OPEN up the doors of many an agricultural building in the North of England nowadays and the last thing you will find is an animal. Foot-and-mouth has seen to that. But so has BSE, scrapie, milk quotas, European food mountains, cut-throat price-fixing by voracious supermarkets, the strong pound, global over-production - the list seems endless.

The new inhabitants of the building are more likely to be vats of ice cream, activity equipment, even a stock of bras. In more extreme instances, the farm goes completely - to be replaced by an 18-hole golf course. This is fast becoming the modern way as traditional farming - like the traditional industries of coal mining, steel and shipbuilding - is consigned to the annals of history.

Livestock and arable farming have become an uphill and down-dale struggle, to such an extent that more and more farmers are deciding not to bother.

"If you diversify into non-farming sectors, then you haven't got all your eggs in one basket," says National Farmers' Union spokesman Rob Simpson, which is why the union encourages it. "We have seen prices fall through the floor in the past few years and we recognise the more strings the farmer has, the less susceptible he is to price crashes."

And farmers in the North are taking the bull by the horns and diversifying into everything from orchid growing, to horse livery, from hat-making to picking your own fruit, from selling toys to office space. One farmer has even became a comedian, and has just appeared at the Edinburgh festival.

Local planning authorities are becoming more sensitive to farmers' needs. There are no major planning issues surrounding the transfer of agricultural land into a golf course, for instance. They are more interested in the fact that the course should look nice than it should remain farmland. And where the land fringes housing, such a scheme can actually increase the value of property, so everyone wins.

Open the barn door at Old Byland, near Sutton Bank, in North Yorkshire, and it will be packed with every size of bra imaginable.

Farmer's wife Sally Robinson runs an Internet underwear business, Ample Bosom, a little side-line which has grown into a £1,200-a-day business (www.amplebosom.com).

"A mail order business was kicking around in my head and then my friend was looking for a bra for her wedding," she says. "We looked on the Internet and there were bras for belly dancers, ones made of leather, plastic and feathers, but no ordinary ones. So I decided on bras. The problem is with sizes - so we have them all.

"My husband is a dyed-in-the-wool farmer. It's his way of life and he will never give it up. But he doesn't need a lot and it's left to me to provide what I need. I love computers, technology fascinates me. Other farmers are going to have to find something else. They should look about, see what their interests and their assets are. It's exciting, it's on-going, it's growing."

The foot-and-mouth-hit Hodgson family has turned its back on farming to set up a paintballing centre. More than 80 years after the first Hodgsons bought Castlewood Farm, near Tow Law, in County Durham, the family has been forced to abandon farming because it is no longer financially viable.

Wallis Hodgson, 25, who was set to inherit the farm from his father John, decided to give it up after they lost their entire stock of 400 cattle to foot-and-mouth.

"Farming is in my blood, it's something my family has done for generations, but it just doesn't pay, there is no government support, and there is no profit. If I had my way I would continue to farm, but this is no longer an option for either my younger brother or myself. We face a different future and we have to call it a day and look at other ways to make a living."

What many farmers don't realise is that they already possess the business skills needed to succeed. It's taken the latest disaster to make them think again.

Hilary and John Berry lost all their cows to foot-and-mouth. Drive along the A59, at Horton, near Skipton, and cut into a field are 6m high, 2m wide letters, a clue to their new enterprise - www.ribbletoys.co.uk - a business which is keeping them buoyant.

"I wanted something I could do at home. Now, because of foot-and-mouth, we are really going for it," says Hilary. "We sell everything from swings to climbing frames, trampolines to go-karts and we have a wide range of customers from local to far off, people wanting stuff for the garden to village play areas."

Chris Hobson first diversified ten years ago when he began ostrich farming. Today, the former dairy farmer still tans the skins and produces handbags at his farm at Wheldrake, near York. But his latest venture is to produce out-of-town office space by converting unwanted farm buildings.

"The old brick buildings are ideal," he says. "Financial services businesses are using them because town centre office space can cost you £15 to £20 per square foot and we can do it for half that. And there's no having to queue in traffic to get to work either. We are not getting enough money from farming to pay the bills, so I think we have got to change our attitude to life totally or we will end up old has-been farmers."

It was the introduction of milk quotas in 1983 which forced the Moore family to think hard about the future. "When the quotas restricted the amount of milk we could sell, no way could we maintain our standard of living," recalls Robert Moore. "My father, Brian, had the idea to go into ice cream and we rolled around laughing, thinking he had gone nuts."

After being forced to move from their farm at Weeton, near Harrogate by intransigent planners, they set up the Brymor ice cream business at High Jervaulx Farm, between Masham and Middleham.

And today, that mad-cap scheme has so far attracted 200,000 visitors to the farm, supplies 350 wholesale outlets, supports nine full and 15 part-time jobs, and offers the public the choice of 40 different flavoured ice creams from milk produced in house. So that's one business which has farming problems licked.