The uplands are among our great national treasures and none more so than the North York Moors. The aspects which we outsiders prize – the sheep and cows grazing in a glorious landscape, the heather, the farmsteads – seem to be timeless fixtures.

In fact, they are far more fragile than we imagine and from the farmers' perspective they look quite different. Officially these parts are classed as Severely Disadvantaged Areas. Compared with lowland farms, the weather is worse and so are the soils. Yields are lower and the remoteness – such a treat for the recreational walker – means
it costs more to get products to market.

If we want the North York Moors to stay unchanged, one thing is essential. The farms here have to be profitable to sustain the local economy. To make that happen, decades of decline have to be reversed.

Subsidies play a part. On North York Moors farms they make up about 30 per cent of income. Part of this is paid through a Hill Farm Allowance – a scheme which ends in 2010. Already farmers are taking flocks off the hills, either through retirement or ill-health. Some 30 dairy farms remain, down from about 300 that existed 40 years ago.

The Prince of Wales came to visit here at the beginning of this year on one of his "seeing is believing" trips. These bring along senior business leaders to look at the farming challenge and see how to bring their own experience to bear. A steering group is now examining exactly how local farmers can work together and embrace an enterprise culture.

The first step was what to sell. The next was to devise a logo and a brand name to establish the product in a niche market. Lamb from off the high moorland, fed on heather, seemed the best bet.

The idea is to cut out the middleman to maximise farmers' income and to persuade the shopper to pay a premium price. The lamb will be promoted as a local product that ticks all the
boxes – more flavour, better welfare, local abattoirs, fewer food miles.

The project is limited to the area of the National Park. The long-term aim is to create stability of supply and so give farmers a degree of control over markets. For their part, it requires nothing short of a culture change. They have to come to understand they can take the initiative and do things – rather than be forever at the mercy of market forces.

This is an approach which came naturally to farmer Tim Wilson, 49, of Levisham. Does it work? His turnover is £4m and he employs 52 people.

The key piece of business machinery parked in most farmyards is the tractor. In Tim Wilson's case it's a Porsche 911 turbo, top speed 193mph. It's the vehicle that takes him each week to the main retail part of his business in London. His grandfather was was a farmer, butcher, grocer. "I knocked about on a neighbour's farm from six years old" says Tim. "If you do anything regularly, it rubs off.
I always wanted to be a farmer, it's fantastic watching things grow."

His father was an antiques dealer, however, and that's the route he took, specialising in early oak furniture. "I liked well-proportioned bits with rarity. Oak houses tended to be old farmhouses, so I drifted into houses."

He bought Harwell Manor, a couple of miles east of where he grew up in Bawtry, partly because it presented the image of an old-fashioned farmyard. "The day I bought it, it looked really pretty with a Victorian courtyard with chickens and geese running about. The day after, the farmer took all his animals away and the little farmyard became derelict."

So he bought three Saddleback pigs, turkeys, chickens, geese and was happy just to see them thrive. Then a neighbour dropped by and said: "You'd better keep an eye on those pigs – they're at pork weight. You've got brothers and sisters in there and they'll be getting active."

Off they went to the abattoir and Tim found a retired pork butcher to make sausages. "I found I liked it and bought a boar. With gilts and a boar, I soon had 24 piglets and I was in the pig trade."

But not in any planned way. Essentially he did it because he liked it and that attitude seems to inform his business approach. These were the days before farm shops and he had no fixed outlet. Selling only to friends and neighbours, he learned his first retail lesson. "One thing you'll never do is sell half a pig for a family freezer twice. It sounds great the first time. Once they have tried the reality, the next time it's 'no thanks'."

He learned butchery and taught himself how to make sausages and cure bacon. "My advice came from the books of Jane Grigson and Elizabeth David. I loved just looking at how it used to be done. I'm interested in the detail. Detail is what fascinates me."

Ten years ago, on August Bank holiday, he took a step which was to lead him beyond a hobby business. He accepted an invitation to take a stall at a new food lover's market in London on the third Saturday of each month.

Tim is still there, at what is now the weekly Borough Market. It became the starting point for his London operation – now extended to shops in Marylebone and Hackney and another planned in Waterloo.

It's not enough to show up in London with unique produce. In Tim's words it arrives "with a story to tell" and you have to make sure this is put over loud and clear to customers.

Think Marks and Sparks food advertisements on television and you get the idea of what he means. This isn't just lamb he's bringing down South. This is heather-fed lamb from the glorious North York Moors.

Tim is convinced that to break into the market, other farmers must stop being modest about what they produce, get out there and "tell the story".

"I'm not decrying farmers. They do what they do very well – they just don't know how to sell it. They are not the best retailers because they are spending all their time looking after the stock. It's very hard. There's not enough income to employ someone to do the other side of things. Prince Charles's initiative should work out so that they club together to employ someone to be the retailer."

In the old days, you can imagine taking four hours to get the mile and a half from remote Levisham to the next village of Lockton – so tricky are the one-in-five gradients around here. But we don't get the winters we used to, and four hours is how long it takes him from Grange Farm, on a good day, on the weekly drive to London.

"I remember the first time we opened on a Friday at Borough Market. At lunchtime I suggested to my assistant that she take the other half of the day off and go shopping. We took £72. We now take £6,000 on a Friday there. The whole place is flourishing through the demand for English food. I do get worked up and cross about this. It's frustrating that farmers don't realise exactly what they've got. Most people who start a business have to create a market. But this one is already there."

In fresh food retailing, sales can be as much about perception as product. That's why four years ago he got involved in another bright North York Moors idea.

It's called the Mutton Renaissance Club, designed to make a meat that was, to say the least, out of fashion, desirable again. Mutton fell from grace because changes in farming practice led to the availability and promotion of lamb. "At one time, farmers would never kill a lamb because of the value that was in the wool. They'd shear it four times before it became mutton. We have about 1,500 ewes and change 20 per cent of the flock every year – that's 300 culled ewes. We need to sell them and slowly people are accepting it back as meat."

Since 2002, he has farmed 350 acres here at Grange Farm, and grazes a further 1,800 acres of heather moorlands. A couple of years ago he took on the tenancy of Blansby Park, a 500-acre mixed farm which is sheltered and ideal for pigs. He also manages two farms at Wykeham for his cousin which are all set up for cattle. His animals are slaughtered at Escrick, south of York, although his own abattoir at Blansby Park is going through the planning process. It would offer him scope to oversee the entire food cycle.

Tim came to these uplands because it was attractive and affordable. "But it's biggest strength is that it still has stockmen – shepherds, sheepdogs." If farmers did form a joint operation on the North York Moors would he like to lead it? "I'd love to head a co-operative. The next stage is to get the farmers to commit to the supermarkets with x-amount of carcases.

"I realise getting in with supermarkets can be a bed of nails, but increasingly the housewife is calling the tune and making supermarkets source from English suppliers." Why would it have to be a deal with a supermarket? "It has to be a supermarket to get the volume. Instead of sending lambs to market, farmers would be sending direct to
the retailer.

"They just need a little bit of faith that the supermarket will keep taking their product. The farmers will say, 'what happens if the price of lamb goes up, will we miss out?' Farmers tend to grow a crop without knowing what they are going to get for it.

"But if you put in a floor price, you are never going to get into a situation where you are losing money. You might not achieve the maximum, but you are able to say, 'I'm going to raise this amount of pigs in future'. You can make plans.

"We're in a bizarre situation where the consumer thinks they are buying English produce when it can have come from anywhere.

"If you go to Smithfield to look at their wholesale business it's quite shocking. I get frustrated that English pig farmers are struggling to make any money out of pork when at Smithfield, 80 per cent of the fresh pork will be from the Continent.

"It's the opposite in Paris at Rungis where 80 per cent of the produce is French. At the poultry warehouses in Rungis you'll find 30 different appellations for chickens – just like you have with bottles of wine. Here we have to compete with the 84p chicken breast." Tim believes this underlines a general point about different attitudes to food which are as much cultural as they are financial.

"The big people in the industry and the processors see it as a commodity, they stop seeing it as food. If you can source it elsewhere cheaper, they will. I don't think that's healthy.

"The only reason I don't sell to supermarkets is I'm not big enough. If I committed everything, I couldn't supply one of the Tescos in York. If I knew 10 people my size, why not supply the 10 nearest supermarkets in York?"

It's difficult to make comparisons with farms – the size, the soil, the climate, the capital, as well as the personalities and age of the farmer, makes each one unique. So Tim Wilson's rare-breeds enterprise is not a model others can easily follow. But there seems a lot to be said for adopting a similar spirit.

How the ginger pig went to market

The Ginger Pig – named after the Tamworths that Tim Wilson rears – was a quick hit with the foodies of London, supplying the River Café, where Jamie Oliver started out, and being named producer of the year.

But in North Yorkshire there's been resistance. A butcher's shop Tim opened in the tourist magnet of Thornton-le-Dale did not work out. His retailing touch has been surer in the centre of Pickering where he took
over a food shop and runs it on the lines of an old-fashioned grocer's.

"Trying to sell meat on your own doorstep can be a problem. Everyone around here has a deal.

"Don't try to sell lamb here, take the product from where it's reared to where the demand is – for me that's London. That way, you are taking the wealth from London and bringing it to spend up here.

"The size of the business is driven by Keith, the pig man and Michael the cattle man who can alter a breeding programme. They come up with an idea, such as 'I can rear another six pigs a week' and I'll say 'okay'."

Tim's horizons extend well beyond the metropolis. He visits France to see what can be learned from their way of doing things. These trips are eye-openers.

"I'm a small farm on the North York Moors and I went to a small farm in south west France run by two brothers. I kill 30 pigs a week and make £425 a pig. They kill 14 and can afford to employ five butchers because they will make £800 per pig."

How do they achieve that added value? By using everything except the squeak to make delicacies for which customers will pay handsomely.

"They have a different approach. We bone a carcass from the outside. They do it from the inside out – nothing is wasted. Backfat, soft fat – every bit is useful and kept separate for use. It's a different food culture.

Should we do what the French do? "No – what's the point of making salami when a French housewife will buy a whole one but an English housewife will only buy a few slices? Let's do what the English do. So our charcuterie – brawn and faggots and black pudding – all of that used to be made in England in the 1940s."

Tim was recently on Dartmoor, trying to add to his herd of belted Galloways. He's also keen on a breeding programme to revive the Riggit, a rare form of Galloway which instead of being born with a belt round its middle, has a stripe down the back. The Riggit Galloway Cattle Society, with Prince Charles as patron, was formed to try and guarantee a future for these rare animals. "There are only 48 in the world,"
says Tim, "and I've got 10 of them."