AN agricultural business adviser is to be appointed by the end of August to help farmers in Wensleydale recover from the foot-and-mouth crisis .

Rejuvenate, a group of farmers, councillors, agricultural business people and NFU representatives, has secured government funding for the apppointment.

The move, announced at a seminar in Middleham last Friday, followed pressure by Rejuvenate for extra help towards the economic recovery of the dale in the wake of foot-and-mouth.

Letters from Rejuvenate and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have gone to all farms in the dale asking them to support the scheme.

"We will also have a meeting at Hawes to discuss the scheme and select an adviser, whom we hope to choose by August 31," said Mr Jim McRobert, of Rejuvenate.

"The adviser will provide an enhanced business advice service, offering up to five days' free advice for farmers. He or she will prepare farm plans on a one-to-one basis, do environmental plans, cash flows and full five-year business plans.

"More importantly, the adviser will facilitate meetings to help farmers along the way and offer encouragement.

"Our aim is to have one person to whom farmers can go for advice and help."

Fifty farmers must sign up for the scheme to make it viable and 30 were already on board.

The seminar, attended by organisations with an interest in the rural economy, including Yorkshire Forward, conservation bodies and local authorities, followed a one-day event at Hawes last month.

Rejuvenate felt the many organisations with an interest in post-foot-and-mouth recovery should be brought together in a bid to eliminate mixed messages, duplication and a lack of local knowledge and understanding.

Mr Mike Keeble, of the Cornerstone project, which encourages young people into business, told the seminar that farming had been a relatively easy occupation in the 50 years since 1947, when farmers were encouraged to increase production following the Second World War.

"It was only when Europe started to take over that a change started to happen," he said. "Farming is like a great big tanker at sea. To make it go in a different direction is a big job. It can't just change suddenly."

It would take ten to 15 years to rebuild the industry, which was likely to emerge as a more environmentally-based business.

Several issues were raised from the floor following a presentation on the changing face of farming by Dr Jeremy Franks, a lecturer in farm management from Newcastle university.

Mr Keeble said a more co-ordinated approach was needed from central and local government, countryside organisations, national park authorities and others.

"These organisations all have their own ideas and none of it is co-ordinated," he said. "If all the organisations get together, they could work together for mutual objectives. It wouldn't take a lot of funding."

There was general support for an agricultural strategy for Wensleydale, possibly based on community investment prospectuses already being drawn up in the area.

Mr McRobert said several plans and strategies were being produced for the area by several different organisations. "It sounds to me as if all these plans are being formulated independently of each other and they should be able to be brought together," he said. "We need to make upper Wensleydale an action zone to ensure the area is sustainable."

Rejuvenate consisted entirely of volunteers who already worked full time and it was up to the various public bodies to take the work forward.

Mr William Lambert, whose farm near Bainbridge was the first in the dale to go down with foot-and-mouth, hoped something positive would come from the crisis: "We don't want to go back to the way we were. We want to try to create some opportunities out of all this. I hope we can create a better kind of agriculture in Wensleydale."

Immediate help was needed for those farms more recently infected and taken out in contiguous culls, he said. "Most affected farms in North Yorkshire are still in turmoil and haven't even begun to go through the process of thinking how to rebuild."

The funding system also needed simplifying as there were so many organisations offering different packages.

Mr David Greenwood, of Halfpenny House, near Leyburn, the subject of a partial contiguous cull, said farmers felt little of the cash available was trickling down to individual farms.

"All the money being offered by Europe, our own government and various organisations is overwhelming but it just seems as though it is not falling into our hands," he said