The Killing of the Countryside

Far spread the moory ground, a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green,
That never felt the rage of blundering plough,
Though centuries wreathed spring blossoms on its brow.
Autumn met plains that stretched them far away
In unchecked shadows of green, brown and grey.
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene;
No fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect from the gazing eye;
Its only bondage was the circling sky.

John Clare. 'Enclosure'

The Killing of the Countryside is publishing in March 1998, £7.99, 0099736616.
Available from any book shop or direct from us (by telephone, details)

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Preface of the book

A few miles west of Cambridge, where the Bourn Brook meanders toward the River Cam, something very curious is happening to the countryside. Wildflowers have begun to appear in the wet meadowland which now lines, the stream banks - ox eye daisy, lady's bedstraw and birdsfoot trefoil. Nearby a grass field blazes with the flowers of meadowland, while a wheat crop is speckled with cornflower, corn cockle and the rare shepherd's needle.

The contrast with surrounding countryside could scarcely be greater. As in much of lowland Britain the farming landscape of Cambridgeshire is dominated by featureless blocks of chemically-manicured crops stretching away to the far horizon. They are neat, ordered and practically devoid of wildlife interest. Here beside the Bourn Brook the wild flowers are returning, and with them many of the indigenous birds and animals that once made up our glorious wildlife heritage.

Clouds of butterflies drift on summer breezes. Reed buntings, yellow wagtails and grasshopper warblers dart amongst the willows. Otters haunt the stream and banksides. While this small corner of England continues to be farmed, the wild species that have gone from so much of our countryside are, here at least, beginning to come back.

The renascence is the accomplishment of a group called the Countryside Restoration Trust. Founded in the early I99OS by writer and broadcaster Robin Page and artist Gordon Beningfield it set out to prove that profitable farming did not have to be destructive of the natural world. Carried out sensitively it might actually enrich our countryside, as indeed it had for many hundreds of years. Sadly this is a message that those who shape European farm policy refuse to hear.

When The Killing of the Countryside was first published in March 1997 it provoked howls of outrage from the agricultural establishment. The author must have been walking around with his eyes shut. Let him take a look at the countryside. Who but a charlatan could deny that it looked as beautiful as ever? So went the accusation. Yet behind the show of public indignation lay a fundamental deceit.

Robin Page tells of taking a group of elderly people to see his restored Cambridgeshire hay meadow. The experience proved too much for one woman. As she gazed upon the meadow flowers that had been such a familiar part of her childhood she was moved to tears. It was a sensual delight she had not experienced for years but one which she had never forgotten. No one too young to have been a child in the 1940s or 50s could have any conception of it, nor of the appalling destruction wrought by the postwar obsession with agricultural efficiency.

Of course the countryside still looks attractive, especially when viewed from a distance, from a passing car or railway carriage window. Paradoxically the gentle undulations of much of the British Landscape give it an aesthetic appeal even when stripped of its trees, hedgerows and wildlife. It is the appeal of form, the appeal of the dead landscape in an art gallery. It may please the intellect but it cannot compare with the full sensual pleasure of a countryside rich in wildlife; a tangled, vibrant, untidy countryside filled with the noise, the colours, the sheer exuberance of life.

This is the experience that contemporary agriculture has robbed us of. It represents a loss which farming's apologists can neither deny nor justify. The great service rendered by the CRT and its imaginative renewal project is in revealing to generations under forty how magnificent the countryside used to be in their parents' and grand parents' time. More important it shows how magnificent the countryside might become again. It would not mean abandoning agriculture or consigning farmers to lives of penury. Instead they would be required to become genuine custodians of our land just as they used to be.

Since this book first appeared farming fortunes have taken a tumble. Currency fluctuations, changes on world commodity markets, plus the lingering affects of the BSE crisis, have together led to substantial falls in the prices of many of farming's major products. Boom has turned to something rather more sombre. Farmers are learning that the relentless drive for efficiency gives them no long term security. Yet the policies which led to the ruthless exploitation of our land and its wildlife remain largely in place.

There was a time not so very long ago when farming enhanced the countryside and its wildlife. Now it threatens them. Habitats must be rescued from the clutches of agriculture for their very protection Twenty years ago a classic TV documentary showed what happened to battery hens when they were released from their cages and given freedom to roam. Who could forget those images - the pathetic, featherless creatures, fresh from the battery shed, for the first time learning to scratch and peck at the dirt. And the fine birds they quickly became, strutting confidently in their new plumage.

This is what happens to our land when it is freed from the cage of intensive farming - the meadows bloom, the hedgerows swarm with birds, the countryside lives again. The Cambridgeshire experiment shows how. Now to apply the lesson through the length' end breadth of Britain.

Graham Harvey. March 1998.