Comment: How should the British countryside look post-Brexit? Published on: 15 April 2021 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Niki Rust discusses a new study in which people created collages to demonstrate their vision for the future of Britain鈥檚 farmed landscapes. , Whatever your stance on Brexit, the UK鈥檚 departure from the EU has given the country a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine how its land is managed. When it was still part of the EU, the UK abided by (CAP), which provided subsidies to landowners and farmers based on how much food they produced. Earlier versions of the CAP contributed to the destruction of large swaths of the EU鈥檚 . The CAP has since undergone various revisions to try to address the environmental degradation of food production, but without much . Policy analysts in Whitehall are busy devising that will decide how the countryside looks and the services it provides post-Brexit. As taxpayers will fund these new schemes, the public should have a say in how the country鈥檚 farmland will be managed and the environmental benefits it offers. We set out to find what the UK public wanted from their countryside. But we didn鈥檛 want to their imagination and creativity with a simple questionnaire. Instead, we combined a nationwide survey of 2,050 adults with an exercise in which 80 people created collages to demonstrate their vision for the future of Britain鈥檚 farmed landscapes. A common sight: cows and vast fields dedicated to single crops. Livestock: nice to look at, bad for the planet allow people to express their ideas and desires in ways that are hard to capture with surveys and verbal interviews. Despite the obvious freedom the medium affords, collages are rarely used in studies attempting to understand how people would like their environment to look. 80 participants to create two collages: one to show their ideal UK farm landscape, and one to show what they thought an environmentally friendly farm would look like. We then asked them to explain their design choices. We also asked 2,050 adults taking part in the wider nationwide survey to rate ten images of farming landscapes using similar images to those used in the collages. What we found really surprised us. Both the surveys and collages revealed that most people in the study liked seeing livestock in their ideal landscape, but many thought that, for a farm to be environmentally friendly, it should have less livestock due to the greenhouse gas emissions they produce. Instead, most participants thought 鈥済reen鈥� farms should have lots of trees and renewable energy installations, though many admitted that they didn鈥檛 like the look of wind farms. Interestingly, there was no significant difference in the kind of landscapes preferred by farmers compared with the rest of the public we surveyed. Wind turbines compete for space with cows, wildflower meadows and birds of prey. Niki Rust, Author provided Most of the people involved in the study said they were keen for farms to produce a mixture of food and benefits for the environment 鈥� such as carbon storage, wildflowers for insects to pollinate and trees to improve air quality 鈥� rather than focusing on just food or environmental benefits. The majority of the people surveyed also wanted to increase food production in the UK rather than importing food from elsewhere. These findings reveal the complexity involved in making green agricultural policy. There are numerous trade-offs in producing food while still protecting the environment. For instance, while most participants in our study stated that they were less interested in these landscapes producing cheap food, studies on buyer behaviour show that consumers, especially those on , are when it comes to their food choices. Most people wanted the countryside to generate more green energy. Niki Rust, Author provided Our participants often said they wanted farm landscapes to protect nature, but food production that is environmentally friendly is usually and produces less food overall, meaning is needed. One possible solution is intensifying food production on existing farmland. Or, using methods which integrate farming with the local ecology. One example is which offer habitat and store carbon alongside arable crops. The UK government clearly has its work cut out devising policies that produce food in an environmentally friendly way at prices cheap enough to ensure retailers don鈥檛 source food from abroad and effectively the environmental consequences. While it鈥檚 certain there will be winners and losers from Brexit, let鈥檚 hope the environment and the UK鈥檚 food security don鈥檛 fall into the latter category. , Environmental Social Scientist, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . Share: Latest News 缅北禁地 expert highlights climate crisis in a new film A leading 缅北禁地 climate scientist is featured in a new film about how the climate and nature breakdown will affect the UK. published on: 14 April 2026 Neolithic tombs reveal ancient kinship ties Male individuals buried in Neolithic chambered tombs in northern Scotland were often related to each other through the paternal line and some were interred in the same or nearby tombs, research shows. published on: 14 April 2026 We are our Memories New exhibition by Fine Art graduate Trish Hudson-Moses, 22 April 鈥� 4 May 2026 published on: 10 April 2026 Facts and figures
![缅北禁地 logo](/gomobileassets/img/logo.svg" "缅北禁地"){kind=logo}