Hello and welcome to the best of today. It being Christmas, the Today program is edited by guest editors, people we invite to control a lot of what we talk about, a lot of the agenda, to bring some perspectives, some ideas which perhaps we are guilty of neglecting at other times of the year.

Today's guest editor is James Rebanks, the farmer, the shepherd, the multi-award

winning author as well. The question that animates his writing that draws so many people to it is a

question that now faces the country. What can, what should be done to sustain this green and

pleasant land?

To preserve the environment we cherish, the air we breathe, the soil we depend on, the biodiversity we treasure,

at the same time as ensuring that we have a plentiful supply of nutritious and healthy food.

It's a question that's being asked particularly now because of Brexit.

Love it or loathe it,

Brexit means we're no longer bound by the rules of the EU's common agriculture policy.

We can design our own farming and environment rules from scratch again.

Now, I visited James Rebanks's farm in Matadale in the Lake District back in March,

where he showed me some of the changes he'd made to the way farms in the hope of restoring the beauty, the diversity, which often modern farming methods have destroyed.

This was basically the least useful, least valuable piece of farmland and the whole farm

we're looking at the least productive bits on the farm

and saying all right it's not producing much

what's the most high value thing we can do for nature

and when we looked at this bit it was

can we create some wetland

and as you can see you know there's butterflies

flying around the orange tips on the cuckoo flower

hundreds of insects dancing across the water

...