29 June, 2001

John Sheard welcomes the £1 million charity appeal to help Dalesfolk survive foot and mouth - but demands that country folk must know now what is expected of them

John Sheard, to tackle the rural economy

MY unrelated namesake John Sheard, who this week launched a £1 million charity appeal to help the Yorkshire Dales fight back after the foot and mouth crisis, knows as much about the countryside as almost anyone alive. Trained as a land management professional, he was for many years agent at the Duke of Devonshire's Bolton Abbey estate and, in that role, was involved at the sharp end of almost every aspect of country life: farming, forestry, field sports and, last but by no means least, tourism and catering.

Very few people alive have had so much experience of dealing with so many facets of the rural economy so there could be no-one better as chairman of the Craven Trust Recovery Appeal to raise such a huge sum of money from big business, wealthy individuals, and other organisations - including government agencies.

By coincidence, the government's Countryside Agency also chose this week to launch a new policy document called - with usual Whitehall snappiness - A Strategy for Sustainable Land Management in England.

"If we are to save agriculture from becoming a sunset industry, we need to take action now," said agency chairman Ewen Cameron. "We need to bring farmers in from the cold. It is time to re-engage farmers in a new contract with the public."

Fine words. But the countryside, in its worst recession since the 1930s, needs action as well as words. And it needs it now!

The new strategy offers some very good ideas, such as involving - and hopefully paying - farmers in land management to include soil and water conservation, landscape character, access for recreation, even creating flood prevention schemes by creating water meadows above flooding-prone towns to slow down river flows - a problem which is exercising many minds in these days of global warming.

Now these things will take time. Even more time will be needed to reform the notorious EU Common Agricultural Policy which, by 2010 will be paying out only a third of its astronomical subsidy bill to support farm prices. The rest will go to (their words) "agri-environment schemes" and other rural development.

That sounds pretty good, too, in theory. But past experience has shown that reforming CAP is slightly easier than climbing Mount Everest on roller skates. Even if that target is met, 2010 is a long, long way off - and the latest NFU surveys show that some 40% of existing farmers are considering quitting the land now.

Many of the farmers I know personally ask just one question: If someone, somewhere, would tell us just what is expected of us, and can give us the way of doing it without our going bankrupt in the process, we will do it. Trouble is, no one seems to know.

And there's the rub. Farmers do not want to leave the land they have tended for years, even generations. Many have huge sums of money invested in it. Some, sadly, owe their bank managers large loans taken out in the good times.

But they do need to know what the nation needs of them. If Whitehall and Brussels do not come up with some guidelines quick, farming - and the conservation of the landscape that goes with it - will indeed become (again the Countryside Agency's words) a "sunset industry."