County chief sounds off over threat to rural life
County chief sounds off over threat to rural life
By Emma Davies
A NEWLY elected NFU county chairman in Wales has warned the government that the current economic climate is seriously threatening a whole culture and way of life.
Pembrokeshire NFU chairman and sheep producer Denzil Jenkins who farms 160ha (400 acres) of less favoured area land at Mynedd Preseli near Clynderwen is particularly concerned over the proposed switch from headage to area-based payments under the new Hill Farm Allowance Scheme.
"The HLCA system has served us well for nearly 50 years. It has kept the rural structure together – it has been the very backbone of the countryside."
Within his working life full-time farming units within a radius of two miles of his holding have been reduced from 40 to about 14. And most of this restructuring has happened over recent years as small units have been amalgamated or sold as country homes to people outside farming.
"It is time that the politicians in Cardiff and Westminster understood. With market prices down, many hill farmers are unable to support themselves without the assistance of subsidies and any erosion of these dramatically affects the community as a whole.
"The fragmentation of the rural infrastructure is gradual and often not immediately noticed," said Mr Jenkins, "But any decrease in farmers incomes affects the entire rural community."
Mr Jenkins also wants politicians and the public to understand that it was only through extensive grazing on the hills that todays landscape was maintained and that any decline in the farming community would seriously compromise the countryside. *
Denzil Jenkins says many hill farmers can no longer support themselves.