A SURVEY highlighting concerns about the future of family farms has been welcomed by the region's agricultural workers.

Almost a third of the 6,893 respondents to the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) survey said they were most worried about losing working farms from the countryside.

One of major concerns is that the accession of new member states to the European Union will result in the EU agricultural budget being spread more widely across the continent.

Ian Woodhurst, CPRE's senior rural policy officer, said the survey demonstrated how fundamental working farms were to the countryside.

"Now that agricultural payments are no longer tied to production, the Government needs to ensure farmers were given money to restore the character of the countryside and the biodiversity it sustains," he said.

Hill farmer Richard Betton, farm liaison officer for the Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Service and a National Farmers' Union (NFU) official, said: "There's likely to be an inevitable spreading of funds, which will have effects - especially on beef farms, who receive most of the redistribution within the UK."

David Maughan, from Morton Tinmouth, near Staindrop, and a member of the Durham and Northumberland Regional Livestock Board for the NFU, said: "We've seen the number of farms decline quite severely since the 60s. What we don't want to see is the whole countryside run by huge farming enterprises. The backbone of British farming has got to be the family farm."