The aim of the CSS was to improve the environmental values of farmland throughout Britain, so they were a good fit for it. Their first step was to apply for funding, under the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, to restore the section of the estate which had formerly been designed as a park. Already aware of the environmental impoverishment that intensive farming had caused, they decided to embark on a bold venture, which was to discontinue dairying, sell the herd and equipment to get themselves out of debt, contract out the arable sections of the property and return the rest to Nature. And despite all efforts to intensify and diversify production it continued to lose money, and was still doing so as the Millennium ticked over.Īt that point, the couple made a big decision. By then, however, it had ceased to be a profitable enterprise. The 3,500 acre Knepp estate in West Sussex, which dates from the 12th Century, has belonged to the same family since 1787, and in 1987 the author’s husband inherited it from his grandparents, who had run it as a farm, with arable crops and a dairy herd.
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