In Ireland and Northern Ireland farming has historically had both economic and cultural significance and its environmental significance has also been receiving increasing attention as part of sustainability discussions. ‘Sustainability’ - meeting the needs of the present while ensuring the ability of future generations to meet their needs encompasses the environment, the economy and society including the preservation of the local, cultural heritage. In Ireland and Northern Ireland where farms are especially small-scale and family owned in the cross-border region, evidence is beginning to emerge that, despite the challenges from Brexit, small-scale family farms may hold the key to a sustainable future, in terms of economic viability, environmental impact and cultural heritage preservation via cross-border collaborations. Despite prominent calls to consider small-scale family farms at the heart of our sustainable future, there is limited systematic analysis of how the representation of farming vis-à-vis sustainability has changed over time, in Ireland and Northern Ireland, in key media outlets that can influence public perceptions; and research with small-scale family farmers from the cross-border region is absent. The few studies that have investigated the media representation of farming in Ireland and Northern Ireland have analysed a limited number and type of media outlets (typically, the farming press) and narrow timeframes and have focused on ‘climate change’ (and how farming contributes to a changing climate), not how farming is represented in relation to ‘sustainability’. This project will address the above-identified gaps by (1) collecting a corpus of news articles from leading newspapers in Ireland and Northern Ireland to systematically analyse the over-time representation of farming vis-à-vis sustainability and (2) conducting pilot interviews with small-scale, family farmers from the cross-border region to start better understanding their views on and experiences with ‘sustainability’.