Rickard in August 2001

Originally from: Susan Staunton
                        
Until foot and mouth struck seven months ago, much of the rural economy was booming. But agriculture was in steep, if not terminal decline.

Yet somehow the farming lobby, which wields a degree of power and influence out of all proportion to its lowly economic standing, managed to portray its industry as the mainstay of the countryside.

Farming has not been powerful since the heady post-war 50s and 60s when an army of land workers, particularly on the plains of fertile East Anglia, were employed to make Britain self-sufficient in food.

But over the past decade particularly – despite multi-billion-pound subsidies which are the envy of other industries – more than 60,000 jobs have gone. Now farming employs probably 1.5% of the workforce overall, and little more than 4% in the countryside itself.

Away from the fields and hill pastures, however, the wider rural economy has been growing ahead of the most optimistic projections. Small and medium-sized towns, not big cities, are the country's new growth areas, with the shire population rising twice as fast – at more than 10% – as in the country as a whole over the past two decades.

Indeed, before the foot and mouth crisis, the government's Countryside Agency had been telling ministers that while farming was in great difficulty, twice as many jobs were being created in rural areas as in cities. New industries, from tourism to cottage enterprises, light engineering, environmental technologies and software, were springing up all over rural Britain as tens of thousands of people drifted to country towns and large villages.

As a result of the foot and mouth crisis, some of these industries are now going to the wall, with minimal compensation. This comes at a time when the government is giving more than £5bn to farmers in compensation for slaughtered animals in an industry which, viewed on strict commercial grounds, would have been on its last legs some time ago.

"There will be more bankruptcies, fewer jobs, and rural communities will suffer for years to come," says a despairing Ewen Cameron, a Somerset landowner and the chairman of the Countryside Agency. The agency puts the wider cost of foot and mouth to the economy at an extra £4bn.

Yet still farming is crying out for more money in the areas worst hit by foot and mouth. Now even senior advisers once close to agriculture are despairing.

Sean Rickard, the former chief economist of the National Farmers' Union, and now a lecturer at Cranfield school of management, said yesterday: "It is amazing the NFU has been getting away with its propaganda that agriculture is the backbone of the countryside for so long. It has not been like that since the 70s."

He says foot and mouth has finally brought to public notice the inefficiency and increasing insignificance of agriculture to the rural economy.

"If we are serious about the countryside we should be looking at supporting other industries away from farming," Mr Rickard said. "Why pour money into an industry running down, propping it up by supporting the assets of farmers rather than jobs? It doesn't make sense."

Neil Ward, professor of geography at Leeds University and a member of the government's rural task force, set up to examine the aftermath of foot and mouth, says the level of public funding for agriculture – at least another £5bn annually on top of foot and mouth compensation – is out of all proportion to its contribution to the rural economy. He says the government should be pressing hard in the European Union to divert money away from agricultural support to more productive areas of rural Britain.

That message will be reinforced by the Countryside Agency, and other government advisers, over the coming weeks. Some are still at a loss to understand why the sheep population, the main source of foot and mouth, was allowed to increase by 50% to 22m in 20 years with hefty government subsidy – at a time when consumption of red meat was going down. "By any standards that was wasteful and hard to defend," said one former ministry insider. "The farmers couldn't believe their luck when it was sanctioned by the government."