Pastures new

THE sun beats down on Flamborough Head, warming away the sea mist drifting over the cliff tops. To one side, grassland slopes away into the East Riding; to the other, there is a sheer drop to the rocks and sea far below.

The sun-warmed sound of a skylark pours out of a hazy blue sky, contrasting oddly with the wild, skirling squawks of the kittiwakes and fulmars swooping and wheeling below the cliffs.

Not so long ago, most of this land was under intensive agriculture. John Foster brought his combine harvester right up to the cliff edge: so close, sometimes he used to worry whether the ground would give way.

That has all changed. Under a countryside stewardship scheme, by which farmers are paid to manage their land in a more environmentally-friendly way, 110 acres of cliff-tops fields belonging to Field House Farm near Bempton have been sewn with traditional grasses and set aside for rough grazing by neighbouring farms' cattle and sheep - a move designed to encourage ground-nesting birds such as the skylark and corn-bunting, as well as voles and field mice.

Under the scheme - by which farmers like John enter into ten-year agreements and are paid from £8 to £225 per acre depending on how they manage their land - John has also restored hedgerows and ancient ponds elsewhere on his 600 acre farm, left margins around fields to encourage wildlife and wild flowers, and even dug 'scrapes', shallow gashes in the soil which become seasonal ponds, encouraging the return of frogs and newts.

The great news for walkers is that he has also created a new footpath along the edge of his fields right up to the cliffs themselves, so that walkers can link up with the existing cliff-top path that leads to the RSPB's Bempton Cliffs reserve.

It means they can do a circular route, starting from the village pub in Bempton, going down to the nature reserve, taking in a bit of the cliff path, and then cutting back across the edge of John's field. The fences and signposts across John's land haven't gone up yet: but the path is already open. "It's quite a nice route for people to try," he says. "The cliff-top is spectacular, and there is plenty of ozone."

Environmentalists and walkers alike will no doubt welcome such schemes, which are opening up farmland like John's and turning it into a refuge for fast-disappearing bird and other species.

Trevor Charlton, manager of the RSPB's nature reserve at Bempton Cliffs, has no doubt they are having a beneficial effect for birds.

He recently did a quick survey of John's land, and that of a neighbouring farmer who has selectively seeded and cut some of his cliff-top land to produce a long and short 'sward', or traditional grassland, which is great for insects and small creatures such as voles. And he found a number of bird species, such as the corn bunting, tree sparrow, grey partridge, skylark, linnet and yellow wagtail, which have been seriously declining since the growth of intensive agriculture.

Perhaps even more exciting, he found several short-eared owls, attracted by the smaller creatures living in the grassland itself.

The growing use of countryside stewardship schemes, however, is marking a big change in the way we manage our farmland.

Between 2000 and 2006, the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has set aside £500 million to encourage less intensive, more environmentally-friendly farming on farms across the country.

In many ways, says Laurie Norris, land use and environment adviser for the National Farmer's Union in the North East, such schemes go against what farming is all about; which is using the land to produce food. So is our relationship with the land in which we live changing for good? And are we in danger of creating a British countryside which is little more than a museum-piece; a recreation of a longed-for landscape of hedgerows and wild meadows which is no longer productive?

Not necessarily. There are many benefits to countryside stewardship schemes, Laurie stresses. By taking their most marginal, least productive land out of production, farmers can earn some income from it, improve public access, and produce environments which are ecologically diverse for wildlife - while still keeping their better land in production.

She says the key is that where such land has been put into stewardship, it must always be available to be brought back into production in future if needed. She adds there is some concern that farms where such schemes have been in operation for ten years or so may face resistance if they then wanted to return to intensive production. That is something the NFU is determined to resist.

The countryside stewardship scheme is only one example, however, of the ways in which struggling farmers are being helped to adapt to changing times. In many ways, Field House Farm is a microcosm of what is happening to British farming generally.

John Foster's family has farmed in the area for centuries. "We were originally from Filey, and farmed in that area since records began. We go back 500 years," he says proudly.

When he and his wife Angela took over the running of Field House Farm from John's father nearly 20 years ago, they soon decided that, even with two young children, the rambling farmhouse was far too big. Part of it was turned into holiday cottages, as a useful sideline. Now, that has become almost the Fosters' main source of income. The farm had always been mixed arable and dairy.

But a couple of years ago, John sold off almost his entire dairy herd of Friesian cows and, with the help of an £80,000 Rural Enterprise Scheme grant, set about converting the collection of stone cowsheds, stables and calf-boxes that surround the farmhouse's courtyard into more holiday cottages.

The six Field House Farm Cottages now make up a thriving business in their own right. Each one is a comfortable, self-contained holiday flat with sitting room, dining/ kitchen, double or twin rooms and en-suite bathrooms.

Above all, they have bags of character - wooden beams holding up the ceilings, bare brick walls with niches set into them that were once, John says, roosting boxes for chickens, but which now make great built-in bookshelves. They look out on to a sunny courtyard set with garden tables which, before the conversion, was a huge covered cowshed.

"In the winter, it was full of straw and cows!" Angela says. "It was a maternity ward for cows."

The outlook from her own kitchen window has certainly improved, she admits - and so, in many ways, has the Fosters' quality of life. John, who is in his early 50s, admits looking after a herd of dairy cattle day-in, day-out regardless of the weather was hard work. And in recent years it hadn't even been paying.

"It wasn't profitable, purely because there was an over-supply of milk which had pushed prices down to lower than the cost of production," he says.

With no signs that either of their children - James, 26, who is completing a degree in maritime resource management at Aberdeen, and Lucy, 24, who is working in PR in Liverpool - intend to go into farming after them, they took the decision to pull out of dairy altogether, keeping the agricultural side of the farm going and building up the holiday business.

There was, John admits, a twinge of regret at giving up his dairy herd. "I realise it was the kind of lifestyle that your grandchildren would look back on and say 'grand-dad used to milk cows'," he admits. "But it has been so bad for so many years that I was glad to be unburdened."

There are so many farmers like him that between 2001 and 2006 a total of £152 million of European and Government money has set aside under the Rural Enterprise Scheme to help other farmers diversify.

There will always be some intensively-farmed land: otherwise how could we feed ourselves?

The future of large parts of the countryside looks increasingly like it will be go 'tourist' with better public access, and environmentally-managed wildlife habitats. It will still be country life: just not as our forefathers knew it. Maybe there is nothing wrong with that.

Updated: 09:47 Thursday, April 15, 2004