²ÝÁñÉçÇø

It has been a tough year for accommodation diversifications but some farm businesses have thrived despite the economic conditions

Worthy Farm will go down in history as the dairy farm that transforms to hold the world’s most iconic festival: Glastonbury.

With the traditional cider sector under pressure in the UK, Herefordshire farmer Paul Stephens is looking to keep the industry alive.

Dan Hawes grew up on an arable farm in Suffolk and now produces strawberry and raspberry plants for the UK fruit market with Blaise Plants, sister company to Hugh Lowe Farms, Kent. The business grows outside, under tunnels and in glasshouses and produces more than four million plants a year. The arable side includes environmental schemes, with a mix of wheat, oilseed rape, beans and barley crops.

With farmers allowing the public onto their land more and more through diversification, ²ÝÁñÉçÇø Guardian takes a look at the pitfalls of inviting public access

Making changes to or erecting a building, or changing its use without planning permission carries big risks but there may be ways of making the development legally compliant.

Helen is a fifth-generation farmer who farms with her parents, David and Anne Shaw, husband, Craig, and their children, Alfred and Hattie, at Grey Leys Farm in the Vale of York. The farm comprises 162 hectares (400 acres) of grass, maize and wholecrop for the herd of 240 pedigree Jersey cows and more than 200 followers.

James farms Dairy Shorthorns east of Kendal, Cumbria, with his parents Kathleen and Henry, wife Michelle and sons Robert and Chris. The fifth generation to farm at Strickley, he is also vice-chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network

85 per cent of respondents in a CLA survey said the planning system has hampered the growth of their business

Kate farms alongside her husband Jim on their farm near Abergavenny, Monmouthshire. Farming 122 hectares (300 acres), the main enterprise consists of 800 breeding ewes and cider made on-site from their orchards. She is a mum of two, runs Kate’s Country School on-farm and is the woodland creation officer for Stump Up For Trees