The Wisdom of Farmers, What We Can Learn from Rural Life is the latest book from Co. Longford beef and sheep farmer, John Connell.

A reflective and scholarly book on wisdom, resilience and community, it suggests the life lessons that can be learned from those who work the land and the millennia of wisdom they draw on when they go about their day "making a living by turning light and time into money".

Fusing philosophy, art, literature and spirituality, Connell delves into topics such as stoicism, the food chain, urbanisation, and the separation of humanity from the natural world.

At its heart, the author's 'land policy' is a plea to slow down and consider the 10,000 years of thought that farmers have brought to their land and livestock since the invention of agriculture.

Land philosophy

Connell, who is also the author of the bestselling memoir, The Cow Book, has come up with his own school of thought - the land philosophy.

The Wisdom of Farmers has 12 core teachings. including: connect with the earth; get up early; take time to savour joy; the past is closer than we think; be prepared to help others, and we all need wilderness.

Characters introduced in the book include a farm worker who moved to the US in search of a better life.

Connell outlined how she was blinded and suffered neurological damage due to exposure to pesticides while working in a plant nursery, and told she did not have long left to live.

Her case was taken up by a farm advocacy group and she got a substantial settlement.

She bought herself a trailer park home and kept enough to get by but gave the rest of the settlement to the advocacy group to help other farm women workers.

Wisdom of Farmers

The product of 10 years' thinking and travel, The Wisdom of Farmers is a self-help book with a difference.

It discusses the trend towards diversification among Irish farmers and the vibrancy of farming in Italy where 55,000 people under 35 work in agriculture.

Published by Allen & Unwin, The Wisdom of Farmers will be available from April 2.