Foot and mouth...the effect of the floods on the potato and cereal harvest ... is there anything to celebrate in the rural areas of York and North Yorkshire? Yes there is, says ROB SIMPSON of the Yorkshire and North East National Farmers Union

ONCE again I apologise for highlighting the destructive impact of foot and mouth disease on the countryside, but this time I promise at least to get away from the understandably depressing tone of this column over the past six months to end on some more positive news.

Amid the continued nightmare of foot-and-mouth, the farming industry is struggling to survive.

The little publicised victims of the disease try to get on with their day-to-day farming operations as best they can; hampered by onerous, but necessary, restrictions.

They are the vast majority of UK farmers who have not been 'taken out' in livestock culls; farmers who must find markets for their animals, even though they know they will be selling at a loss.

One farmer revealed recently that he had spent £3,000 on disinfectant since the start of the outbreak. He will also have spent hundreds of man-hours cleaning and disinfecting his machinery and vehicles, all in a bid to keep his farm clear of the disease.

He's typical of thousands of livestock farmers in North Yorkshire who are being hammered by the virus's economic impact. They are the hidden victims, but they are certainly not forgotten.

In the cereal sector, the calendar has once again turned to harvest where arable farmers pit their skills against mother nature to combine the driest and highest quality grain.

It is proving an impossible job again this year for many, though.

The flooding last autumn, and again this spring, wreaked havoc on the potato harvest and some farmers were almost ruined by their losses. Today, as the cereal crops come in, farmers are beginning to reckon up the total impact the flooding has had.

Early reports of the cereal harvest do not make comfortable reading for farmers in North Yorkshire: yields of wheat, barley and oilseed rape down by a third. The waterlogging and rain-formed lakes earlier this year drowned many of the seeds and plants.

And just to compound the damage already done, weather extremes this summer - primarily the heatwave in June - have left many cereal farmers with sub-quality grain. Lost quality equals lost income, while the farmgate price for cereals continues to be depressed.

On the back of last year's summer of rain, which made for a very expensive harvest, this may prove to be the final straw for some.

So what, you might ask, can there possibly be to be cheerful about amidst all this doom and gloom?

Birds.......the feathered variety, of course!

A boom in the number of farm and woodland birds has been reported in the latest national survey which is a welcome sign for farmers that they are striking the right balance between the demands of food production and the environment.

The Common Birds Census, carried out by the British Trust for Ornithology, shows large increases in 14 species of bird, including those of Conservation Concern, and significant improvements on the figures for the last 25 years.

The numbers of song thrush increased by 17 per cent after declining by 55 per cent since 1974. Blackbirds also increased by 6per cent after falling by 23 per cent in the previous 25 years.

The number of tawny owls rose by a third, up from a 15 per cent decline. Dunnock numbers also increased by a tenth, up from a 44 per cent decline.

The census also showed a welcome increase in the popular robin (up 13per cent), the wren (up eight per cent) and the chaffinch (up eight).

And what do we owe for this reversal in the birds' fortune? Well one major factor is the willingness of British farmers to sign up to conservation schemes. In fact, they have been signing up in their droves. More than 25,000 farmers entered a million hectares of farmland into conservation schemes during the 1990s.

Not, I hasten to add, because the schemes are profitable, but because farmers take their role as custodians of the countryside very seriously.

British farmers have proved they can produce the nation's food. The priority now is on improvements to the environment and wildlife. It's a challenge farmers have already embraced.