Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Farmers now facing abuse in the workplace
Recent events surrounding access to the countryside have led Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger to detect a growing anti-farmer mood in rural areas
DEAR George, A sure sign of summer arriving with the better weather on the back of it is an upsurge in the appearance of access agitators in the country.
Now they can get out there without fear of being drenched and frozen, they are popping up everywhere, not so much making hay while the sun shines but trampling all over it.
You may have picked up on the ‘mass trespass’ through the Duke of Somerset’s estate down in the South Hams at the weekend, an event eagerly reported on by some sections of the media because the illegal trespass had revealed that (shock horror!) part of the land was being used for pheasant shooting.
And what of it? Pheasant shooting remains not merely an entirely legal activity but a useful income stream for many landowners and one they may be looking to increasingly now the tap on the farm support barrel is running more slowly.
What, I ask myself, is the alternative these people seek? To be able to walk through the estate while pheasant shooting is in progress – which would, of course, not only disrupt the activity (perhaps their undeclared aim anyway) but mean putting themselves in great physical danger?
Similarly would they like to wander through a wheat field with a £200,000 combine bearing down on them and threatening to scoop them into its maw?
To be allowed to wander at will through herds of cows with newborn calves at foot? And believe me, if a cow decides to get uppity and go for you, merely shrieking ‘I’m a vegan’ isn’t going to save you.
No. They are agitating as a matter of principle with minds refreshingly unclouded by any over-familiarity with the realities of rural life.
As I think we’ve discussed before, while the authorities in some hotspots have had to spend much money repairing the damage to footpaths caused by the passage of millions of ramblers’ boots, there are
areas of the countryside (including many square miles around me) which are freely open to access yet
where you are more likely to encounter a giant panda than a happy wanderer.
There is, in short, plenty of room for all given what has been designated in recent years plus all the defacto access that existed before.
What really concerns me, George, is that there is a nasty, sinister antifarmer flavour to many of these protests and that is backed up by reports I am getting of famers being abused by walkers. This is particularly when they try to point out that (a) a legal footpath is not a picnic area or a football pitch; (b) that dog faeces can cause serious disease in sheep; and (c) those sheep really don’t take too kindly to being chased by feral children – though, naturally, farmers don’t actually use the word ‘feral’ in case it results in a threat to have the law on them for slaggin’ off the kids.
I would also refer you to last week’s case of a farmer near me who had structural alterations to the head carried out by a dog walker who objected to his ploughing regime.
George, we have to get the message out there that farms are places of work and that farmers have every right to go about their business without being insulted or assaulted by walkers.
And only Defra can do it.
Yours ever,
Ian