THE idea that farmers should be paid for land management is not a new one. There are already a number of grants which recognise the role farmers play in maintaining the countryside.

At present those grants are not substantial enough to provide all the income a farmer needs to survive. He or she still needs to raise stock or grow crops to generate cash for the business.

But the foot-and-mouth crisis has focussed people's minds wonderfully. Many now consider the time is ripe to accelerate the switch from production-orientated farm support to that of rewards for environmentally-sensitive countryside stewardship.

The director of the Countryside Agency and the new minister in charge of farming, and other rural matters, have both upped the ante in recent days, making similar points about the need for change. It is clear the pace is to be stepped up.

Farmers coming to terms with this, on top of the medium-term implications of the foot-and-mouth crisis, want a degree of reassurance that the changes they face will be, above all, fair to everyone in the industry.

How will judgments be made about the quality of certain landscapes and will the differences in the land farmed make a difference to the support payment received? For example, will a farm inside the boundary of a national park be treated differently to one on the other side of the boundary? Will farmers receiving support payments for land management be overly restricted in the marketing of their produce? If the powers that be decide it is environmentally beneficial to have stock on the hills but economically undesirable to produce lamb meat, what will happen to the stock? And can farmers come to terms with the idea of raising stock for no purpose other than its aesthetic or bio-diversity value?

All the talk in recent years about the principles of farm support have produced a consensus that the Common Agricultural Policy has to be replaced. The question for Mrs Margaret Beckett and her colleagues at Defra and the other EU farm ministers is how can the CAP be dismantled and replaced with a new farm support system which Europe can afford, farmers understand and the general public feel is the right way to sustain the farming industry and the countryside.