The Environmental and Social Costs of Improvement 39engaged in agriculture will fall by a further 17–26 per cent during the 1990s (in
DoW, 1992). Now, as a result of modernization, some of the worst poverty is in
rural areas (Pretty and Howes, 1993).
In the quest for greater food production, landscapes have been homogenized,
and rural livelihoods and farming systems have been progressively simplified.
Where there were diverse and integrated farms employing local people, there are
now operations specializing in one or two enterprises that largely rely on farm or
contractor labour only. Where processing operations were local, now they are cen-
tralized and remote from rural people. The result is that few people who live in
rural areas have a direct link to the process of farming. Fewer people make a living
from the land and, of course, they understand it less. The lack of employment has
also coincided with the steady decline in rural services, such as schools, shops, doc-
tors and public transport.
However, the number of people in rural areas is increasing, though it appears
that it is younger people migrating away, to be replaced by older, particularly
retired, new entrants (DoW, 1992). More people want to move into rural areas
too. Recent surveys found that 76 per cent of those who live in cities want to live
in a village or country town and 37 per cent expect to move out during the next
decade (Rose, 1993). The rural community, bonded in the past by a common
understanding and economic interest in the land, currently appears unlikely to be
brought together by close links with farming.
Various national enquiries have shown that the incidence of rural poverty is
considerably greater than previously supposed (DoW, 1992; HL, 1990; ACORA,
1990). According to an unpublished government report, some 25 per cent of rural
households are living on or below the official poverty line (in DoW, 1992). Farm-
ers and farmworkers are about twice as likely to commit suicide than the rest of the
population, and suicide is the second most common form of death for male farm-
ers (in DoW, 1992). Farmers are increasingly recognized as suffering the stress and
deteriorating confidence associated with lonely occupations (Martineau, 1993;
Cornelius, 1993). The Duke of Westminster’s report (1992) described these prob-
lems in this way: ‘Hidden in the rural landscape which the British so much love,
people are suffering poverty, housing problems, unemployment, deprivation of
various kinds, and misery. Traditional patterns of rural life are changing fast, caus-
ing worry, shame and distress. Those most affected are often angry and bitter but
feel they have little chance of being heard. The suicide rate is very high. Neither
the public nor the private sector is showing any signs of caring very much about all
this.’
Small family farms have been especially vulnerable (Lobley, 1993; Moss, 1993).
They rely more on diverse sources of off-farm income and so are dependent upon
the wider success of the rural economy. When small farms are given up, they tend
to be amalgamated into ever larger holdings, with a resulting radical change in the
landscape structure (Munton and Marsden, 1991). Many successions lead to
intensified land use, and the removal of woods and hedges. Continuity of farms is
a goal held by many farm families. Most wish to see their heirs as successors. Yet,