Redress balance of countryside

Defra has caved in under pressure from well-organised special interest groups, mixed with considerable influence from extreme political and welfare bodies. Environment is top-heavy and farm production under-estimated.

In one week, I visited a farm which is taking up the challenges of the future and attended the launch of the Friends of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In fact, I saw the two ends of the environmental stick with which our masters try to goad us forward - the dichotomy which is Green Britain, 21st century.

I sit on a Defra advisory committee and I count many of the staff on that as respected friends who understand my concern, but Government is putting a slant on policy that I am certain is putting the countryside at risk of irreparable damage. I do not have the space to deal with the indiscriminate use of green areas for building and infrastructure, and that is probably the most damaging aspect. It is the interpretation of land use policy that was so brought home to me at the two events I attended.

At Springdale Crop Synergies' farm at Rudston, on the Yorkshire Wolds, I saw an arable farm which has responded to world markets, leading the way out of the stockless monoculture of 20th century government farm policy towards the production of renewable energy, industrial fibres, pharmaceuticals, dyes and nutraceuticals. Crambe, borage, lunaria, calendula, hemp and others grow on this 1,200-acre farm, which is well supported by Defra and the RDA. There is no livestock, it is organic only in part.

However, in the AONB between the Wharfe and the Ure, arable ground is rare and the crops are trees, plants, herbage and tourists. The land in both cases is privately-owned, so must show a return on investment from the earth beneath.

Ideally, I would create some form of national park north of the line from Hull, York and Skipton to Preston, where no more greenfield development would be allowed, not even for barns and redundant farm buildings. But my first consideration would be the maximum use of the area's agricultural production within the rules of good practice, from which, in my view, would come adequate environmental conditions. Land is a multi-use resource, which will not in future be entirely for food, as is demonstrated on the Wolds.

The meeting of the Friends of the AONB was a good idea, but failed to invite the very friends on whom it depends: the farmers. It is their farming that keeps the land trimmed. Without them, the land would revert to the country that the Brothers of Fountains and Jervaulx spent so long reclaiming for their flocks and food.

The speakers spelt out the aims and objectives and volunteered the help and financial support of local residents, who could act as wardens, wallers, conservationists or simply put their hands in their pockets. Farmers can benefit from all this but, ultimately, the maintainance of the countryside is the occupier's responsibility and he should be in a financial position to undertake it without voluntary workers.

One huge move forward would be to stop trying to rebuild walls long in ruin, and begin replacing them with hedges, with all the additional wildlife - but that is for another day.

For 40 years I have driven over the Wolds and to Ilkley on a regular basis. To the east I have seen a gradual change from mixed to almost entirely stockless farming, relying increasingly on the old subsidy system to keep it afloat. My visit to Springdale showed the way to a return to both food and non-food crops. I doubt that stock will ever return in any quantity.

On my journeys to Wharfeside, I have seen a gradual improvement to the countryside as the subsidy system allowed beef, sheep and dairying to modernise, but it all went too far. Labour and land became too expensive; mechanisation attempted to lift efficiency but it hasn't really worked, so dairying has gone into decline, workers' houses have been sold off and the new support system attempts to push the farms down an environmental road. Horses run where ruminants grazed, and the general trend in upland farming is one of gloom.

I can quite understand how residents new to the AONB read of change in the farm support strategy and see new opportunities. The environmental payments are expected to compensate for the loss of profitable production; they will not. They may well increase property values or improve shooting values, but do nothing for the vital link between grazing, food production and countryside maintenance at a time when there are clear messages that, within a couple of decades, food supplies will be delicate worldwide. Yet, on the Wolds, the energy production alone is going to make new, intensive farming absolutely vital.

Nor should anyone go forth under the misapprehension that diversification is the panacea for the farmers' lack of profit and the residents' alternative solution. Wherever these projects are a success, they are copied into over-supply and, if overdone, do both environmental and economic damage.

Change is very necessary, but it will take a lot of time and persuasion to shift the mindset of Government and those who have its ear. I would suggest to the two sides of the AONB, for that is how it appears to be, that they start to build bridges by understanding that each has legitimate aspirations for the land in which we are lucky to live, but there is one problem.

For someone with a decent income, having invested in a very expensive house in a lovely place and with little knowledge of the boiler house that has created it, it is all too easy to eulogise its beauty. People blame farmers for all sorts of damage and it is taken at face value. The fact is that the keepers of the countryside have done a darned good job as directed by Government over 50 years. Now is a time of huge change . Let us all try to work at trying to understand the essentials - and the first of these is farm profitability.