Fear and confusion reigns

Foot and mouth 2001 will go down in the memories of everyone concerned with farming and the countryside as one of the worst things which has ever happened to them and a lot of people and firms who thought they had no connections with farming are beginning to realise that agriculture affects everyone in some way.

Writing this on Friday the 13th of July, nearly six months after the first official outbreak, I started to try to analyse how the disease has affected me and my family.

The first effect was a feeling of disbelief that foot and mouth could possibly have reappeared after all those years and add yet another negative component into our farming equation.

The Harrison family, like many other farming families, have been farming in our part of Yorkshire for hundreds of years and livestock has always been the base on which all our businesses have been built.

Like many more farmers, I was brought up to believe I needed to run a mixed farm with the aim that when one enterprise was losing money, some of the others would be profitable. The modern word is diversification.

With this in mind, today at Lodge Farm, we have a herd of pure-bred Holstein dairy cows and grow potatoes and winter wheat.

This is a simple system and is managed by my son John with the help of a full-time cowman. I help at busy times and run errands as required in between writing jobs which, prior to foot and mouth, seemed to be increasing every month.

John has two little sons, aged one and two and, in spite of this, his wife Ann holds down a very demanding job which entails quite a lot of travelling as well as some nights spent away from home.

Pat, my wife, too, is still very involved in the family business and spends time every week looking after our grandchildren.

In today's world, we are a typical farming business with a massive amount of capital invested in livestock, machinery and milk quota and high variable costs caused by inflation, BSE and the break-up of the Milk Marketing Board and the Potato Marketing Board, both of which were agricultural co-operatives, has reduced the returns for all the products we have to sell until, like most farmers, we are struggling to maintain viability in our business. Our experience is quite normal in farming today.

Once the initial shock of foot and mouth was over, there was on our farm a certain amount of relief because we are one of the few who still have an insurance which covers some of the consequential loss we will sustain if we get the disease.

This is not a huge amount but it will help if disaster strikes. But I have being paying quite substantial premiums for this cover for the past 40 years and, thankfully, my insurance cover had just been renewed. Next year will be a different story if other farmers' experiences are to be believed and our cover is withdrawn by our insurers because of the increased risk.

The first stage was to try to institute a bio-security system, with foot-baths for people and road mats for cars and lorries and to try to cut down on all non-essential movements on and off the farm.

In this respect, we have an almost impossible job in that my farm surrounds a small hamlet which has another six houses in its midst, all using the common road with none of the inhabitants or their visitors seeming to want to stop and dip their feet as they came onto the farm.

It seems that once again the British mentality that the rules don't apply to me was working against us and after ten weeks when John took out the dust bins to the village for everyone we just accepted the futility of the current situation and began to relax.

Like most stock farmers today, we have accepted that the epidemic is out of control. The current control methods used by Government cannot possibly work and today the feeling is not if we get the disease but how much longer will it take before we too become a victim instead of being an onlooker?

We have tried to limit our movements off the farm and when Ann has been forced to travel away from home with her job she has always used a car wash on the way back to try to reduce the risk of bringing infection on to the farm with her car.

At the same time, we wonder about other travellers who move around the country and think that foot and mouth is just a farmers' problem and there is no need for them to take any precautions whatsoever. Could this be one of the ways in which the disease is moving around?

Then we limited the number of visitors to those who are essential to the well-being of the farm and parcels and drugs from the vet were dropped off with me in the village.

In 1967, we were able to take milk out in churns to the road end and bring feed in on tractor trailers. Today, logistics have changed and everything is handled in bulk, which makes any attempt to isolate the farm impossible.

Also at that time, deer were unknown on our farm today there is a family of roe deer in every wood and they travel backwards and forwards over our land every day.

As time passed and in response to Mr Blair's statement that foot and mouth was no longer a problem, all the locals relaxed and one of our neighbours held a big party with visitors from all over the country in spite of my opposition.

The next unwelcome visitor was to be a firm which is re-lining our antiquated water pipes. They have been most helpful and understanding and have agreed to come back at a later date. This was wonderful news and renewed my faith in people.

Our next visitors were a journalist and a photographer, accompanied by their minder a county council official.

These people were intent on walking our footpaths with a view to writing a story for a magazine called Country Walking, intent on exploiting the fact that footpaths in our part of the county are open and visitors are welcome on almost every farm in North Yorkshire.

When I explained the true facts about the disease in the county to the Editor, he was confused and very apologetic, having been assured by senior staff at County Hall that all was well in North Yorkshire and that dairy farms and pregnant cows were not at risk from walkers. This is still the situation today.

The county has been declared open for business, walkers and tourists are all welcome in spite of the fact that thousands of farm stock are being murdered every day in the midst of our beautiful countryside.

The worst aspect of the situation for those members of the industry who still have livestock is the fear which lives with us every waking hour - the worry every time the phone rings and John says can I have a word with Dad. This applies to every livestock farmer and his family.

Just as bad is our lack of contact with people in the outside world. We have not had one rep on the farm since the beginning of the outbreak. Every bit of business has to be done over the phone.

Friends have stopped calling because they are afraid they might bring the infection with them and relatives seem to have forgotten where we all live.

In spite of this, the farming community is perhaps growing closer together and there seems to be a determination to stick this one out and stay in business.

At a local level, the NFU staff have all been brilliant - nationally none of us are too sure. We need a much stronger voice at the top, maybe it is time for the president to make way for a new man.

In the industry today, he is seen, like Nick Brown, the former minister, as a man whose policies have failed his members.

Updated: 09:14 Thursday, July 19, 2001