MODERN commercial commercial farming could exist alongside conservation, Teresa Dent, chief executive of the Game Conservancy Trust, told the audience.

Describing a GCT project undertaken with funding from members, charitable trusts, farmers, landowners and shooting organisations, she said there had been nine nationally declining farmland birds but, within three years, numbers had recovered to the levels of the Sixties.

The project had involved changing hedgerow management systems, using grass field boundary strips, selective crop spraying and encouraging beetle banks. Wildlife seed mixtures had been used on set-aside land and there had been investigations into brood- rearing cover.

Mrs Dent urged farmers to treat set-aside as a wildlife habitat rather than a means of production control.

Robert Ropner, of Camp Hill, described how he turned the family farm into a successful conference and outdoor activity venue after a controversial proposal by Lakewoods for a "city" of log cabins aimed at holidaymakers on 480 acres foundered in the early Nineties.

He said the family was faced with staying or leaving and his father asked him if he wanted to move in but, in 1996, there was not enough agricultural land left in a productive state to meet the needs of a growing family.

Mr Ropner added: "It is a very beautiful place. I did not want to be the one always known as the person who sold it. The premises were not tip-top, slightly run down."

The rural business he established seven years ago includes corporate entertainment, team building, training and development, a 4x4 course, one of the country's highest outdoor climbing walls and the new Aerial Extreme adventure course.

In an oblique reference to Lakewoods, Mr Ropner said Camp Hill could be described as almost coming full circle with a new market, a visitor centre with six log cabins and plans for another 12.