Countryside Alliance - love the countryside

The long-term conservation of our landscape depends upon its sustainable productive use by its communities for economic, social and recreational purposes. With the modern pressures on our countryside, a new approach to rural investment is required to catalyse the transition away from unsustainable intensive agriculture and extend the productive capacity of land far beyond traditional food products into other crops and land uses such as biomass and environment products.

Government policy on, and investment in, our countryside must recognise that:

A multi-facetted countryside needs integrated policies, investment and management systems. Yet despite the creation of DEFRA, rural policies are poorly integrated and implemented by compartmentalised agencies. It is to be hoped that Government has recognized the extent to which the countryside is currently multi-functional, which must be reflected in more integrated development and delivery of landuse policies.

Farming plays a far more important role in both the rural economy and society than its 1% direct contribution to GDP would suggest. It remains the engine both of the rural economy and of rural community life. Farming is not only the pump-primer for a long, diverse chain of related rural businesses - which gives it an economic significance far in excess of its own direct GDP contribution - but shapes the kind of countryside and villages, (and increasingly, the kind of tourist accommodation), which generate the ‘proposition' underpinning rural tourism itself. A fairer GDP comparison would be the combined farming, agri-food and rural tourism contributions, which amount in the UK to some 8% of GDP.

Although British and European agriculture are set to see big changes over the coming years there is no guarantee that these changes will help most of our farming industry become more sustainable and profitable without transitional support and guidance from our national Government. With the modern pressures on our countryside a new approach to rural investment is required. The continued and more efficient delivery of sustainable, progressive land-use from our multi-productive countryside needs more people and more skills.

policy recommendations

• Increased funding should be made available for regional marketing initiatives and the formation of marketing co-operatives such as English Food & Farming Partnerships (and other organisations established post-Curry). Non-agricultural businesses should also be encouraged to form marques and cooperatives.

• Regulatory obstacles to rural diversification must be minimised. Current planning regulations are one of the largest hurdles facing those wishing to diversify. Regimes should be flexible, so as to enable rather than disable.

• The Government should stop ‘gold-plating’ EU regulations or intensifying Directives which make the UK regulatory regime in this country harsher than in other member states. Farmers and rural businesses need a level playing field and a domestic regulatory environment which allows enterprising rural people to exploit opportunities.

• The Government should initiate a major rationalisation of the present unnecessary red tape, both domestic and EC, harming rural businesses and should reject all further new EU-proposed red tape which pointlessly hobbles UK farmers and other rural businesses.

• The Government should prioritise training for farmers and small and medium-sized producers, to help them market their goods for domestic and export consumption.