From tomorrow, subsidies paid to farmers will be for looking after the land, not producing food. A victory on paper for the environmental lobby perhaps, but at what price, asks Douglas Chalmers, Northern regional director of the Country Land and Business Association, who represents 5,000 members in Durham, Cleveland, North-umberland and the North-West. He looks at the year ahead.

THE so-called "cross compliance" aims to ensure that those who manage the land maintain its "public goods" such as environment and landscape. Food is no longer a factor and, while all farmers I know believe that food production is an honourable occupation which they intend to continue, this nation is in danger of the losing the ability to feed itself.

The decoupling of support from food production means that the loss of farming's critical mass becomes a distinct possibility in some areas, and if this happens, all its support industries will also be affected, wiping out the major, sometimes only, economic activity in those areas.

The national trade deficit for food products increased from £4.7bn in 1992 to £9.8bn in 2002. What are the odds on this trend having continued? Is this dependence on imported food a wise policy in such an uncertain world?

If this was the only threat to our rural communities, why worry? While we can import lots of cheap food, why should we want anything other than views and wildlife from our own countryside?

Sadly, there are many more threats, some of which the man and woman in the street will never truly appreciate. They are unlikely to read letters to the farm and countryside press and recognise the real anger that spits and crackles from them, much of it from people who have been roused to put pen to paper for the first time.

Even if they did, would they understand? The British public complains that we complain too much. People insist on food being produced in this country under the best hygiene, welfare and environmental conditions, with the farmers and growers bearing the cost, yet these same people are quite happy to buy cheaper produce from across the world, regardless of its provenance, the environmental cost of flying it in, or the conditions under which it was produced.

It's hard not to complain when our industry has to comply with wave upon wave of legislation, taxation and bureaucracy which penalise enterprise and threaten to engulf many rural businesses, including those farmers who have followed advice to diversify and find red tape still affects their business.

It's hard not to complain when we're told to diversify but live and work in an area where rearing stock and growing crops are the only economic activities possible. Tourism or farm shops are an excellent idea if you live in an attractive, accessible area and the idea hasn't been done to death by your neighbours. Even then, diversification might stumble at the planning hurdle and, if any new business is to create employment, we have to find somewhere affordable for these people to live - an increasingly impossible task.

It's hard not to complain when the so-called level playing field rises steeply away from us. We were told it was a rigid EU rule that calves had to be registered by 28 days old or be excluded from the human food chain - until the CLA contacted other European countries directly and found that it was most certainly not so.

It's hard not to complain when our political leaders appear to have no real appreciation of rural life and enterprise. If land itself is not to be nationalised, the nationalisation of its use certainly seems to be the intention.

The right to allow hunting on our land is threatened, yet we must open our land to the general public for its enjoyment, even if this restricts some of our normal business practices. Tracks over our land, originally intended for horse and cart and unused for hundreds of years, are being re-claimed, with Government support, as a suitable place for people to play with modern vehicles.

The ability of local authorities to compulsorily acquire our land and property has never been greater. The right to own property is a fundamental principle of a free society, yet it seems the right no longer applies to land. The New Statesman recently started calling for the redistribution of land, assuming that it must all have been inherited, and that this privilege is maintained by obscenely large support from taxpayers.

That argument conveniently overlooks the many who have taken on land with their own money, or with a mortgage. It also ignores the significant yet often unsung contributions many larger landowners make to employment locally, or to their communities' "public goods", perhaps in the form of local needs housing, roads or water supplies.

It is an old argument, but we mustn't forget that the landscape we want to protect is the product of the interaction of people living and working in their habitat. If that changes, the landscape will change, certainly quickly, perhaps irretrievably.

It's hard not to complain, but perhaps we don't complain loudly enough, or to the wrong people. We are heading for a General Election; politicians will be out and about. This presents many opportunities to highlight the real state of the countryside. Let's take every one and, by ensuring we put our case well, make every one count.