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On Your Farm

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Getting to the heart of country life with a look at individual farming endeavours

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On Your Farm: Farming at Heathrow

04/10/2015

Farming at Heathrow

BBC Radio 4 - On Your Farm, Farming at Heathrow

Charlotte Smith meets the farmer who grows crops around the runways at Heathrow.

Charlotte Smith meets the farmer who grows crops around the runways at Heathrow and finds out what the airport's planned expansion could mean for him.

Colin Rayner's family have farmed land near London since the 17th century. In 1947 some of it was compulsorily purchased under the War Act, to build what is now Heathrow airport. As the years have gone by, more and more of the fields have been covered by concrete. But Colin still grows wheat, maize and oil seed rape on fields chopped in half by runways and the M25. A new railway line is also being built across the farm along with a construction compound for the planned HS2 high-speed rail link. As the modern world gradually swallows up what used to be agricultural land, Charlotte Smith finds out what it's like to grow crops with planes taking off at the end of the field and asks whether the arrival of a third runway at Heathrow would mean Colin is the last generation to farm this land.

Producer: Emma Campbell.

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