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When Debra and Tom Willoughby first arrived at their tenant farm in Nottinghamshire, they tried to reroute a bridleway that runs through their farmyard. Now the organic farmers are relieved they were refused permission because of the benefits they have found from the connections they make with people who walk through their farm. They have since opened new permissive footpaths on their land.
Farmers are often cast as vociferous opponents of wider access to the countryside. But a growing band of access-friendly farmers has joined forces with the Right to Roam campaign and will discuss how to open up more land for public enjoyment at this week’s Oxford real farming conference.
“It’s really nice when we get people through the yard – the positives far outweigh the negatives,” said Debra Willoughby, who farms 157 hectares (387 acres) with organic beef cattle, cereals and new agroforestry apple orchards at Normanton-on-Soar near Loughborough. “Farms are very isolated places. It used to be tens of people working on this farm and now it’s just me and my husband.”
One positive for the Willoughbys and other farmers is finding new customers – particularly as a growing number of farmers are seeking to circumvent the vicissitudes of global commodity markets by selling produce directly to people.
“If we’ve got people coming through, enjoying the landscape here, they are your customers,” said Willoughby. “We need that connection with people otherwise what’s going to stop them going to the supermarket? We have to put ourselves out there.”
The Willoughbys are planting more than 12,000 apple trees for eating and juicing, converting their former dairy farm to agroforestry. While they are paying local people to plant the trees this winter, they are also organising village tree-planting days so volunteers can get involved.
In England, only 8% of the countryside is designated as open access for walking, picnicking and other outdoor activities. A recent poll found 71% of people were in favour of allowing access around the edge of fields if there were no safe alternative routes.
According to the Right to Roam campaign, farmers are finding that more people on their land helps alert them to potential thefts, fires and fly-tipping.
“Farmers need to reconnect with their communities as much as we need to reconnect with nature. And the land is where we meet,” said Amy-Jane Beer of the Right to Roam campaign. “Farmers are isolated and in that isolation it’s very easy to regard someone coming on your land as a stranger. It’s that Irish proverb – a stranger being the friend you haven’t met yet. By having more people on your land particularly if they’re local, the strangers become a known quantity – they become your neighbours, friends and potentially your customers.”
Members of the Right to Roam’s access-friendly farmers’ working group are appearing this week at the Oxford real farming conference – launched in 2010 as an alternative to the Oxford farming conference – to discuss the benefits of opening up more land to people.
The Right to Roam campaign is seeking a default right of responsible access to land and water, as enjoyed in Scotland, Scandinavia and other European countries, with exceptions for privacy, public safety, protecting young crops, livestock and sensitive wildlife.
But the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Land and Business Association have claimed that Labour’s abandonment of its right to roam policy for England and Wales in the months before the 2024 general election was a major win for their lobbying against the policy.
A growing number of landowners favour a careful increase in public access.
Jo Clark, a small farmer in south Devon, said: “I grew up on a farm and as a kid I was told by lots of neighbours: ‘Get off my land!’ My philosophy has been: ‘Get on my land,’ but I’d rather people come here and have a really grounded experience.”
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Clark hosts educational visits and camps – with particular focus on screen-free camps for teenagers – through the On the Hill social enterprise and a vegetable box scheme alongside other farming. He is applying for the government’s new sustainable farming incentive (SFI) but is dismayed it does not include any support for new footpath creation or better incentives for educational visits.
“I’d love to make recommendations to Defra on what could be added to the SFI to encourage farmers to bring people out from the towns and cities and on to the land,” said Clark. “It’s such a shame that financial incentives to encourage public access aren’t there.”
Guy Thallon, the head of natural environment for the 3,600-hectare Castle Howard estate in North Yorkshire, is participating in the Oxford real farming conference debate and said the estate had opened up new permissive footpaths to better connect existing public rights of way.
The estate is changing the way it manages land, with a mix of traditional farming operations and tenant farmers alongside new forestry creation and a rewilding block.
“Obviously access is in the front of our minds when we’re thinking about how do we progress,” said Thallon. “We don’t support a universal right to roam but we recognise that access to the natural environment is important to society and we are supportive of more public access to land.”
There are some public funds already available for enhancing public access – the woodland creation offer in England provides one-off payments of up to £3,700 a hectare to landowners who create publicly accessible woodlands close to major towns and cities. But according to Thallon, offering landowners incentives to create new public access via its environmental stewardship schemes would be a logical step. “It would definitely be good to see [government] support for more access,” he said.
Beer said adding public access creation to existing environmental farm payments would be an “easy win” for the government. “It’s relatively inexpensive and hugely beneficial for public health, as a way of keeping people fitter and healthier with improved mental wellbeing as well – keeping people out of hospitals. Yes there’s a cost to creating new access infrastructure for the public but there’s so much to gain – and economic gain as well.”
