Farming in North Wales
SIR,-1 have read with very great interest the letter from Mr. C. S. Chapman, published in the Spectator of December 2nd. As a hill-farmer, I ,consider the points made by Mr. Chapman to be extremely cogent. Few people have realised the effect these open (cats will have on the mountain sheep-walks and the potential danger they will constitute to the sheep and to the many hikers who frequent the Welsh hills during the winter. The splendid picture presented to us of all the little Welsh hill farms gloriously lit up and heated by electricity is, to my mind, so fantastic as to be purely laughable. When one bears in mind the various developments taking place on The Merseyside, where since 1945 no fewer than 54 new factories have been completed, and where further schemes have been licensed which will bring the total up to 84 new factories, together with the prospect of new towns springing up, all of which will be consuming vast amounts of electricity, one can foresee that the Welsh hill farms and the rural districts arc destined to remain perpetually in the " power-cut " area.
The question raised in the !att chapter of Snowdonia--"Can Rural Wales Survive ? "—as quoted in Mr. Chapman's letter, can be very briefly answered in the negative. No rural area, or any other area, can survive, let alone develop, when all the available water supplies have been directed and' diverted to generate electricity, a point that the authorities in some of our Welsh towns would do well to ponder upon.
It is often thrown in our faces that we in Wales import three units out of every four that we consume. I would like to stress the point that we also are exporters, the chief commodity being water, not to mention lisc- stock, in the guise of beef and mutton, also milk in large quantities. so that on the whole the balance of trade is fairly well maintained. More- over, the hydro-electric scheme may be the means of upsetting our economic life ; the countless rural dwellers who make a living by cater- ing for the tourists visiting this part of Wales would no doubt lose their means of livelihood, since who wants to Come and see pipe-lines and
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