The greys are off the menu

There are many positives about my homeland. Suffolk boasts one of the UK’s lowest crime rates, less than 3% of its population are unemployed — we even live longer than everyone else. A mere 2% of mid-Suffolk is built on; 98% is farmland. While on the surface this all sounds like some sort of bucolic idyll, and in many ways it is, with rurality comes seclusion.

For those of us who work on the land, the pressures brought about by isolation are well known, if rarely admitted. A study under way at the University of Exeter is looking at how mental ill-health caused by isolation and loneliness might be managed within the socially and culturally distinct farming community.

For rural people, one of the highlights of the year is their county’s agricultural