IN ADVANCE of the Countryside Alliance march in London on Sunday, I am concerned that the real issues affecting agriculture and the rural economy are not being discussed.

Farms incomes are collapsing and farmers are going out of business. In addition, 60,000 agricultural workers have lost their jobs in the last three years. Village shops and post offices are closing at an alarming rate.

The single most important reason for falling farm incomes is because farming is in the grip of severe price deflation. The high value of the pound against the euro is having a devastating impact. The situation has been made worse by the impact of BSE.

Our rural infrastructure has been weakened by de-regulation of bus services and the imposition of right-to-buy schemes which has almost wiped out affordable housing for local people. The stranglehold of the large supermarkets has forced many farmers to go to the wall and hastened the closure of village shops.

The rural economy needs support to diversify. However, instead of emphasising the need to preserve fox-hunting, which creates few jobs and plays a minimal part in the rural economy, we should be campaigning for an early entry into the euro which, at a sensible level, could boost farm incomes by up to a quarter.

Affordable housing, improved transport and increasing incomes for farmers and other workers are the real issues. So long as the Countryside Alliance insists on breeding euro-scepticism and campaigning for fox-hunting, the rural economy will only decline further.

George McManus,

Meadowfield Close,

Pocklington.

Updated: 09:30 Friday, September 20, 2002