutely delightful. It is described on the cover as the “courtship correspondence of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb”, and contains a series of letters between Wallis and his cousin and eventual wife Molly Bloxham, along with some useful annotation by their daughter, Mary. The courtship itself is not without difficulties, as Wallis was 18 years older than the 17-year-old Molly at the start of the correspondence, and her father, not surprisingly, wasn’t too pleased about the interest of such an elderly suitor, but that isn’t the only reason the letters are interesting – it’s also because of maths, and Wallis’s position in the UK as the engineering hero of the Second World War. (Incidentally, it seemed very strange to see letters addressed to “Barnes” – I had always assumed Barnes Wallis was a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Data Empire - Roopika Risam ****

The central thesis presented by Roopika Risam is that information gives us (and particularly countries) the power to organise, control and dominate others. Although I have a couple of issues with the presentation, this is a genuinely interesting trip through the history of our use of stored information from the earliest tallies to the latest information technology. I loved a quote from Lisa Gitelman that data is is always 'cooked' so 'raw data is an oxymoron'. This neatly underlines Risam's thesis that data and information are not neutral facts, but rather tools that (like everything from fire to electronics) can be used for good or evil. As we are taken through the historical context, it can sometimes be a little difficult to judge whether Risam regards a particular example as bad or good, even when the outcome is disastrous. One thing I didn't like too much is the adherence to a popular science writing approach that has got distinctly hackneyed: opening chapte...
Post a Comment
Read more

Andrew Jaffe - Five way interview

Andrew Jaffe is professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Imperial College, London and director of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology. His new book is The Random Universe. Why science? I’ve always been interested in science, in particular in  astronomy, astrophysics, and space. One of my earliest memories - back in nursery school in New Jersey, I think - was watching one of the moon launches. I wanted that excitement to be part of my life! I never got to be an astronaut, but I did get to be part of the Planck Satellite team, and was privileged to be able to travel to the ESA Spaceport in French Guiana to watch the launch.  In between, I was lucky enough to have a supportive family, get a good education, and find inspiring teachers, mentors, and collaborators. They helped me model the universe, and helped me learn how to refine those models in the face of experimental and observational evidence. That is, they taught me to be a scientist. Why this book? The Random...
Post a Comment
Read more