Every year at primary school we would be asked to complete a project. Even then, I tended to work to deadlines, so apart from my effort on the "Mexico Olympics", I would always choose "Farming", knowing that I could simply spend a couple of evenings cutting pictures from "Scottish Farmer" and "Farmer & Stockbreeder" and adding a few captions.
I was particularly pleased with my cuttings one year because I'd found an impressive picture from a feed company's advert, based on the Royal Standard and showing the four different species of farm animals. That was my front cover, above a verse my father taught me called "The Farmer's Motto".
Although I can't remember the full poem, the last two lines have always stuck with me:
Live as if you would die tomorrow,
Farm as if you would live forever.
Farmers have always taken the long view. The land isn't ours, but in our stewardship for future generations. Anyone who tries to take out more than they put in will soon be caught out as their land loses heart. The rest of the population has not only benefited from food produced to the highest standards, but from the creation and management of a landscape sought after for tranquillity and relaxation as well as adventure and rural hospitality.
But there is another, better known saying, "Nothing lasts for ever". Is this about to come true for farmers in England? Is there an economic justification to keep these rural businessmen in situ? Farmers now receive a Single Farm Payment in return for managing farming's "public goods", the landscape. But in all other economic respects, all we receive now are further challenges.
We are being undermined on one side by Government indifference and on the other by a general public who expect us to maintain the countryside while they are happy to support food producers in other countries. This leads to our being "bombed" by cheaper imported food, of sometimes unknown provenance and at significant environmental cost, which drives our prices down further. We continue to be strangled by excessive red tape, which has turned our already short of time husbandmen into office administrators. Those who try to create other economic activities are blocked by planning policies and now gaps in funding opportunities.
And above all this, the environmental lobby want their say in how they want the land to be managed, sometimes by halting or even reversing economic activity. We now face some productive farmland being allowed to flood again.
The well-intentioned aim of many is the preservation of the countryside, but without fully understanding the interaction between the economic, environmental and social factors, their policies and actions may actually destroy it.
No one can argue against biodiversity and managing the environment, but unless landowners and managers can see opportunities to run a profitable business, they will abandon the land, taking with them the experience and expertise necessary for landscape management. When people and jobs leave, then the social and environmental framework in these rural communities must surely fail.
So will 2007 be a Happy New Year? There are many opportunities for the production of food and "green" energy, and for diversification and creation of jobs, but we must be freed up to do so.
The recent Barker Review on the land use planning system does offer some hope, as it realises that balancing economic growth with social and environmental factors can help create thriving rural communities, and we look forward to the Planning Reform Bill White Paper. In January, the CLA launches its "Just Ask" campaign, encouraging customers to find out where their food actually comes from, and the Government's emphasis on Climate Change must surely highlight further markets for our industry.
The threats to our industry and our landscape are real, but so are the opportunities. We simply want to be allowed to take them.