Farmers install toilets to keep badly behaved walkers off their land telegraph.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from telegraph.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“It turned us onto a new way of thinking which puts as much emphasis on the environmental and social benefits of the work we do here as it does on the food production side of the business.
“Prior to that we had run the farm on assumptions rather than facts and it made us realise that if we still wanted to be here in 10 or 15 years’ time, we had to take a clinical look at every aspect of the business.”
Mr Heseltine is now one of the leading members of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, which was set up to promote sustainable farming, and having reduced the number of grazing livestock while at the same time delaying the annual mowing of meadows, he has successfully increased the farm’s biodiversity credentials.
Don t show me this message again✕
Cattle in Australia are fed growth-promoting hormones that are banned in Britain (Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media)
Schoolchildren and hospital patients could be fed meat from hormone-fed cattle, chlorine-washed chicken and pigs kept in cruel stalls that are illegal in the UK under a trade deal with Australia, experts are warning.
Farmers and environmentalists say allowing imports that create high greenhouse gas emissions and undermine animal welfare would be grossly hypocritical of the government.
The UK and Australia have agreed “the vast majority” of a post-Brexit free trade deal, aiming to seal a deal by next month. Ministers hope a deal would help the economy to surge ahead as it recovers from the pandemic.