Farming Talk: Similar issues on agenda of CLA for 1952

With the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations, it is interesting to compare farming in 1952 with the present day.

It was a time when horses and men still worked the fields in large numbers, so it would be reasonable to assume life had a slower, more relaxed pace.

Yet 1952 was a year of energy and optimism, stimulated not just by a new Queen, but by a country recovering from war.

Reading through the minutes from the CLA Shropshire branch meetings from 1952, many topics are still being discussed today, including planning, housing, taxation, insecticides, grey squirrel control and water issues (although the lengthy debate on the price of pit props appears to have disappeared from the current agenda).

Despite the unfortunate cancellation of the stock section at the Shropshire and West Midlands Show that year due to foot and mouth, those meetings reveal an underlying sense of progress and opportunity.

The wartime emphasis on self-sufficiency meant there was still some rationing but these were expansionist times after years of under-investment in farming. The 1947 Agriculture Act said we should produce 'such part of the nation's food and other agricultural produce as in the national interest it is desirable to produce in the United Kingdom.' This was loosely interpreted as 'produce as much as possible.'

By 1952 it was felt that nearly all suitable land had already been brought into use, much of it underproductive because of past mismanagement.

Many countries had to start 'conservation' to try to save fertility and prevent soil erosion.

Today we are concerned with preventing permanent pasture being ploughed up, but then Ploughing Grants offered the equivalent of almost £700 per hectare to do just that.

I was particularly taken by a letter in a 1952 copy of the Farmer & Stockbreeder journal, which sums up a point I find myself making ever more frequently: "... Even if there were no economic, social or strategic reasons for the maintenance of agriculture, the cheapest, indeed the only way, of preserving the countryside in anything like its traditional aspect would be to farm it. The real point is, the countryside must be alive, and life means work, movement and change."

Society's demands have changed. The economic significance of agriculture has reduced, the diversity of the rural economy broadened, and pressures on land use increase.

We live in a crowded country. We have social, economic and environmental conflicts over food production, water supplies and flooding, carbon storage, renewable energy, waste and biodiversity. Globally our output is relatively small, yet the role of Britain's farmers is increasingly important with an rising population and diminishing natural resources.

Farming remains the lifeblood of rural areas and this is especially true in Shropshire. At some time since 1952 society distanced itself from farming and some even tried to discourage or prevent what we do. That must change to encouragement, support and, ideally, advocacy. Farmers must be allowed to evaluate new techniques and technologies.

The Wonder Book of the Farm, published in the year of the Coronation, describes farming as 'the most important occupation of mankind. We must eat to live; and we must farm before we can eat.'

That will be just as true in 60 years' time.

Caroline Bedell IS CLA Director Midlands