16 APRIL 1965, Page 24

ENDPAPERS

Another Part of the Forest

By STR1X IF somebody told you that the average annual loss of farmland in England and Wales today was twice as great as it was in the years • before the last war, would you have any hesitation in believing him? I would have had none at all if I had not read, in the cur-

rent issue of the Geo- graphical Journal, an ad-

mirable paper on the subject by Dr. Robin H. Best. From this it unexpectedly appears that the true facts are the other way round—that farm- land is being transferred to other uses (building, sports grounds, service departments and forestry) at roughly half the rate prevailing in the 1930s, when land was cheap and there were no planning controls. 'There is no doubt,' writes Dr. Best, `that the 1930s saw the greatest rate of turn- over of agricultural and to urban development that has so far been experienced in this country.'

Other (to me) surprising points that he brings out include the fact that in the six counties from Lincolnshire to Suffolk there has actually been a net gain of agricultural acreage since 1955; the main reasons are derequisitioning of land by the services, reclamation from the sea and drain- age improvement in the Fens. And from a table covering the period 1955-0 it appears that the only, counties which lost 2 per cent or more of their farmland were Berkshire and Cardigan; most of the latter's losses were presumably to forestry.

The ,Overspill of Overspill The trend of the Dr. Best's statistics is on the whole reassuring, except in the South-East; at present rates of urban expansion 'nearly half' of this region 'could be urbanised by the year 2000 instead of rather more than a third as at the moment.' But what no study of this kind can take into account are the side-detriments of urbanisation, using that word to include the establishment or expansion of any form of human settlement: 'Well-farmed land,' Dr. Best rightly says, `provides the urban dweller with an open space and visual amenity on which it is difficult to place too high a value.' But with what does the urban dweller provide the farmer? The answer, all too often, is a problem out of all proportion to the small area occupied by his dwelling. To suggest that a new housing estate sterilises the agricultural land on its immediate periphery would be an exaggeration; but it does severely restrict the ways in which it can be used.

The farmer soon learns that it is unwise to keep cattle in a field where paine-tins, plastic bags and other potentially lethal debris are liable to be dumped over the fence; or sheep where the risk of their being worried by dogs is great- est; nor is there any guarantee that a combine, left in the area overnight, will still be worth 13,000 next morning. He may have no specific cause to fear vandalism, armed trespass or fire- raising, but I doubt if there are many parts of the country where he can dismiss such contingencies from his mind. The damage he suffers from his new neighbours may not in practice be great, the precautions he takes to avoid suffering it do not hamstring him, and his censtant anxietj, and Occasional exasperation are not insupportable; but these things do affect his well-being, his efficiency and—probably—his pocket, and one would like to feel sure that, merely because they are nowhere reflected in statistics, they are not overlooked by the planners.

Snow on One's Boots

It is a quarter of a century ago this week since the first British soldier landed on the Norwegian mainland. I was he—at least, I am pretty sure I was; I don't count Royal Marines, a party of whom I found preparing to demolish a bridge which was of capital importance to our ambitious but impracticable plans. After the war, the Joint Services Staff College used to do a sort of set-piece study of the Norwegian campaign, and they often asked me to go along to provide, like the Porter in Macbeth, a short interlude of irrelevant comic relief. Norway was chosen on the principle that the lessons of failure are more illuminating than those of success, but I never thought it was a good choice. The errors were so gross, the muddles so pervasive and the whole affair so quickly over that there wasn't really a great deal to be learnt from it; it threw little more light on the art of war than a jerry-built villa throws on architecture. Greece, a failure rather than a fiasco, would have been more in- structive. We never stood a chance of success in either campaign, because of German air supremacy; but I think that most people who happened to take part in both—there can't be very many of us—would agree that, whereas Nor- ' way felt hopeless from the word 'Go,' there was a certain irrational euphoria about Greece. I ex- pect it was because the weather was so much nicer.