Farmworker’s nature-friendly photos champion farming

Stunning images of nature-friendly farmers and farming, taken by a farmworker who is also a photographer and artist, are going on display to the public in North Yorkshire.

The images, from Jo Coates, who also works on her partner’s family farm in Coverdale in the Yorkshire Dales, will be shown at three locations as part of the Swaledale Farming Film and Photography Festival.

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This is a joint project between the Tees-Swale Naturally Connected Programme and the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), for whom Jo is a “farming champion”.

Photographer Jo Coates © Jack Moyse

Jo travelled the length and breadth of the UK to photograph her fellow NFFN farming champions for the project, capturing everything from a remote upland livestock farm in Wales to micro-dairies in southern England, to landscape-scale farming in the Scottish Borders.

She says: “Telling the stories of nature-friendly approaches to farming is vital. As both a photographer and a farmworker, I don’t often see farming and the issues within it documented in depth or from the perspective of people’s lived experiences.

Sam Beaumont is restoring wood pasture and upland hay meadows in Cumbria © Jo Coates

“It is so important for our future that we have the chance to document and tell these stories.

“We need to build understanding and share knowledge of what nature-friendly farmers are doing, and photography has a unique ability to do just that.”

The exhibition, which is titled Custodians of the Soil, opened on Saturday 25 May in Keld, where it runs to 8 June.

A smaller version moves to Reeth from 15-29 June, while the entire collection goes on display at The Station in Richmond from 22 June to 4 July.

More information can be found at www.joannecoates.co.uk.

Cattle at Debbie Wilkins’ Norton Farm in Gloucestershire © Jo Coates