The Guardian: A county divided: is Lancashire ready for its fracking revolution?
Robert Sanderson, a strapping dairy farmer, is standing in his muddy yard. He is in tears. Sanderson’s family and his Lancashire farm have, thanks to geological chance, ended up on the frontline of fracking in the UK.
“I’ve never wanted to do anything but farm,” says Sanderson, part of the third generation of his family to farm near Kirkham. “All my young lad dreams about is farming. Last night he said to me, ‘When I grow up I want to have the biggest tractor in the world’. How can they just take away generations of work? It’s not bloody fair.”
Sanderson is intensely proud of his prize-winning cattle, but fears pollution from planned shale gas exploration nearby will harm his children and poison his 400 acres. The issue has also split his family. His mother’s sister and her husband own the land near Roseacre on which the fracking company Cuadrilla wants to drill and have agreed to allow the work to take place.