In his 2010 report, The Rural Advocate states; “From day one, by far the most frequent issue raised with me has been the need for more affordable housing in rural areas”. Later, in the report he recommends that planners should take a flexible and creative approach to deliver more affordable housing.

UKagriculture.com has long campaigned for flexibility to be adopted by planners when considering new properties in farmyards. Planning consent for new properties could be granted subject to the condition that the property was made available for letting on a long-term basis. This could be reinforced by restrictive covenants that ensured that the property could not be sold away from the farm, nor occupied by holiday lets; thus preserving its status as rented accommodation.

Over the past couple of decades many farmers have converted redundant farm buildings to workshops and retail outlets. The businesses that occupy these buildings employ staff who frequently would prefer to live, on-farm, at the place of their employment. If farmers were given the opportunity to build a few traditionally styled cottages to house these workers, they would be able to incorporate district-heating systems into the design from the outset and heat the cottages from farm-sourced renewables. Living and working in the countryside utilising locally produced energy is a particularly sustainable form of existence that has proved itself over the last 6000 years.

The provision of rented accommodation in rural areas would help reinvigorate our villages, maintain their social fabric and prevent their decline into dormitory status. We believe this can be achieved sustainably and have developed the concept of Diffuse Development which we commend to the Rural Advocate and local planning authorities. More from the bookmark of the same name.

Have you ever seen a dog drive a sheep off the top of a cliff to its death on the rocks below? Its one of the more uncomfortable aspects of dog worrying that farmers have to face when grazing their stock along our coastline. It is also one that is set to increase as the Government legislates to open a continuous 10-metre wide access corridor around our coastline.


The concerns of farmers and landowner have been dismissed; indeed they won’t even be entitled to compensation. So what happens next?


Faced with uncontrolled dogs, farmers will withdraw their stock and precious habitats degrade, reverting to scrub. And it’s not just the sheep that dislike the intrusion. Ground nesting birds in particular stand to suffer.


Natural England seem unconcerned about the risks. Can anyone remind me what it is they are supposed to do?

If you want evidence that the Government isn't thinking, you may need to look no further than your nearest forestry commission wood.


Close to us, recently felled forestry is being left to regenerate naturally. This master stroke of management will provide decades of unproductive scrub at a time when the world needs timber fast. Not utilising forestry here (for environmental reasons) simply reduces timber supply increasing the price and the risk that yet more virgin rain forest is felled to satisfy demand. Crazy or what?

According to recent analysis by the BBC’s “Costing the earth” and The Times, farming is partly to blame for this summer’s floods. Apparently:


• farmers have been draining their land
• trees and hedgerows have been dug up
• soil has become compacted by heavier machinery
• the wrong sort of cultivations are being undertaken
• tramlines are acting as gullies for rainwater
• livestock numbers have increased


- and all of these are contributing to flooding. Its pretty damning stuff except that its complete nonsense.


Farmers have been draining their land since Roman times, but there has been no recent increase - quite the opposite - poor profitability has prevented essential maintenance.


Hedgerow length has been increasing for the last 15 years and there is now more woodland in the UK than at any time in the last 1000 years. Unmentioned there are also hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland in environmental schemes and set-aside – all of which are beneficial for flood management.


Soil compaction is largely a problem of the past. When the great mechanisation of agriculture began in the 1960’s, tractors used narrow tyres that did cause compaction. Tractors may be bigger now but the tyres they drive on are dramatically bigger. Today’s low ground pressure tyres cause minimal compaction.


With a few exceptions, fields don’t get cultivated in May and June. This is the period when crops are in the ground and growing most vigorously, utilising more rainfall than at any other time of year.


Tramlines of course still exist in fields. But whereas 12 metre spacing was the norm 20 years ago, the average now is probably over 24 metres – in other words they are less than half the problem they once were.


A quick check at livestock numbers in the farming today section of this site will show that over the past 15 years livestock numbers have declined markedly. This has been particularly so in southern areas (generally drought prone) that were badly hit by the flooding.


Easy as it is to try to blame agriculture, the analysis doesn’t stack up. If you get as much as 5 inches of rain in a day, and over the summer period the rainfall breaks all the records – its going to flood.


Soggy work!

Yesterday the BBC’s “You and Yours” discussed the Green Belt.


The Natural England representative on the program said that he was happy to see biodiverse greenbelt but, wanted less of it where it was monoculture agriculture.


For the agency that’s charged with knowing England’s natural environment, the representative seemed somewhat ill informed - monoculture agriculture died out in the 1980’s. Still maybe this is what we should expect.


So let’s not reflect on a prospective UK population of 70 million, tumbling self-sufficiency, nor on droughts, floods, failed crops and soaring world food prices brought on by population growth and demand for biofuels; No: let’s just hope that somewhere else in the world there’s space for productive agriculture that has sufficient surplus to meet our food needs.


Has it really come to this?