The rurban fringe is the zone where rural land is being converted to urban in a haphazard way that fragments farmland and exposes it to a great variety of urban and recreational pressures. During the last few decades there has been an enormous planning literature dealing with the urbanisation viewpoint and an extensive literature on recreational geography. The viewpoint of the pressured and displaced farmers has been much more neglected, and consequently the present paper helps to balance the perspective. Mrs. Feaver is a geographer, working as a research assistant at King's College, London. Her research field has ranged from urban geography to agriculture and horsiculture and has also included methods of cartographic presentation. She lives in a rurban fringe area of Surrey, and was able to draw upon personal as well as professional experience to compile a questionnaire on urban and recreational pressures on farmland. This was published in the Farmers’ Weekly in 1980, asking for farmers’ responses from all over the country, regardless of whether their problems were severe, mild or non‐existent. The Farmers’ Weekly generously financed the postage for returning the forms, and one of its staff journalists reported on the findings, together with an in‐depth study of one of the worst affected farms. Mrs. Feaver wishes to express her indebtedness for this support (Guest Editor's introduction).