The Archers could prove a hit with Gen-Z listeners as ‘sustainability and farming are now seen as cool’

• Graham Harvey worked on programme as agricultural editor and scriptwriter
• He said he thinks young people’s interest in farming is linked to climate change

The gentle goings-on in Ambridge have been charming radio listeners since The Archers first hit the airwaves more than 70 years ago.

But the plotlines may soon be pivoting towards an entirely new generation as young people increasingly see farming as cool, a former story editor of the rural soap claims.

Graham Harvey, who worked on the programme as agricultural editor as well as scriptwriter, revealed that Gen-Z are attracted to the BBC Radio 4 show due to their preoccupation with global warming and sustainability.

He said: ‘There are just unmistakable signs that young people are interested in farming. I think that it is linked in with nature and also climate change and the threat to our planet.

‘Nature is probably the best thing we have, governments pour money into high-tech solutions, like carbon capture and all that, but nature can do it better.

Graham Harvey, who worked on the programme as agricultural editor as well as scriptwriter, said: ‘There are just unmistakable signs that young people are interested in farming. I think that it is linked in with nature and also climate change and the threat to our planet’

‘Farmers can do more to fix climate-related issues than any new technology.’

Harvey, who is an environmental campaigner, said that the drama has always found ways to attract new audiences, bringing in new audiences and ‘in a sense always reinventing itself’.

The inclusion of key teenage characters, such as Brad and Chelsea Horrobin, is a recent example of this.

Harvey’s memoir, Underneath The Archers: Nature’s Secret Agent on Britain’s Longest-Running Drama, reveals how he encouraged the use of pesticides and chemicals when it was more focused on industrial farming.

He said: ‘When The Archers started, it very much followed the government line that we had to increase the supply of food – and at that time, they thought that meant using more fertiliser, so in a way The Archers encouraged the use of chemicals.

‘Now, I think The Archers could be showing the way out of that crisis we’ve got into with loss of diversity and soil damage by showing a different way of farming, regenerative, planet fixing and nature friendly.’

Harvey’s memoir, Underneath The Archers: Nature’s Secret Agent on Britain’s Longest-Running Drama, reveals how he encouraged the use of pesticides and chemicals when it was more focused on industrial farming

The Archers aired earlier this month its first ever lesbian kiss between farmer Pip Archer and Stella Pryor, the manager of Home Farm. Daisy Badger, 33, who plays Pip, insisted that her character’s same-sex relationship feels natural and she only wishes it had happened earlier.

She told the Radio Times: ‘It should have happened sooner. It seems obvious and normal, the stuff that’s been happening between Pip and Stella. Nobody is trying too hard with it.’

The Archers, exploring the lives of people living in the fictional rural village of Ambridge, was first broadcast in 1950 with five pilot episodes before being aired nationally on New Year’s Day 1951.

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