E195 Gavin Lane & Eliza Ecclestone

We ask an extraordinary amount of Britain’s countryside.

Produce our food. Restore nature. Store carbon. Hold floodwater. Build houses. Generate energy. Create jobs. Give people access. And, somehow, remain completely unchanged.

Gavin Lane, President of the Country Land and Business Association, and Eliza Ecclestone, Vice President, were two of the most engaging people we’ve had around the Second Nature table. Gavin farms around 1,200 acres in Norfolk alongside diversified family businesses; Eliza manages the 3,000-acre St Clere Estate in Kent. Both live the complexity they’re talking about.

This conversation made me think again about something we’ve discussed repeatedly on Second Nature: **land use isn’t binary**. Farming versus nature. Development versus conservation. Public access versus private ownership. Food security versus natural capital. The people actually managing Britain’s land rarely have the luxury of thinking in those terms. As Gavin puts it, the question is often the right thing, in the right place, at the right scale and the right time.

The CLA represents 26,000 farmers, landowners and rural businesses. This is a conversation about what those people actually do, and why Britain’s rural economy might be considerably more entrepreneurial, innovative and important than the caricature suggests.