KENT Brooks considers changes to the farming community over the past 60 years.

In the countryside, the changes over 60 years have been overwhelming.

Villages are devoid of buses and the chances are that the school, post office and pub have gone, whereas 60 years ago there was a tight community where people, if not related, had known each other from childhood.

Now many of the houses are inhabited by elderly offcomers, retired to the rural idyll from urban areas. In the worst cases, many houses may be second homes, uninhabited most of the time.

But most noticeable perhaps is the conversion of farms to cater for these offcomers.

The farmhouse has been gentrified with double glazing, sometimes with previously small panes replaced by plate glass, and solar panels added to the roof.

The farm buildings have been converted to living accommodation such that barns have had their walls pierced by many windows, and the shippon has been tarted-up to form a ‘des res’ which can be sold for several times more than the entire farm was once worth.

In favourable cases, the land has been taken over by other farmers and maintained, but otherwise it has been used for ‘equestrian interests’ and has subsequently fallen into an unkempt state with meadows overgrown and tussocky.

In the worst cases the land has become a holiday park, with numerous caravans or timber lodges crammed together on concrete pads.

This once-productive farmland is now classified as a brownfield site and risks further ‘development’.

For those who remember World War Two and the days of ‘dig for victory’, every loss of farmland is a disaster. How will people be fed next time there is a bottleneck on the import of agricultural products?