SPRING and summer are times of harvest for every farmer. In the hills and uplands, calves and lambs are born; grass is harvested in May and June then, as July comes in, down the hill combine harvesters start to rattle, followed in autumn by potato and beet harvesters. While all this is going on the dairy farmer rises in the early hours to milk.

Nothing changes and this has been going on for centuries; only the techniques have altered. One thing is different, however, and that is the farmer's image. Today it is a shadow of 20 years ago.

When I started farming, farmers were seen in their true colours as producers of quality food and protectors of the countryside. Now they are regarded as subsidised producers of food which can be obtained more cheaply from abroad, as well as the breakers of the landscape.

What went wrong? The cheap food policies of the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies and Eighties pushed agriculture into extremes of crop and animal husbandry.

Monoculture developed and expanded, using drainage and reclamation. Cheap fertiliser, a by-product of the petrochemical industry, became the basis of intensive livestock farming and all this was fuelled by grants and subsidies.

Some farm businesses grew as others gave up, and a proportion floated gradually backwards on a tide of government support. This scenario lasted for about 40 years, during which farmers went from being heroes to becoming the rogues of the piece.

In parallel, a number of special interest groups worked tirelessly to fight their causes, building membership, income and lobbying strength.

Wildlife, welfare, organic and access groups, and just plain interferers, all eventually came together to alter the position of agriculture in the eyes of both government and the public.

Groups such as these are usually too focused to consider the wider situation and end up basing their policies on misinformation and innuendo.

Since the Eighties it had been obvious we had gone too far down the intensive road and government should have realised that the speed of development in agriculture needed to be slowed, to prevent pushing the environment too far, but that did not happen.

Instead, suddenly the pressure groups broke through and it was the present incumbents who just put the brakes on and tried to throw the industry into reverse.

The results will take time to show, but already animal health stands out as a chasm for public money. The very base of the countryside, the family farm, is in danger of being replaced by lifestyle farming and horses and, no matter what Mrs Beckett and her team may think, this is not the answer.

Two decades of government ignorance and neglect in the field of animal health alone have amounted to costs equivalant to another world war and TB is still sucking money in at a frightening rate which will shortly require a tax rise to keep it going. None of this is the fault of farmers, but nevertheless it is still laid at their door.

TB will cost the nation more than foot-and-mouth; there are ways of bringing it to a halt but the pressure groups are in control.

Vote-gathering in this way is no way to govern and, as an election approaches, once again rural sport can be guaranteed to come to the top of the political hit list.

Farmers and rural folk have more love and respect for livestock, both wild and domestic, than any other social group yet they are still so often portrayed as the devils.

Yes, of course we breed animals to eat, but remember we also care for and respect them. Some of us shoot or hunt and the same applies. Ask any dog or cat which they would prefer: living with farmers or non-farmers and I think I know the answer.

Perhaps it is easier now to understand just why farmers are at breaking point over the TB debacle. Here in the North-East we are free of the disease, but all the time it comes North towards us. Proper controls must be put in place.

Disease is, however, only the tip of an iceberg of misunderstanding.

The break-up of the family farm will have a devastating effect on our traditional landscape. The combination of ridiculously high country property values, falling profits and a crippling labour shortage will do untold damage to the traditional patchwork of rural Britain.

With lifestyle farming, farm buildings decreed redundant become development sites, the land becomes overun with pets and horses and the country we once knew and loved becomes tatty, covered in sheds and coloured poles.

If you want a foretaste of what is to come drive the Fosse Way, once pristine mixed farming and now stockless, with most farmhouses and cottages gone out of rural use.

When you arrive in the Cheltenham-Gloucester area, look around at what happens when farming relinquishes its role to other uses.

Government tells us that they are making the rural community sustainable; they claim to be regenerating it. What rot. I've got news for them: it never degenerated, it's just suffered from poor policies