Farming today…

Beneath the froth of daily political controversy at Westminster, lie slow-moving, long-term changes to our way of life that we hardly notice. For example, in January 2005 farming faces its biggest shake-up for fifty years. What will happen to our Wiltshire landscape and to our farmers and their families – for it is they who have made our wonderful countryside what it is today.

To understand better the future of farming, I took a step back – and learnt a lot. Just imagine that the green expanse of Salisbury Cathedral Close had new houses built on it, because it was no longer needed for gravestones. Or that it was neglected and reverted to the boggy marsh it was in 1219?

It won’t happen – because we recognise that, the Close is a perfect example of English domestic architecture and man-made harmony. So why are some people upset that parts of Salisbury Plain are being restored to the biodiverse grassland achieved at the peak of its social and economic evolution a hundred years ago?

Both the Plain and the Close were created by man. The Close will not change significantly. If neglected, the Plain will become unrecognizable. Now, carefully managed by the Army, the Salisbury Plain Life Project is bringing a new vision of conservation to one of England’s most precious landscapes.

During the twentieth Century, Marlborough Downs were seriously damaged in terms of biodiversity. They were ploughed up for essential food production. Salisbury Plain was protected by the presence of the military who developed a land use and farm tenancy system that kept alive farming alongside training.

Those of us who have loved the Plain for half a century and more, take for granted the abiding image of sheep and cattle grazing on the grasslands, on hazy warm summer evenings or with the backdrop of orange sunsets in freezing winter. But, imperceptibly, the Plain has changed.

Just as in 1954 myxomatosis decimated the rabbits that kept the scrub at bay so that the cattle and sheep could graze, so, right across Europe, from France to Slovenia and from Germany to the Ukraine, cattle have moved indoors, grazing land has been abandoned and scrub and trees have encroached – blotting out the record and the achievement of mankind over centuries – from strip lynchets and Roman villages to the farms of Imber.

Salisbury Plain is now the only great expanse of unimproved chalk grassland left in Europe. I spent a day on the Plain watching (and listening to) our Great Bustards and learning about the restoration of the lost grassland. I saw free-ranging cattle on parts of the Plain ungrazed for sixty years. The herdsman walks out his 120 cows and calves from their overnight penning in the morning – and back again at night. The farmer reports that it pays. Biodiversity is winning. Let’s keep it that way.

Robert Key MP
12 November 2004