This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.Farmers today are increasingly facing pressure from policy and market forces to improve
their environmental performance. Yet – despite widespread recognition of the negative
externalities of agriculture on a national and global scale - many farmers would argue that, as
‘custodians of the countryside’ they have always respected and cared for the local
environment, and play a central role in creating and maintaining the countryside as we know
it today. In this paper, we use evidence emerging from research with farmers across England
and Wales to explore farmer accounts of environmental concern and action in the context of
both traditional farming values and contemporary imperatives. We draw particularly on
scholarly work around constructs of ‘good farming’ to consider the extent to which
environmental concern has been accommodated within a wide range of farming contexts
across England and Wales. Our findings highlight an intrinsic sense of care towards the
environment among farmers and reveal how environmental management has in many ways
become an integral part of farming discourse; recognised as synergistic with personal and
business goals concerning i) personal respect for the environment and conservation; ii)
countryside custodianship; iii) farm legacy and succession; iv) ‘good’ agricultural practice
and compliance with regulation; and/or v) financial profitability. We discuss some of the
issues arising from our findings and offer our thoughts on implications for efforts to
encourage farmers to carry out environmentally beneficial activities. Whilst expressions of
environmental concern do not necessarily equate to effective action on the ground,
recognising that many farmers believe environmental management to be part of good farming
practice provides a more positive foundation for engaging with them on this topic than
assuming they need to be cajoled into action.The research on which this paper is based was funded as part of Defra’s Sustainable
Intensification Research Platform (Project LM0302)
