People who hold the view that livestock farming protects and maintains the ‘traditional British rural landscape’…
"Farmers would like us to believe we are attached to this kind of scenery (trim and tidy fieldscape). Yet the idea that as much as 80% of our rural landscape should be farmed, as it is at present, is relatively new. Until subsidy revived it after World War II, farming in Britain suffered a 100-year recession. Much of the marginal land which has now been ploughed up was left derelict, to be colonised by bramble and hawthorn, cornflower and dog-rose. It was the countryside of pastoral myth that most of us know only from art galleries. We need to learn once more that we have nothing to fear from the incursion of indigenous flora into our landscape. On the contrary, we desperately need more wilderness in our over-domesticated outdoors…While other countries make a point of dedicating wilderness areas, Britain has almost none. We could do with spaces where we could see what happens to our countryside when left to its own devises. We lecture Third World countries about their rainforests without making any effort to restore the lost habitat of our own wildlife…If subsidies were withdrawn, land prices would fall. Then conservation and wildlife organisations such as the National trust, the RSPB and wildlife trusts could extend their holdings…Local Authorities could create more parks. Foresters could begin to address the problem of tree cover, which is only a fraction of what it is in continental Europe…These new owners would create a very different landscape. We have every reason to believe it would be far more attractive to us, and to the wild creatures with whom we would share it, than the existing farm landscape devoid of skylarks, orchids, newts and buttercups…None of this is fantastic. It is all within our grasp. What is fantastic is our inability to shake ourselves free of the idea that our countryside must be one big farm.
David Cox, director of a Forestry Company (Observer)
Countryside without livestock
"If the sheep and cattle are gone and the grip of agriculture which shaped our landscapes is wrestled by one crisis too many, the wild will slowly reclaim the countryside. Seed and root, leaf and wing will push out from woods, stream banks and hedges, and the forest in waiting will make its return journey from obscure corners in the land. In many parts of the country, particularly the uplands, wild nature is gathering for an opportunity denied for generations."
Paul Evans, The Guardian 11.04.2001