We continue to fight for a better food and farming system to protect the distinctiveness and diversity of the countryside, its patchwork beauty and health and the well-being of rural communities. We can look back and build on landmark campaigns including: 

• In the 1980s CPRE fought the grant-aid scheme to drain Halvergate Marshes in the Norfolk Broads; this campaign went on to challenge and end EU funding for many damaging farm activities and achieved the first green farm payments.
• The Government announced a straw and stubble burning ban from 1992, following a CPRE campaign that had started in 1983.
• In 1997 CPRE’s 20-year campaign succeeded in securing better protection for historic and ecologically rich hedgerows being grubbed up to increase field sizes; the Hedgerow Regulations maintain this protection today.
• Recently, we worked with Wildlife and Countryside LINK to ensure green farming schemes were properly funded by moving 12% of funds over from the basic farm subsidy to farmers; we campaigned to make sure new schemes from 2016 would be better targeted to achieve change at landscape level.