Wider rural population doesn't feel adequately represented in Westminster - Sarah Todd

The farmers’ party, known as the BBB, was only set up in 2019 but has won almost 20 per cent of the vote. It is now set to become the biggest party in the country’s upper house of parliament after provincial elections.

The BoerBurgerBeweging, otherwise known as the Farmer-Citizen Movement, sent shockwaves around mainstream politics by winning 15 out of 75 seats.

This pro-farmer party has outperformed Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy and thrown a spanner in the works of the ruling coalition’s plans to drastically reduce nitrogen emissions coming from farms. His environmental policies include aims to slash livestock numbers, buy out and shut down as many as 3,000 farms.

Party leader is Caroline van der Plas, 55, a former agricultural journalist who is easily identified by her trademark green nail polish and ring featuring an upside-down Dutch flag, a symbol of farmer protests.

Now let’s be clear. Hell would freeze over before this correspondent would knowingly buy Danish bacon. British farming’s welfare standards are second to none and the industrial scale of some farming operations overseas often needs calling into question.

However, there is a lot to agree with in the BBB’s mission statement, which has gathered support by focusing on the ‘different dynamics and lifestyles’ in the countryside. It basically points out that those living in rural areas do not recognise themselves in government policy that is aimed at big cities. How true is this right here in the UK?

Farmers over here have legitimate grievances; not least they don’t seem to be allowed to do anything on their own land without filling in a form. But there is a wider rural population who also don’t feel adequately represented in Westminster. There is a whole raft of concerns that are unique to country folk.

But back to agriculture. Just the other day Ben Goldsmith - the multi-millionaire financier and environmentalist with close links to the corridors of power - declared sheep should be banished from the British countryside because they are the ‘principal obstacle’ to nature recovery.

Good for the National Sheep Association (NSA) for immediately expressing its exasperation at his comments.

Anyone with any sense knows it is sheep and the generations of farmers who have managed their grazing that are responsible for preserving much of our traditional landscape.

Shepherds don’t mend the stone walls for fun. Without livestock grazing our hillsides they would fall into disrepair; the weeds would take over. Farmers don’t need proposed new environmental land management schemes to tell them how to look after their own acres; they do it instinctively. If they didn’t, their livestock wouldn’t flourish and it would hit them where it hurts - in the pocket.

A wise old upland farmer once reminisced to this reporter about how during the foot and mouth crisis, when his livestock was culled, the saddest thing was realising how quickly (with no animal dung on the fields) he didn’t see any insects. So what if there were no creepy crawlies? With no insects to feed on, the birds he had witnessed every summer since boyhood soon stopped coming. There was a sterile emptiness to the countryside and this otherwise tough farmer had tears in his eyes as he remembered it. It’s easy to forget that proper country people have forgotten more about the environment than so-called experts will ever know.

To finish with somebody shining a rare positive light on agriculture, explorer Bear Grylls has been in the news. The former vegan has revealed in an interview that he has ditched a plant-based diet in favour of one heavy in red meat, liver and raw dairy.

Grylls has declared his animal-based diet is what gives him the energy to tackle the tough challenges he takes on. He has urged followers who want to do something carbon positive to forget ‘plant-based stuff full of environmentally harmful seed oils’ and instead eat grass-fed, locally sourced meats.

Chief Scout Grylls deserves his farming badge for pointing out that livestock fertilise the land; which makes deep roots which in turn help protect from flooding.