Opinion: Farmers have a ‘bone-deep resilience’ to endure tough times
© Julia Stoddart He was an upland farmer high in England’s north country, in a place way off any tourist trail.
The farm driveway led from tarmac into stoney soil, grass-grown in the middle.
The greystone farmhouse was the type that squats in the landscape like it grew out of the rock.
But it was built centuries ago by earthy men with hands like shovels. Practical, hardy – the house and the men.
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I was visiting for a rent review. The farmer said I was the first person he’d seen in three weeks.
And three weeks ago he’d been at the mart, which was the only reason he’d seen anyone even then.
In the kitchen, a kettle bubbled on an ancient Rayburn.
I was offered a rickety chair at the table and custard creams on a chipped plate.
I felt ridiculous in my smart clothes and branded clipboard, though the farmer couldn’t have been kinder to this rookie landlord’s agent.
We chatted about his livestock (good), the recent sale (OK), the weather (terrible), the isolation (normal).
Leaving after our chat, I passed through an empty corridor with one old framed photo, a faint smell of damp, a humbling bareness.
This was a tough farm to manage alone, and I didn’t believe the rent should change.
But driving back onto the tarmac, I thought about the unseen rent that man was paying.
Years later, I’m thinking about it still. It’s a bloody hard life.
What does it cost a human to live like that, in all the seasons of the year and all the seasons of a life?
Sacrifice was woven into everything I’d seen, and in other local farms.
Yet he kept going. They all kept going. Where a cost needed trimming, it was trimmed from the people, not the land or animals.
This is why the Labour government’s treatment of farmers is an abomination.
They speak of hard, necessary decisions while their soft hands rest on a polished desk.
They think sacrifice is having to pay for Taylor Swift tickets out of their own pocket.
The real sacrifices made throughout the whole lives of the farmers who feed the nation are so taken for granted that Labour think nothing of piling on more.
Tying your livelihood to the land is a monumental undertaking that’s unfathomable to this lanyard class.
There’s nothing as sad and impoverishing as an enforced dispersal sale.
Even the best farm in the UK is dependent on factors outside the farmer’s control – climate, weather events, global markets, politics.
So what, we’re told, you’re not special. Just sell up and use the profits for something else.
But man doesn’t live by profits alone. There’s nothing as sad and impoverishing as an enforced dispersal sale.
It’s the closure of an irreplaceable life, a chipping away of centuries-old communities, the endpoint of Labour’s process of attrition.
Our government is culturally illiterate, irremediably stricken by the delusional self-belief and entrenched bias that characterises the urbanite Left.
For farmers beginning this new year, the unseen rent is a weighty burden.
But farmers have been tempered over many years of real sacrifice.
You’ll cut another belt-hole and grit your teeth against this red wind that we all know must change at the next general election.
Resilience is in your bones. It’s an endurance inherited through many generations – and a strength that can never be taken from you.