Fields of change: who can be a farmer?

As a child, I was the farmer of a toy farm. So realistic were my animal figures and tractor models that I continued being a ‘farmer of the imagination’ in the fields or on our allotment. There I found the things my model farm couldn’t give me: the smell of the earth, things to pick and eat, birds singing and Water Voles in the stream. Although I worked on farms as an adult, it wasn’t possible to become a farmer or study at an agricultural college as a woman from a non-farming family in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Writing a book about that, and the story of three women in the 1940s who achieved their dreams to farm, was a revelation. After such a gargantuan effort to feed the nation during the Second World War, the farm gate was shut on the women who had carried out much of the work and innovation of that time. And, of course, the rapid modernisation and intensification of the farming industry then, under government directives, set a direction, mindset and pattern in motion that continues to have devastating impacts on nature today. I can’t help but put the two together and wonder if things might have been different if farm holders after the war had continued to diversify, and if more had been female.

When it comes to nature, farmers get a hard time. Add in weather, climate, markets, disease, government policy and the precarity of subsidies, and you might conclude that farmers get a very hard time overall. But farming and nature shouldn’t be so polarised; they start from the same place, after all. Most people are separated from the land and from any knowledge or agency in how their food is produced, while farmers are often poorly rewarded for what they produce, misunderstood, and unsupported in farming that would benefit nature. The challenge of our time is how to feed ourselves sustainably, without exacerbating an unstable climate, and while stopping, then reversing, the devastating effects on farmland wildlife.

It’s a challenge we must share. There is a real opportunity for a caring and interested public, as well as farmers, to change the narrative at the grassroots, level. And many are. It probably won’t take much searching where you live to find a farm that is doing just that: building relationships, caring for nature.

Farming and nature can coexist in harmony. At scale, if we are mindful and work together, we can bust the stereotypes of who a ‘farmer’ is and diversify this relationship on a community-by-community basis. Those who manage this develop strong social links and love connecting people with the land and seasons, making us all nature-literate and agri-cultural.

As nature lovers, and consumers of food and drink, we must play our part in supporting, advocating and campaigning for what we want. Farming has always reacted to change, but it needs our help. The fact that more women are leading in farming, and studying agricultural courses, gives me – and that little-girl-farmer me – a lot of hope and joy.

Read how wildlife enthusiasts across the UK helped protect England’s nature-friendly farming budget.