Some thoughts on farming

Recently, I spent a day shooting with farmers on the downs near Amesbury. I found them very much more optimistic than they were a year or two ago. I would have said then that they were characterised by people aware that the farming they had known was over and they could not see a way forward. Now they can. They are still going to have to rely on the traditional cereal crops and animals - but in my opinion farmers now have a much keener sense of their market and the need at every opportunity to seek out special niches which they can exploit.

For example, five years ago my host planted precious little other than wheat and almost the only argument was how much nitrate he could pile on top of it. Now he sows not only wheat, but also malting barley under contract to a brewer and he has diversified very profitably into free-range egg production - and he has some 500 turkeys strutting around his land! He has gone into partnership with another farmer in the north of the county to process their own meat and sell it in traditional market places including Marlborough. Another farmer has moved back into sheep in a big way - 600 of them this year - because the price has recovered and he has gone for late lambing in May so that he confidently expects this year's lambs to hit the pre-Christmas market at around £35 a carcase.

One thing local farmers seem all to be agreed on is that consumers are increasingly interested in quality, in knowing the origins of what they eat and to some extent in a product that can be labelled "organic".

Interestingly, there was one retired farmer with me on that day who can still remember the terrible agricultural depression of the 1930s when things were very much worse for farmers than they have been even in today's down-turn. I know of another farmer at Bowerchalke whose father bought a farm off a near-bankrupt Wilton Estate and who has seen farming go through the "dig for victory" years of World War II and then the booming years of the Common Agricultural Policy. He has no doubt that his farm will not only survive but thrive during this century.

There are, of course, some sectors which have been particularly badly hit - notably the pig industry. This is where the controversy about food labelling comes in. Pork products are being imported at ridiculously low prices from countries where animal welfare standards are either very low or not enforced and this is doing huge damage to our heavily regulated farming industry.

I find I can tell when farmers have had a good year because there is a lot of new fencing about and there are no potholes in the farm tracks. I regret to say that this year the fencers have had a bad season and the tracks are full of potholes. Perhaps farmers are spending all that money on bureaucracy - and farming has certainly become an over-regulated industry. There have been additional burdens in terms of rights-of-way wardens enforcing footpath maintenance and pedestrian gates and farmers are genuinely fearful about the impact of "the right to roam". They already have to cope with a great deal of rural crime (mostly theft from farm buildings and some evidence of intimidation as well) and expense and distress has been caused by illegal hare coursing and thoughtless use of 4x4 vehicles by visitors to the countryside.

People ask if partnership with the EU has been beneficial to the farming industry. There is no doubt that farming has taken full advantage of EU subsidies - but there is always a downside to these things and it has now arrived. The weakness of the Euro is probably the main cause of this at the present time.

Farming is "different" because it is not about a farmer leaving home and going to a factory to do a day's work. Farming is a way of life and food production cannot be divorced from environmental issues, care of the countryside and the unique way in which the fortunes of farmers are linked to the strength of the whole local economy. We saw this at the height of the BSE crisis when around Salisbury agricultural merchants and suppliers, vehicle and equipment manufacturers, even financial services companies and solicitors were all suffering, too. Our farmers have certainly felt alienated from the mainstream of British life and there is no doubt that the doubling of the cost of agricultural diesel fuel has had a severe effect. Disaffection with this Government's attitude to the rural economy is genuine and in my view well-placed.

In short, and in spite of everything, I believe the long-term prognosis for British farming is good. It has been going through a very bad patch and the fact that most British people live in towns as do their Members of Parliament, has not helped. We are really going to have to work at it to get it right - but the optimism, determination and new professionalism of young farmers in particular is really good to see. They can certainly count on my support.