I THINK it was somewhere around the middle of the foot-and-mouth disease crisis that DEFRA was formed to take the place of the MAFF. I could not have got all that excited about it at the time or I would have recalled the date rather more precisely. But what I do remember is Margaret Beckett saying the Government wanted to see a prosperous farming through re-linking with the market place and through playing an active part in maintaining the sort of countryside the public wanted to see.

That may not be an exact quote but it is the gist of what Margaret Beckett said and, after foot-and-mouth the new DEFRA announced, I think through junior farm minister Lord Witty, that the main focus of land management in the future would NOT be the production of animals or crops for food, but rather land being managed in a manner which encouraged tourists and delivered the countryside that dwellers in the urban areas like to see. I also recall that there were reports of some (and only some) urban folk saying they were often "stressed" about the countryside. Now I don't do stress, but I remember once being involved in a discussion about stress and whether the word was becoming over-used. I recall saying: "I don't known about that, but I can tell you what stress is. When it's turned six o'clock at night, you have almost 2,000 bales of hay to cart in; it's just started to drizzle, you've got a puncture in a rear wheel of your main tractor and your neighbour's just called to tell you your bull's got out onto the road and it's on its way down to Kendal; now that's stress." What do you do about it? Well you set whoever you can spare on to putting the bales into small stacks; you send someone to see if they can get a tyre specialist out to the tractor and the rest of you jump into the Land Rover and take off after the bull hoping he will be tired out and that you can pop him into a building belonging to an obliging farmer so that you can collect him with the cattle trailer.

How do you square the two announcements by DEFRA? The answer is you can't - so look behind the spin and make of it what you will.

I bet if you were to ask the famous three, namely Margaret Beckett, Lord Whitty and Elliot Morely, what was the most urgent need for farming you would get three incredibly long, but not necessarily well-informed answers. If you then asked me I would give the answer in a word INCOME. I am also conscious that no-one is likely to ask me anyway. But I tell you what, I'm not wrong.

Did you know that the mandarins of DEFRA are being tested on their suitability for the job? Once again nobody is likely to ask me. I cannot think why when I would be so kind, so considerate and so helpful. Ah well, it's being so cheerful that keeps us going.

Dialect word: Scale meaning to spread with a shovel or a fork (Thanks George).

Thought for the Day: Life is just one damned thing after another.

February 13, 2003 11:00