YP Letters: Farmers, not distant bureaucrats, care for our countryside

I WAS infuriated by the recent article in your excellent newspaper about a certain learned member of academia having the gall to suggest that the countryside is better looked after because of the diktats made by the paper- shuffling pen-pushers in the gilded palaces of the EU.

It was self evident that this lady, Dr Charlotte Burns, has very limited knowledge of the state of wildlife on farms in my locality, for she certainly has not visited my farm, which is incidently overflowing with wildlife and even wilder flora, and having asked around amongst my farming friends, I am unable to find any farm in this area where research has been carried out by her or her associates.

As I have already stated my own farm is a veritable cornucopia of wildlife, which is the result of my management and is not as a consequence of any of the idiotic EU-devised schemes, such as the Environmental Stewardship, which I avoid like the plague.

The purpose, and indeed the duty, of all proper farmers is to produce as much food as possible at a price which the consumer can afford to pay, while at the same time taking great care of the land and the wildlife.

Farmers are already doing all this, despite the best efforts of the faceless bureaucrats in the EU, who appear to be trying to strangulate our farming fraternity with red tape.

The huge amount of EU regulations imposed on farmers make life on the farm very difficult and stressful.

Farming today, under the yoke of the Commissars in the EU, is rather like swimming in treacle, just possible, but totally exhausting.

The only solution is to declare unilateral independence and leave the EU before the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels finally manage to destroy our agricultural industry and eventually our country.

From: Pamela Z Frankland, Hull Road, Dunnington, York.

IT is ironic that we farmers can average our “profits” over five years. It begs the question yet again: what profits? I defy any farmer big, small and indifferent to have made any profit over the last years. Every aspect of our industry is in fast decline – but do the shop prices indicate this downturn? Not on your life!

We are at the mercy of world market prices and the bottom of the financial pile as I told my accountant when he said he was a professional when I queried his fee of £165 per hour plus VAT! My solicitor is £175 plus VAT. And so it goes on.