Archived press release

Countryside alliance barks up wrong tree

20 September 2002

Organisers of the 'Liberty and Livelihood March' are ignoring the real threats to the countryside Friends of the Earth said today. The Countryside Alliance leadership seems more concerned about defending hunting than about more important threats to farming and rural life.

Currently farm incomes are at rock bottom because of the strength of the pound, the effects of the destructive Common Agricultural Policy and the “globalizing” trend for supermarkets and food manufacturers to source the cheapest food possible from around the world. Farm gate prices in many sectors are close to or below the cost of production. But supermarket profits continue to soar and the large retailers and food manufacturers expand their control and influence. Rural services from affordable housing to shops to doctors to buses are in decline. Development in the form of new roads, airports and urban expansion also threaten the rural environment and take land out of production.

All three major political parties make sympathetic noises about the plight of farmers. But all also favour “free trade” in farm produce, implying cheap imports of food that should be locally and sustainably produced. FOE has called for the World Trade Organisation’s Agricultural Agreement, which is driving the liberalisation of farm trade, to be scrapped and replaced by an international agreement that reflects the wider importance of agriculture to society and the need to protect the environment.

Charles Secrett, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, commented:

“The Countryside Alliance spends way too much time worrying about hunting, and not nearly enough working on the major threats to rural life. Thousands of farmers will be driven out of business unless our politicians recognise the need to invest in rural areas to create new local markets for quality farm produce and encourage environmentally friendly land management. Unless town and country unite to demand a new system of sustainable food production, the next Countryside March may find there are very few farmers left to mobilise”.

Notes

Friends of the Earth briefing Get Real About Food and Farming (PDF format 819K) is available on request.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust