Country life
Don't forget who's boss
Leanda de Lisle
Those keenest to rebrand Britain as a modern, go-getting, steel and sycamore kind of place are often not merely conser- vative, but reactionary when it comes to the countryside. It's Damien Hirst for the weekdays and Constable at weekends. I Sympathise with their attitude. I'd love to see shire horses ploughing the fields, for example. I just don't want to share one thatched room with two pigs, a husband and three children as country people once did, and I would doubtless have to, were we to plough with horses here. But that's the fear among farmers — that they are going to be forced back into smocks to grow the kind of fresh produce their mas- ters like to eat in expensive urban restau- rants.
For five-star peasant cuisine, first find Your peasants. There are plenty in France and quite a few in Italy, but in Britain they've got rather uppity. As with other businesses, both small and big, there are workers, managers, owners. How much more picturesque things would be if we had One great feudal landlord. The govern- ment, for example, which, as I write, is investigating a new tax on pesticides that would serve to remind farmers who is boss and impoverish them a little bit more. It's a brilliant wheeze, not least because it's so Populist. Chemicals aren't cuddly things, and I, for one, don't care to talk them up. But just how much a boon would such a tax be to the environment, which it is designed to support?
Let me first explain what's happening. After some prompting from the Depart- ment of the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture commissioned an independent report which will look at a weighted system of taxes on pesticides. Those most capable of harm will be taxed the highest, which sounds great. However, such a system is unlikely to take into account when a spray Is used. A pesticide that is capable of killing beneficial insects causes harm when It is used in July. But when it is used in the autumn it kills disease-spreading aphids While leaving hibernating beneficials alone. Who cares?' you may cry. 'I want organic food.' Yes, well, organic farmers won't be Immune from this tax.
The report has looked at copper sulphate and other 'organic' pesticides, and I hear they have been judged to be less environ- mentally friendly than many less 'natural' methods. Organic farmers will therefore be hit along with the rest. I don't rejoice in this. I would like to see more organic farm- ers in this country, but the term 'organic' is often used as a stick to beat conventional farmers with, so it's as well you have the facts.
And it is a fact that farmers are using fewer and more sophisticated pesticides year on year, and I'm not sure new taxes will help this trend so much as add an unnecessary extra burden on an industry which is already in crisis.
To be fair to the Ministry of Agriculture, I believe they Would have liked to see these new taxes returned to the farmer in the form of environmental subsidies, but Gor- don Brown (perhaps we should call him Gorgon Brown?) won't go along with that. Taxes on wine don't go directly back to drinkers, and once he's got some money in his pocket he wants to spend it as he will. As farmers' problems don't feature highly in the concerns of the average voter, they will very probably have to wave their money good-bye, and quite possibly their livelihoods as well. Farmers are already sending their children to work in the cities. Well, the smart ones, at any rate. In 20 years time, unfashionable villages could be entirely inhabited by old men and idiots, and I fear the scene will be more Hogarth than Constable.
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