There is more to the rural economy than farms and Bed and Breakfasts, but all businesses are battling under the weight of regulation, poor infrastructure and financial worries. Lisa Miles calls for wider support of the region's rural businesses
It's a sunny Friday evening in late summer and the M6 is clogged. An accident on a slip road causes a tailback in the vicinity of Lancaster; an empty bus engulfed in flames somewhere near Kendal brings traffic to a standstill. The Lake District finds itself cut off again.
Meanwhile, a small army of Polish workers is making its way along the M62 towards Manchester coach station for the journey home after a long, hot summer picking tomatoes in Merseyside fields. Local youths eye them without interest, heading back to the hills after a day's training in media studies and technology.
Add to this a conservatories salesman in a converted barn, a dairy farmer making speciality yoghurt, several closed-down village shops, a business incubator and a few home-based web designers and you have a picture of the North West's rural business community.
From the mainly dairy farming county of Cheshire, via arable south-west Lancashire, to the beef and sheep farming uplands of north Lancashire and Cumbria, the North West is predominantly rural. But its rural businesses, from sheep farmers to small-scale manufacturers, from tomato growers to internet retailers, face a daily struggle against poor infrastructure, skills shortages, strict planning guidelines and the closure of local services.
At the heart of the rural economy lie the farmers. Agriculture may only contribute a total £3700m to the region's economy each year, but farmers are also the guardians of the landscape, employers of both skilled and unskilled labour and the lifeblood of communities. "It's important in all rural areas that farms thrive," says Jim Birkett, Lancashire county chairman at the National Farmers' Union (NFU) and a dairy, beef and sheep farmer near Morecambe. "The decline of the rural economy has affected communities and agriculture is the core of the rural economy."
The problems are wide-ranging and complex, but all intertwined. Better transport and more affordable housing would bring more people in to rural areas, which would allow services such as Post Offices, shops and petrol stations to remain open. This in turn would bring in more visitors and more businesses. And ultimately all these improvements would bring about exactly what the country needs: sustainability and self-sufficiency.
"If the UK borders were shut tomorrow morning, we've got six days' food supply before there would be shortages," says Trevor Wilson, NFU chairman for Cumbria and a farmer of beef and sheep in Cartmel. The future of agriculture, say farmers, should lie in producing food for the UK and growing renewable resources such as oil seed rape for biofuels.
Only just beginning to recover from the 2001 Food and Mouth crisis, struggling to make ends meet under a new government payment scheme and under pressure from supermarkets to cut prices, farmers are shutting up shop. In the first five months of 2006 calls to a helpline provided by the Farm Crisis Network were over 50 per cent higher than in the same period in 2005 - the most common problems involve finance.
And the countryside's ability to feed us is being further squeezed by many remaining farmers choosing diversification as a means to boost earnings. "If we diversify away from core farming, when we are short of food we will find it takes generations to build skills and farms back up," says Wilson. "We are only 60 per cent self-sufficient in beef and 80 per cent self-sufficient in milk - the rest of Europe is producing food for us."
Of course, diversification is nothing new and many farmers are beginning to see their earnings pick up as a result of some entrepreneurial thinking. As with all new business ventures, careful research pays dividends.
"How much demand is there for fishing lakes, farm shops and craft barns? There are plenty of things people can do but it's wise to seek advice first and to go into something where there is a big enough market," says Geoff Tomlinson, head of rural business at Napthens Solicitors in Preston. "Farmers are used to working hard and used to being their own bosses. They can turn their hand to most practical things but are also good business people and would probably have a better chance than most of making a go of a new business or a new area.
"In farming in the North West the 80 to 20 rule applies. Around 20 per cent of farming businesses in the North West are sound and profitable and have a good future - these tend to be the bigger and more efficient ones. At the other end of the scale are the 20 per cent who should have got out years ago. In the middle are 60 per cent who are getting by however they can by diversifying."
At Claremont Farm on the edge of Bebington on the Wirral, Andrew Pimbley, the fourth generation of his family to farm in 100 years, has embraced change. "Even when I was at college in 1995 to 1996 they were talking about diversification," he says. "The supermarkets were taking a lot of control and farmers were not getting as much money as they should. I started thinking about what we could do with the farm."
As well as operating a farm shop and a fishery, Claremont feeds people's new-found desire for locally growing food by supplying produce to top-end Liverpool restaurants - Pimbley's asparagus, soft fruits, potatoes and broccoli are munched in upmarket venues such as 60 Hope Street and the London Carriage Works.
Claremont also played host to the first Wirral Food and Drink Festival over the August Bank Holiday, attended by an unexpected 14,000 people looking for local produce. The farm benefits from its location on the edge of a community and close to the M53. "If you want to do direct sales you've got to be in the right location," says Pimbley. "Young farmers are trying to do different things with what we produce. You have to change with the times and farming is adapting. It's had a massive shake-up over the last ten years, but anything you beat down comes back stronger."
For those without a business brain, help comes in the form of the Farm Business Advice Service, funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to help farmers with the implications of the new Single Payment Scheme (SPS). Sandra Burger, North West project manager, explains that many farmers will have found themselves worse off under the new payment system: "Quite a lot of farmers will be getting less money, in particular beef and sheep farmers in the North West, and some are getting only 40 per cent of what they received previously. This creates a real pressure on profitability.
"It's about having a good look at the situation on the farm and taking the new circumstances into account. We can help assess what's right for the farm, whether it is in the right position for a farm shop, a cafxe9, a tourist attraction or renting out a barn. It's an uncomfortable subject - it can be quite difficult to get someone to face up to the fact that their income is going to drop and to make radical decisions."
The SPS, brought in as part of the reform of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy to replace most existing crop and livestock payments from 1 January 2005, is just one area in which farmers have felt let down by central government. The scheme was designed to give farmers greater freedom to farm to the demands of the market, with subsidies no longer linked to production, and environmentally friendly practices are rewarded.
But, as with all such bright ideas, the £31.5bn of payments were plagued with delays and most farmers react with words such as "complicated", "hell of a concern" and, the fruit of all delays, "speculation". Some farmers are turning away from payments, preferring to concentrate on making money through growing and vibrant export markets.
The whole situation is, say critics, symptomatic of central government's lack of understanding of the rural economy. "The fact Defra doesn't even have the word "agriculture' in its title shows that government doesn't pay enough respect," says Pimbley. "There is a lot of legislation, rules and regulations, which mean we can't compete effectively with other countries. I want government to understand farming. They are so detached from real farms."
And it is not just farmers who feel let down. Many people based in rural areas blame infrastructure, housing and poverty problems on a lack of understanding at government level. Tom Fell, North West regional director of the Countryside Alliance, says: "This government seems to come up with a lot of schemes, but most of the people in government are from an urban background. They don't live the life country people do - they think it's all based on The Archers and don't realise the hardship and the massive poverty. There's a lack of empathy."
Will Cockbain, a sheep and beef cattle farmer outside Keswick, acts as independent chairman of the management group responsible for delivering the government's sustainable farming and food strategy. He is also national uplands spokesman for the NFU.
He says that one of the areas he hopes government will focus on is affordable housing. "If there's going to be a sustainable future for rural communities, affordable housing and a new look at planning restrictions are necessary otherwise young people will drift away," he says. "People want to retire to the country, but if you're going to allow that to happen you need a policy that allows local youngsters to stay too."
The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) plays a growing role in tackling the problems of the rural economy and its communities. With broadband projects to get villages online, schemes that lend 50cc mopeds for youngsters to get to training and investment in food initiatives, NWDA head of rural policy Steve Heaton does all he can to fulfil a huge remit.
"We have a very extensive rural investment programme that was put together in the wake of Foot & Mouth in 2001 and that investment totals just over £3100m over five years," he says. "Then in 2004 Defra decided that it made sense to give the regional development agencies responsibility for socio-economic investment so its gave us £33m to £33.2m a year that was previously administered by the Countryside Agency."
And from 2007 to 2013 the NWDA will be running a new European programme matched by UK money, Rural Development Programme for England, which Heaton says looks likely to involve at least £34.7m a year for social and economic development in rural areas.
The NWDA offers simple solutions for large-scale problems to which there is no immediate answer. Of broadband Heaton says: "One of the ways of increasing passing trade is through the web. Realistically we're not investing in road schemes and we know how constrained that investment is. If you have accessibility issues you can start to address it by harnessing technology."
There is still a perception that rural areas are just about farming, tourism and small retailers, but these are only part of the picture. In 1998 Myerscough College, one of the UK's biggest agricultural and land-based colleges, with sites in Preston, Liverpool, Manchester, East Lancashire and Dorset, set up a rural business centre. The centre initially focussed on training and skills but Lorna Tyson, director of business and enterprise, found that what held businesses back was more than just skills: "They need to know about product development, distribution, marketing, the whole package. People are very good at producing their product or service but have limited experience in communicating to the consumer."
There is also an incubator funded by the NWDA to help diversify the economy. "We are trying to encourage businesses that are developing something completely new, who, once they have been in the incubator, would want to base themselves in rural areas," says Tyson.
For anyone who wants to help boost and sustain the rural economy, the answer is clear: buy local, be it services or products, and particularly food. In a 2006 survey for Farmers Weekly magazine, 47 per cent of people don't know where the food they buy is produced but 83 per cent would prefer to buy local. The Countryside Alliance has launched its second annual Best Rural Retailer awards to celebrate the rural retail with the categories best local food retailer, best village shop/ Post Office, best diversification and best traditional skills.
Supporting local businesses increases employment, revitalises services and creates a sense of community. But the answers to rural England's problems are complex and require direct action from central government. It is going to take more than a few locally grown carrots to save the countryside.
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