When Bizza Walters is out working on her Warwickshire farm, she often sees people strolling around the patchwork fields, looking at her fluffy sheep.
The 25-year-old is a fourth generation farmer on 500 acres of English countryside, and she likes that visitors to the area enjoy using their farm for a walk.
However, a campaign for the right to roam across the countryside has concerned her. In recent years, thousands of people have taken part in mass trespasses, arguing that many people in England do not enjoy access to nature, or the rights that those across the border in Scotland enjoy.
In England, just 8% of the countryside is open access – including the coastal path, moorland, mountains, heaths, downs and commons, and footpaths that crisscross the countryside. The situation is similar in Wales, and in Northern Ireland there is hardly any access at all as it is not under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act. Politicians have been pushing for a Right to Roam Act to pass in parliament, arguing that people do not get to have “immersion in wild nature” with the limited footpaths available. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, proposed her own bill to widen access, and said people are now confronted with fences and barbed wire when trying to access the countryside.
But Walters, whose farm is a mixture of livestock and arable, is concerned that further access rights would harm the family business.
“A large hotel borders the farm so we have a lot of people walking about both on and off the footpaths,” she said. “Right to roam wouldn’t necessarily be the right way to go as we have livestock and crops in fields and we have people walking across them and it has an impact on food production and the countryside. Gates are left open and crops are destroyed. We also have wild birdseed down for the flora and fauna and people walking through can disturb them.”
Walters, who enjoys rambling in the countryside herself, is conscious of how some farmers are perceived: “I don’t want to be a typical farmer who says ‘get off my land’. I want people to enjoy the countryside.”
She campaigns to keep farms accessible to the public, with clear signs and accessible footpaths, and does demonstrations during lambing season for the hotel guests next door.
But a minority of guests are disrespectful, she says, and wander off the footpaths. She is also concerned about dogs. A dog-lover, Walters has a sheepdog, Dougal, who accompanies her all day at work. But she fears a right to roam would encourage irresponsible dog owners to descend on the countryside with untrained, off-lead animals.
“We had quite a bad dog attack in a field without a footpath at all where quite a lot of livestock died. We care hugely about our animals and when you have one that’s been torn apart by dogs, the welfare of the animal really upsets us,” she said.
Another common complaint from farmers is that walkers often leave gates open: “We have about 600 sheep on the farm and we spend all day separating them into different flocks and when people leave the gate open it is just so time consuming for the business to have to round them back up again.”
She sums up her views on right to roam: “At the end of the day, [farming is] a business and we have to make a profit off it,” she said.
‘Reconnecting to land is a win for everyone’
Though farmers often see themselves as custodians of the environment – and many actively try to improve their land for nature – the UK’s biodiversity has been in severe decline for decades, in large part because of the impact of intensive agriculture.
The government reformed the EU’s common agricultural policy in England to pay farmers to give space for nature. Campaigners think these payments could include a scheme to encourage farmers to give people more access to nature, by improving or adding pathways and educating the public about the nature on the farm.
Amy-Jane Beer, who runs the landowners’ working group for the Right to Roam campaign, said: “We see reconnecting to land through responsible access as a win for everyone, including farmers, who face increasing isolation from local communities. Reconnecting with the land also means reconnecting with those who work there. When people can access land they can learn what responsibility means in practice.”
The campaign believes that access to nature is important in the fight against biodiversity decline, as people won’t always protect what they don’t know and love.
The barrister turned farmer Sarah Langford has a mixed farm in Suffolk, which she has spent a long time converting to organic.
She has footpaths across her land but finds the current law confusing: “We do have a bananas right of way that takes you across a margin, through a crop, to join another margin, then through the crop again and then join the margin you just left. We tried to change the right of way so instead of three sides of a square it took you all across the margin, but it would have cost us thousands of pounds.”
Instead, Langford supports widened access to nature: “I am very convinced that we need greater access to the countryside and that there is plenty of research to the benefit to people’s physical or mental health.”
Rather than restricting people to footpaths, she thinks they should use the margins of fields that are set aside for access and nature: “Because we have just gone organic we have changed three large East Anglian fields into six, but we have deliberately put big hedgerows and fat paths on the margins. I am very enthusiastic about people foraging in the hedgerows for blackberries.”
But alongside a right to roam, Langford thinks that the public needs to be educated about how to enjoy the countryside in a respectful way.
“We talk collectively quite a lot about rights without the mirror of that which are responsibilities,” she said. “I think there is an absence of a public information campaign about everybody’s responsibilities in the country, from landowner to farmer to walker.”
She added: “I don’t think I would advocate open access without a corresponding information campaign.”
Langford cites “common sense stuff” that if you grew up in the countryside you know about, such as closing gates and keeping dogs under control.
“In London or in any city you can do what you want and don’t have to worry about it. You can leave a door open, a gate open, drop a crisp packet, behave without consequence with a system that’s set to clean up your mess. The countryside doesn’t have that. How can they know that leaving a gate open will cause six hours of work for the farmer who has to round their sheep up?”
But as someone who is evangelical about nature-friendly farming, Langford wants people to be able to see the benefits. “We’ve made a huge increase in our bird population and it’s a great joy to be able to share that with the people who live around it, because their joy gives me joy,” she said.
