I had no idea who Strutt & Parkers were, as their approach seemed rather simplistic. *
I think a lot of people forget that the B4RN is rather fortunate (& rather unique) in that they have the likes of Barry Forde's extensive knowledge behind them. Most of the other key founding members also have links to Lancaster Uni, and the majority of their 'staff' have intensive knowledge in networking.
Barry has historically been at the forefront of Internet connectivity technology from his days as being responsible for networking at Lancaster Uni and the University network JANET. I personally recall Lancaster Uni's innovative microwave links to supply broadband to remote universities/colleges/educational facilities dating way back to the late 90's and being totally amazed at the speeds of 2Mbps when most of use were lucky if we could afford 56k dial up.
There is absolutely no doubt that what B4RN has achieved has been fantastic and I'm certainly not knocking what they have achieved... but so much of it relies on the technical expertise of certain key people, plus an enormous amount of goodwill by locals to do such things as digging or waive access fees which would cost any normal network co practically an arm and a leg.
I seriously doubt that your average farmer would have the slightest clue how to begin to build their own network... nvm know where to start to find someone to provision the backhaul connectivity. ;'(
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ETA
* A quick google shows they put £200m of their farms up for sale -
linky