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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Tom Levitt

Shedloads of colour: how a move away from grey buildings could help farmers’ mental health

A close up of the mural on a farm shed – mural shows pigs in a field with flowers and mushrooms.
A mural has transformed a steel shed on Ben and Helen Taylor-Davies’s farm near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. Photograph: Alexander Turner/The Guardian

The modern-day farm is rarely a thing of beauty. While a farmyard in Britain might for many still conjure up a bucolic idyll and freely roaming animals, the reality is often no more than a collection of bland metal sheds.

It turns out that a large, windowless, temperature-controlled shed can be the most efficient way to house and fatten up farm animals, particularly chickens. But among many downsides for the animals’ health and welfare, it is also leaving farmers miserable.

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