Derek Banbury’s Farm
Sitting on 500 acres to the north of Derek Gow’s rewilding project is Frankaborough farm. Three generations live and work here. Its patriarch is Derek Banbury.
Wild animals running amok is not something Derek is happy about. Since he left school at 16 to work for his father he’s grown the farm from 50 to 400 cows. He likes seeing wildlife from his tractor but isn’t much concerned about it’s loss. “Wildlife don’t affect farmers really – the less of it the better!”
“I love farming – intensive farming – because that’s supplying the world with food and everybody can be happy if they’ve got full bellies; but if everybody rewilded where would we be?”
Wild boar escaping digging up his fields is bad enough, beavers flooding fields is frightening, now he’s been told storks are going to be released and wildcats. Where it ends he does not know and that worries him.