Country life
Get on with it
Leanda de Lisle
Farmers — go forth and diversify! It is, if Tony Blair is to be believed, the answer to all your problems. You can try organic farming, although the money for the organ- ic conversion scheme has run out. You can run GM trials, for the brief period before the crops are destroyed. You can plump for an unsubsidised industry like pig farming, currently doing worse than almost any other area of agriculture — or we can just stop farming altogether. Farmers can make really big money growing a concrete crop of houses. But don't start counting your cash before you've got planning permission, which, in the vast majority of cases, will be denied you. The government doesn't want you to have to operate within market forces all the time. It may, therefore, be more prof- itable to look to stately-home owners for inspiration and open your place to the pub- lic. Outside you can create a petting zoo putting aside any worries about the cost of insurance that will have arisen since a child died after contracting E.coli during a visit to a toy farm.
Inside, your wife can be set to work in the kitchens of the rather small, damp home that could soon be a bed and breakfast. It will be difficult if you are used to living a solitary life, have large debts and are over 50, as many of you are, but so what? The time has come to stop whingeing and just get on with things. Mr Blair and his minis- ters have, after all, made many useful sug- gestions. In addition to those above, they cite the possibility of starting up riding sta- bles. Many of you may have noticed that the numbers of such establishments have been drastically reduced since business rates were imposed on them, but perhaps you'll succeed where so many more experi- enced people have failed. If, by mischance, you go bust, are not a tenant farmer and don't live outside the London pale, you can always sell your property to a yuppie with a large bonus to dispose of. He may even find a job for you as an aging tea-boy in his office. As there is no money to come from the tax-payers' purse, but plenty more unreasonable demands to answer, farmers need to be prepared to look on the bright side at all times. The 10 per cent of farmers living below the poverty line have the Prime Min- ister himself to thank for the consoling thought that many of their neighbours are very well off, thank you. If that doesn't work, you may well find in your extended family some former miners who are as mis- erable as you are.
Doesn't it gladden the heart to know that others despair? Isn't it inspiring to see how, one day, your unemployment may be held up as a reason to cheer the ruin of some other once proud group of people? If not, all I can say is — you are clearly not very modern, quite probably have never heard of Polly Toynbee, may well be Welsh and it would be best if you were boiled down into organic fertiliser. With supermarkets like Asda endeavouring to roll back premium prices for organic produce, the organic farmer will soon be welcoming any contri- bution that can be made to his survival.
Hill farmers can also rejoice at the dawn of their role as the people's park-keeper. There is no pay as yet for such a job. Indeed, the right to roam and a farmer's duty to maintain public footpaths simply burden them with more costs. But there is surely satisfaction to be found in the smiles on the lips of the tourists who will vote for Tony and the thought of all the woodland snowdrops that will find a happy home in a suburban garden. Finally, large farms in areas of high-quality agricultural land can look on the bankruptcy of smaller neigh- bours as nothing more nor less than a great opportunity to further spread their costs. For, lo, farmers go forward to diversify and there will be but a handful left.
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