A chance to rebuild Cumbrias agriculture?
A chance to rebuild Cumbrias agriculture?
ONE year on and the fields and fells of Cumbria are coming back to life.
It is hard to believe that just 12 months ago this county was in the middle of the biggest crisis to hit British agriculture.
For many farmers, the sight of the first lambs this spring were significant in heralding a new beginning. Organisations like the EU-funded Cumbria Farmlink are still dealing with enquiries from farmers keen to restructure their businesses. And there is an energy behind recovery in some sectors.
Plans for a new farmer-run slaughterhouse in mid-Cumbria are progressing. Marketing schemes like Lakeland Beef and a National Trust initiative to promote Herdwick lamb are all positive and vibrant in their vision of the future. But are those gambolling lambs truly indicative of a chance to rebuild agriculture in Cumbria?
The North West Development Agency has £274m to distribute throughout the rural infrastructure of Cumbria. Who and what gets a slice of this much-needed injection of capital will soon be announced. But cash awards are one thing, support and commitment from farmers to ensure it is fully utilised are quite another.
Many farmers have said to me: "We just want to get back to normal." But normal, if that was the state of the livestock sector in Cumbria in January 2001 just prior to foot-and-mouth, was not exactly profitable.
Prime livestock and milk prices are certainly no better than they were 16 months ago. And it would be naive in any observation of the current state of Cumbria farming not to recognise the divisions that have inevitably emerged in certain communities.
Some livestock producers have been able to use compensation awards to clear debts, reinvest and align their businesses on a more secure footing. Others who suffered all the restrictions and trauma of F&M but did not lose stock and so received no compensation are still there and are among the most deserving of new initiatives.
While lowland fields in the county are dotted white with lambs, many high fell farms are still eerily quiet. Where once a man would be in the thick of lambing 1700 Herdwick ewes in the heart of the Lake District, he now has barely 200 – a flimsy foundation stock scraped together from here and there.
The sheep are not hefted – bred to instinctively stick to one area of the hills. They are merely a mixed-bag and represent the first stages of the rebuild. For one-time shepherds, many now forced to spend most of their time as jobbing builders or labourers, the phrase "getting back to normal" still seems a long way off.
Late last summer, Cumbria was buzzing with new ideas to set the countys farming on a new track. A myriad of schemes and plans laying the foundation for a secure future for livestock producers and rural communities were proposed and debated. Hefty tomes and documents laced with a generous dose of optimism were discussed ad infinitum.
Cumbrias plight as the primary victim of F&M is far from over, but recovery and long-term stability needs all the help it can get from every quarter. When the latest batch of schemes and plans are hatched it would be encouraging to see them attract the same whole-hearted support and commitment that united the countys farmers in their time of crisis.
Beyond the "self-help" approach to financial security so loved by this government it would be heartening to see some visionary proposals for hill farming that did not blatantly propose to turn the countys skilled shepherds and stockbreeders into nothing more than wall menders and path makers. *