Charles Ward has been riding tractors since his feet could barely reach the pedals. “I got into farming as soon as I could waddle,” he says. “Every day I’d come back from school and start seeing to the cows, or sit on my dad’s knee in the tractor.” Now 27, Ward is a fully fledged farmer in his own right but still works on his parents’ farm in Derbyshire, which has been in his family for some 200 years. “There’s no wage or salary – you’re investing into a family business, so you’re never drawing a salary out of it.” Despite dedicated families like Ward’s, Britain’s once-proud farming heritage is in a state of worrying decline. The numbers are already bleak: last year, the overall number of agricultural workers fell by 1.7pc to 462,000, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). There are some 10,000 fewer agricultural workers than there were in 2018. Meanwhile, farms are under greater pressure than ever before. Defra’s most recent report into the state of agriculture in the UK found that one in 10 farms were making a net loss, while 40pc averaged a farm business income – equal to net...