Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Farmers need more help, fewer buzzwords
The Government proposes getting landowners to rewild 300,000 hectares of natural habitat by 2030. Get real, Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Defra Secretary George Eustice
DEAR George, In a rare idle moment the other day I was reflecting on the way society has changed – changed in the way everyone now gets so frightfully wound up about various causes.
It’s probably a manifestation of the mass hysteria that can so easily be generated via social media nowadays but it seems that no sooner has an individual floated an idea or a belief than it’s become a national issue; everyone’s jumping all over it; or people are starting classes in how to do it; or anyone that doesn’t sign up to it is being comprehensively ostracised and treated like a nasty case of measles.
Veganism is a good example. So’s the current, vehement crusade against those who are denounced as planet-wreckers because they dare to heat their homes with woodburners. Fair enough, perhaps, if you want to keep city air free from the fumes given off by smouldering wet wood but another matter entirely out in the countryside where we have the sense to burn seasoned logs and there are plentiful supplies of them.
And I detect the same wave of fundamentalism stoking up the temperature over rewilding, the green crusaders’ latest buzzword. The activity that will offer a complete antidote to the evils of intensive farming, populate the countryside with abundant species of wildlife (some of which haven’t roamed it since before the last Ice Age) and generally give the place more of the flavour it had in the days when farmers wore smocks and trudged behind horse-drawn ploughs.
I note that chap who does the gardening on TV (while wearing what appear to be Worzel Gummidge’s cast-offs) was sounding off about rewilding last weekend and pointing out that as a policy it’s only going to benefit the owners of large estates.
He doesn’t just potter around among the hardy perennials, he owns a hill farm in Wales as well so he at least knows what he is talking about. Which is more than a lot of the rewilding enthusiasts do.
And he is quite right. Bang on the button. He hit the n on the h, as it were. Rewilding, for all the way the greens are shouting about it, is only going to be worth doing – indeed have any point – if your property extends to several thousand acres, in other words has the critical mass necessary to actually create a distinct habitat.
Asking your average farmer to rewild one field in return for a twiceyearly cheque for eight-and-six is utterly pointless.
What we should be doing, George, is ensuring that farmers remain properly supported (with the minimum of fuss, faff and form-filling) so they can carry on supplying us with the excellent produce for which this country is renowned. And if you or anyone else tries to argue the case for increasing our food imports then I would merely ask you what about the food miles – that other matter everyone got so exercised about a few years back. Or is that simply yesterday’s issue?
Now if you’ll excuse me I must put another log on the fire and get the pork chops on for supper.
Yours ever,
Ian