Dig for Victory ‘destroyed’ the countryside, says farmer

THE Dig for Victory campaign destroyed the British countryside, a landowner has claimed, after finally making her family farm pay by taking it back to its pre-war state.

Isabella Tree and her husband, Sir Charles Burrell, who own the 3,500acre Knepp estate south of Horsham, in West Sussex, decided to stop fighting nature after finding themselves drowning under a £1.5million overdraft.

Like thousands of freeholds across the country, large parts of the estate were intensively farmed to provide food during the Second World War, and carried on afterwards, even though the land was unsuitable.

Since 2001, Knepp Home Farm has been allowed to return to scrubland where rare breeds can roam, trees can seed themselves and pollinators fly free from the threat of pesticides.

Mrs Tree, who will be speaking about the rewilding project today at the Tree Conference in Frome, Somerset, urged other farms to follow suit to allow the countryside to return to its natural state.

“Nature has an extraordinary way of bouncing back if you just let it, “she said. “This was once a complex habitat where everything worked together, but Dig for Victory altered the balance and the countryside has never recovered. The campaign was a response to a crisis and it was never meant to be a sustainable in the long term, but farmers became hooked on subsidies.

“18 years ago, when we started this project, we were losing money hand over fist, so we decided to take a different approach. We sold the dairy farm and machinery to clear our debts.

“Now our oaks grow because jays plant the acorns, and they do it near thorny bushes so they can find them, but it also stops other animals eating them because its like nature’s barbed wire. Animals heal themselves by eating the herbs naturally growing in the fields. So we don’t need antibiotics, which are also devastating for the biodiversity of the soil.”

A spokesman for the NFU said: “The wartime ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign played a vital role in the nation’s drive for greater self-sufficiency during a critical time for our nation’s food security. Food rationing then meant that food production had to take priority. Contrast that with now, when food production and environmental management must go hand-in-hand.

“What remains true is that farmers are best placed to deliver for both the environment and providing the British public with a supply of safe, traceable and affordable food.”