Countryside is safe in hands of farmers
THE Government is in a corner over rewilding the countryside as part of its international agreements (Mail). Farmers have been getting more than £90 an acre of support, which has given beef and sheep farmers 94 per cent of their income of £15,500, according to official statistics. Unless you are a poultry or pig farmer, most farm income comes from the Government. Politicians think farmers should be paid to look after and improve the countryside instead of receiving an acreage payment, but it is not offering even half the £90, so how can farmers remain viable? Within five years of transition, most farms will be running at a loss. Yes, there are grants for green schemes, but these still cost money to set up. What are farmers likely to do? Tenants may run their farms at a loss, hoping common sense will return when farmers are food producers and not park attendants. Owner-occupiers could go for the various schemes if they can sell their carbon offsets as an additional income. UK farmers produced 78 per cent of our food in 1978, but today it’s just under 60 per cent. So, whatever approach farmers take, we will still be importing food from abroad. This won’t be green or produced to UK standards. I was farming before we joined the EU when it was profitable because at the annual review the Government agreed a fair price and quantity for each commodity. Today, it’s the supermarkets that dictate rock-bottom prices for everything. Surely food security should be an exception. It’s been said that farmers reliant on subsidies means the peasants are kept in their place! Interestingly, the farms with the least subsidy — accounting for 8 per cent of income — are pig and poultry farmers yet they are the most profitable. The reality is that farming may return to the 1930s with derelict land reverting to scrubland, rewilding and 80 per cent of our food being imported.
cHris NorMAN, shepton Mallet, somerset. RIDICULOUS rewilding is just neglect and decline. The obsessions of eco zealots infuriate me as their knowledge of the countryside usually consists of trips to their second home while pointing out a sheep in a field. They don’t know the countryside is so beautiful, green and pleasant because of the farming community, who have maintained the land for generations. Country folk don’t tell city dwellers how to earn a living, so why do politicians and outsiders feel that they know better about how to preserve the countryside? As a small child growing up on a farm, every day my dad would show me birds’ nests, grasshoppers, wheat and barley growing in the fields, berries in the hedgerows, how to roll a sheared fleece, milk cows, threshing and haymaking, and how to care for lambs and chicks. All living things were nurtured with care and attention. Don’t tell farmers to abandon all that has gone before in favour of trendy fads and the latest eco posturing. The countryside is safe in their hands.
B. siMpsoN, preston, Lancs.