LIVESTOCK farmers are the best placed people to maintain the environment and landscape.

But unless they are successful and profitable, any environmental schemes will fail.

The warning was issued by John Geldard, vice-chairman of the National Sheep Association's (NSA) northern region, speaking in Weardale.

He said: "Family farms are the absolute backbone of sustainable landscape management and sustainable environment."

He disagreed with David Miliband, secretary of state at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), who recently said food security was not an immediate concern.

Mr Geldard said it may not be today, but definitely would be in the future and Government must take note.

Today's world population of 6.6bn is forecast to reach 9.4bn by 2050.

Mr Geldard said: "If you accept there is only 12 per cent more land in the world that can be brought into real agricultural production, then you do not need to be a scientist to work out that we have to maintain our agricultural and food-producing capacity worldwide."

Farmers accepted that headage-based subsidy payments should go, but warned that low market prices were hitting many and payments from new environmental schemes were not making up for it.

He highlighted higher level stewardship where farmers have to pay up to £3,000 to apply for entry. Many were being rejected and told to re-apply later simply because Government funding had run out.

He said: "This is not acceptable and I believe it is wake up time for Government and Defra to accept that this money has got to come through much quicker if we are going to get the environmental schemes running.

"There is a need to help farmers bridge the gap between now and the time that the price of commodities rise sufficiently to make the business profitable."