Farmers in Shropshire explain how they gained inspiration from the new king

The monarch has long been a passionate advocate for sustainability, in recent years calling for a shift to regenerative farming - an approach which seeks to boost soil health, increase biodiversity, enhance the water cycle and tackle climate change.

Farmers, landowners and ecologists across the region share his enthusiasms or are engaged in projects and networks the King set up as Prince of Wales.

Viscount Newport, heir to the Bradford Estates, manages 12,000 acres on the Shropshire-Staffordshire border of which 4,500 acres is farmed in hand.

Bradford Farming is now into its second harvest of regenerative farming. Baseline surveys for soil health, biodiversity and carbon have been completed, a 200KW solar array installed as part of the business's modernisation of its farm centre, and a sheep flock brought in to graze cover crops as a sustainable alternative to spraying.

Lord Newport is looking next at working with partners on wetland recreations for biodiversity net gain, and developing the Estates' wildflower seed enterprise, Bradford Green, into a national concern.

As Prince of Wales, Charles "ploughed his own furrow," Lord Newport says.

With the breadth of the Duchy of Cornwall's business ventures, plus the network the King built around his chosen causes, he has also "created a springboard of evidence for people. There's a lot of risk associated with those areas - he showed leadership”.

Lord Newport is replicating the King's and the late Queen's woodland planting vision, the Green Canopy movement, for his own woodland planting programme of 250,000 trees. He is also part of the Prince's Foundation's 'Building a Legacy' group of landed estates businesses proposing holistic, new settlements, with plans for a community at Weston on the Estate.

"Poundbury was revolutionary. Nansledan [a 540-acre extension to Newquay embodying the King's ideas] is the current expression of the movement, using the best experiences learnt from Poundbury. At Weston (weston-shropshire.co.uk), we plan to take forward the 'Building a Legacy' principles - traditional vernacular architecture, walkability, integration with employment as well as looking to be Net Zero operationally".

"The King has shown you can integrate development, farming and the environment in a holistic way. That's how I'm trying to develop my legacy as well”.

On Coronation weekend, "I think we should be really proud" Lord Newport says. "A lot of heads of state have simply performed a ceremonial and figurehead function. It's a pretty diverse portfolio the King has pursued over his lifetime”.

Mandy Stoker is a dairy farmer in the Severn and Vyrnwy floodplain at Pentre, north of Shrewsbury environmental consultant. Her original boss in the latter field was sustainability entrepreneur and farmer Professor Rod Aspinwall, who was an advisor to Charles in the early 1990s.

She specialised in and completed a PhD on soil health, where "everything I learned indicated we need to change the way we farm," she says.

She has researched methods of reducing carbon emissions while maintaining productivity, leading to an innovative project around heating water for calves by using microbial activity in composting manure for which she won a School of Sustainable Food and Farming award.

"On our farm we make sure the manure's on the fields and that we use good quality grass - so we're reducing all the nitrates put on the land," says Stoker.

"The King was one of the pioneers of sustainable farming, then others did it - that was brave and really exciting.

"A lot of farmers rely on advice their agronomists give them, and often they are backed by the people who make chemicals. In the past five years, agronomists are starting to advise on seeds that provide cover crops for example. Change is coming.

"The King has been a fantastic leader pushing the way we're moving with farming. While people laughed at the outset, now they've seen he had something important to say.

"Food security alone is a massive issue, and he's been heading up awareness on that.

"I can't think of anyone else who has been quite so influential."