Yet another sellout to the housing sector

PROBABLY the first sound I heard when I came into this world was that of a farmer somewhere moaning. And I have no doubt it will be the last thing to reach my ears just before I depart.

But the moaning seems to have reached something of a frantic pitch lately. Now let me make it clear that I do not blame any farmer for letting off steam about the difficulties of the situation he has been plunged into – generally, though not always, as a result of events way beyond his control.

What with input costs disappearing into the clouds and even the benefits of an unexpectedly good cereal harvest unlikely to make much impact on the higher bills, an outsider would think farmers have good grounds for whingeing. As they do – before we even get round to discussing a government which appears to have no more ability to steer a steady course than does a rubber duck in a bath.

Then there’s the general moan coming from farming organisations and individuals alike as to the way the countryside is being wrecked, what with corporates buying land to plant supposedly carbon-offsetting trees, or the installation of ranks of solar panels.

But one of the biggest whinges of all concerns the way villages are losing their identity because of the actions of property developers. Britain’s rural heritage is, apparently, under threat from this rash of new homes, many of them built on highly productive land which is vitally required for food production – and farmers don’t like it at all.

Odd, then, that when I visited my mother’s home in Cornwall recently and walked up the land behind her house where my late father and I used to go and shoot rabbits – its tranquillity only now disturbed by the swishing of wind turbine blades – I found laid out a series of new roadways: one straight spine and a couple of spurs.

Being the inquisitive type I am I rang the owner – I used to go to school with his father – and asked him what was going on, knowing full well he was already developing four housing units close to the farmhouse.

Well, he explained, since the Government was making £17-a-metre grants available for farm roadways so that neither stock nor muddywheeled vehicles would need to use public roads, he thought it was too good an opportunity to miss.

Further pressed as to what the end use of the land – some of the most productive in that part of North Cornwall, I might add – would be, he assured me he was ‘future-proofing’ his enterprise but that nothing was likely to happen in my mother’s lifetime. To those of you who don’t know the location, North Cornwall has suffered more than most areas of the South West from the new homes blight, and farmers have been among the most vociferous critics of the bland new estates that have all but swamped traditional villages and bleached every last scrap of charm out of the place.

I made it my business to visit the local planning office and see if anything was proposed for the fields that were now served by a convenient new road system. Nothing by way of a proposal, I was told, had been put forward. A day or two later I decided to walk the fields and take a few pictures only to encounter the owner. Who, after a few more probing questions, conceded that he was indeed thinking about a housing development down the line – though not, he repeated, in my mother’s lifetime.

Since my mother is in her 90s that does not exactly push the likelihood of new houses appearing into the distant future. And it was clear to me which way the wind was blowing (through the turbine): yet another sellout to the housing sector was on the way.

I have never been much of a churchgoer but I do remember one quotation which farmers would do well to recall when they feel moved to complain about new housing: He amongst you who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.