Crowdfunding aims to protect central England’s largest area of scrubland in heart of intensively farmed Bedfordshire

When new rules in the 1980s encouraged farmers to “set aside” some arable fields from crop-growing to reduce EU-wide overproduction, Hugh White rebelled.

“He said: ‘If you don’t want my corn, I’ll put the whole lot in set-aside,’” remembers the farmer’s son, Graham White. And so in 1988, cultivation ceased abruptly on all 153 hectares (377 acres) of Strawberry Hill farm in rural Bedfordshire.