WHEN I was at school Geography masters always told us Britain's biggest industry was farming.At that time, here in the North, it was just ahead of steel, coal, shipbuilding and fishing in economic importance.

How things have changed. Steel is only a shadow of its former self, most of the mines are reclaimed or redeveloped, the shipyards a shadow of the past and our East coast fish docks all but empty. In agriculture, while a lot of land has been squandered to development, acres of urban and industrial land stand derelict, yet we continue to farm a vaste acreage with less labour and fewer animals and with crop yields substantially increased.

I am no economist, but I would have thought that agriculture was still a very important industry, yet a straw poll among a group of farmers shows that a majority are fast concluding that the Government is prepared to see the industry gradually lose its importance within the nation's economy.

The editor has given me the opportunity to run a fortnightly column which will address not just farming, but the entire rural community. It is impossible to separate farming from forestry and the associated industries, as well as from country sports, conservation and the environment. I hope I can stimulate discussion, raise questons and even occasionally produce a few answers.

As farmers today, it is easy to feel removed from much of what goes on in our villages and towns, to say nothing of the loss of influence we have suffered at local, regional, national, and even European levels. In short, we no longer have the voice of old when we were acknowledged as vital to the nation.

Today we stand at the brink of the most dramatic change any industry has ever experienced.The emphasis is no longer to be on producing an abundant, healthy and secure supply of food for the British people. Instead we are being pushed into an environmental policy which, in my view, is totally unsustainable in the long term. It is one that will encourage little or no food to come from some acres, while the occupier will still be subsidised.

Farmers and farmworkers have been leaving the land steadily since tractors saw off the horse, but today this is turning to a fast-flowing stream. These people are the backbone of the rural community; they maintain the countryside and without them much of our unique landscape will change.

Never before have farming families been faced with a situation where the next generation has no wish to continue what in all probability is a livelihood going back genetically for hundreds of years. Young Farmers' Clubs now worry more about social life than stockmanship and the colleges and universities run farming courses with students in single figures.

Apart from the radical changes which will be wreaked by the MTR of the CAP, open access will increase, and country sports will continue to be ravaged by minority interest groups holding more sway than those whose traditional and legal occupations and pastimes they seek to destroy.

While this column will cover rural affairs as a whole, it will primarily be about this paper's circulation area. Across our dales, hills and moors, in the Vale country and on our seaboard, we have a diverse agriculture with a landscape rich in wildlife, flora and fauna. As farmers, foresters, gamekeepers and their ilk, or as folk whose occupations are interdependent on them, we are very important to this country. I hope that, over a period, we can restore confidence and initiate change which will turn much of the current uncertainty into a positive and exciting future.