Your countryside
HAVE YOUR SAY ON RURAL ISSUES
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HARD WORK FOR LITTLE MONEY
letter of the month
*We reserve the right to edit correspondence
I read with interest Sara Maitland’s article on how the British view manual labour, in particular rural manual labour (January issue). I think she is right, in that most of us would not choose a job as an unskilled manual worker, unless we could not find any other work, as it is usually repetitive, often means working outside in all weathers and is notoriously poorly paid. I believe, though, that most of us see it as hard honest work, and respect anyone who is prepared to do it, as it is often vital and important work.
Rural manual work – particularly crop picking – is different. This has always been viewed as casual, seasonal work often carried out by travellers, gangs of workers from abroad, students and others needing temporary work. The pay is notoriously appalling.
I live in an area of Hampshire where strawberries and other soft fruits are grown. As a teenager, we would go fruit picking in the summer to earn pocket money, and my daughters did the same. We often worked alongside students from abroad. It was hard work for very poor money, but as it was casual work that you could pick up and drop as you liked, people were willing to do it. You were paid by the weight of the fruit you picked.
Why crops rotted in the fields last year is food for thought. There would have been no students or overseas workers because of Covid. Would youngsters be willing to work in the fields for poor wages as they used to? The hospitality industry is now crying out for seasonal workers, a much more glamorous option for many, and as it is generally better regulated, will be better paid. I doubt whether many students would consider crop-picking in the fields as work they would undertake.
Is this snobbery or just that there are better paid and more glamorous options?
Editor Fergus Collins replies:
Excellent points. In my teens I spent two summers picking and bagging potatoes on a Somerset farm. It was hard work and I and my fellow workers were berated by the farmer daily. I gained a suntan and some muscles but I lacked the skill and speed to make more than a pittance. But it has given me total respect for those who can do such work for a living.
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PUT A JUMPER ON
I watched the piece on energy poverty (Countryfile, 16 January) with great interest. I felt I had to comment as it seemed to me to be implying that we somehow have a right to all live in a balmy house in winter. The two people featured didn’t ring true. I see nothing wrong with wearing a hoodie or two in the cold months or even resorting to a hot water bottle or hat.
I was actually amazed that the lady with the horses prioritised keeping a number of thoroughbreds, which must require thousands of pounds, but couldn’t afford a few hundred to heat her home.
I appreciate some people are genuinely very poor and struggle to heat their homes, but I would say the norm is far more the expectation to heat the home to, say, 21°, so that a T-shirt can be worn indoors. This is an expectation of comfort we seem to think our right in Western culture today. What concerns me is the trashing of nature to meet these demands. In Suffolk, we are opposing in our thousands Sizewell C nuclear power station, which promises to be the largest construction site in Europe, right next to our premier nature reserve Minsmere. Not to mention appalling consequences in the future, as sea levels rise and the huge amounts of radioactive waste on site that can’t be disposed of.
LOCAL BUTCHERS
I appreciate this is a sensitive, potentially emotive subject, but I’d be interested to learn about the current state of abattoirs.
I know many of the smaller ones have been closed and the longer the distance animals have to travel, the more distressing it must be for them. I remember a butcher in Kington proudly advertising that none of the meat sold in their shop had travelled more than three miles.
I have friends in the Wye Valley/ Forest of Dean area who have a smallholding and keep a few sheep and goats. They recently took some to a local, small abattoir who immediately commented that these animals were more like pets and said they would deal with them first to minimise any distress. I thought that was pretty impressive.
ONLY HUMAN
I have just read the letter from an incensed Laura Johnston (February issue) wading into totally over-thetop criticism of Ellie Harrison. It appears to be a sad sign of the times that expressing a view, however mildly, runs the risk of the sort of extreme and intolerant criticism illustrated by said correspondent.
At no time seeing Ellie on Countryfile or reading her excellent monthly column have I ever thought her flippant about the climate crisis and ecological disaster we are bringing about. She was merely being human, acknowledging as we all must, perhaps even Ms Johnston, that we should all do more and we all fall short at times.
DEBATE: DO SALMON FARMS IMPACT ON WILD SALMON?
A news article on Countryfile.com included comment from anglers and conservationists who dismissed a recent study by Dr Martin Ja a that suggested salmon farms did not negatively impact on wild salmon numbers: countryfile.com/wildlife/marine-life/new-salmonfarming-paper-dismissed/
Dr Jaffa responds: The decline in salmon numbers is down to a range of factors but the most important is that since the early 1970s, the number of fish returning to rivers across the whole of their range, not just Scotland, has been in decline [based on anglers’ records of salmon catches].
During the 1980s, around 20% of migrating salmon returned; now the number is 2–3%.
This applies to rivers farming as it does to rivers located in the salmon farming areas. Small west coast rivers have only a small stock of fish and this decline impacted them faster than it did on the east coast.
The angling fraternity have, over the years, blamed everyone for the declines except their own actions. Even with catch-and-release being prevalent, anglers are still killing salmon across Scotland. Salmon farming has been blamed for the decline for years because it has been a convenient scapegoat to deflect attention from the angling sector.
Salmon farming really began to take o around 1980. Total Scottish production in 1982 was just under 1,000 tonnes (200,000 tonnes today). Clearly sea trout catches were in decline for the 30 years before then. I have repeatedly asked everyone from anglers to government scientists to explain how salmon farming can be blamed for this decline and as yet I have not had a single response.
The campaigning by Salmon and Trout Conservation to ban salmon farms will not save wild salmon. The real reasons for the decline, especially on the east coast where there are no salmon farms, has yet to be discovered.