The Killing of the Countryside

The Killing of the Countryside

Graham Harvey

Comments extracted from the book:

City dwellers view of farmers:

'For an urban people the British remain remarkably well disposed towards farmers. This is surprising since the only time most of us encounter them is in a traffic queue behind a crawling slurry wagon on the morning we are late for work'....'We like to think of them as honest, well-meaning folk, kind to their animals and responsible in their care of the countryside.'

The Wiltshire Downland:

'The farmers of the Wiltshire downland have taken a little less than a generation to sterilise their own small part of Britain. They have done it not because of some immutable law of progress, nor even because of the market. They have destroyed the living countryside because the government paid them to do so,..'

On Farm Owners:

'The owners are neither shrewd stockmen nor horny-handed sons of the soil. Our taxes go to subsidise hard-headed businessmen; exploiters of resources rather than guardians of the landscape. They are more likely to be wearing Armani suites than overalls, and the closest they get to the fields is driving over them in the Range Rover.

Decline of the bird population:

'Each year 300 volunteer bird-watchers take to the fields and woods of Britain as part of the annual bird census......the census has reveled a dramatic fall in the population numbers for a whole range of farmland species over the past twenty five years - tree sparrow : down 89%, bullfinch : down 76%, song thrush : down 73%, spotted flycatcher : down 73%, lapwings : down 62%, skylark - down 58%...'

Millions of acres of farmland not necessary:

'A study carried out by London University's Wye College on land required for Britain to feed itself...2.5million acres of land could be surplus to the country's food production needs by the year 2000.....Europe could feed itself on just 20% or its present land area... fertiliser use could be reduced from 11 million to 3 million tons, pesticides use from 400,000 to 100,00 kilograms.'

Small farmers and the NFU:

'Small farmers may not produce much of our food, but they provide many other benefits for society. Among the more important is keeping rural communities alive. The National Farmers' Union frequently uses this argument in its justification of farm subsidies in general. However it is not the subsidised farms which contribute most to the rural economies, it is the small farms, the farms that generally fall outside the support net. The big specialist farms provide few jobs and spend little of their huge cash turnover locally.'

Ex-farm workers:

'The people who have been removed from the land now work as fertiliser reps or assemblers in the factory making pesticide sprayers'.