Desperate tenant farmers unable to sleep at night and struggling with marital problems are turning to anti-depressants, a new report revealed today.

As Yorkshire pig farmers prepared to travel to London tomorrow to press their case for survival to MPs, North Yorkshire farmers leader Ben Gill warned the Government: "Time is rapidly running out for assistance."

The report, commissioned by the National Farmers' Union, revealed that a quarter of tenant farmers are having marital difficulties, 70 per cent are kept awake at night with worry and 60 per cent fear they will lose everything because of the state of the industry.

And one in ten tenant farmers is said to be taking anti-depressants.

Mr Gill, who farms near Easingwold as well as being President of the NFU, said: "The fact that one in ten of those in our report have been prescribed drugs is particularly worrying, when you consider that last year there was more than one farming suicide a week."

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Rev Lord Runcie, who was himself once a pig farmer, said: "British pig farming is folding up before our eyes. It is an economic and personal tragedy. It is not inevitable. It must be resisted."

Prayers were being said by church leaders today at the site of a farmers' vigil outside the Houses of Parliament.

A delegation from the British Pig Industry Support Group will tomorrow meet up to 50 Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs. The group is chaired by Matthew Atkin, of Everingham, near Pocklington, and the delegation will include Richard Longthorp, a pig farmer from Howden, near Goole.

Mr Atkin and the support group's treasurer Meryl Ward are due to brief Labour's backbench agricultural committee next Tuesday.

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