AN ORGANISATION set up to raise awareness of the problems of stress in the countryside has celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Representatives from a wide range of countryside and farming organisations met at the Great Yorkshire Showground to mark the anniversary of the Yorkshire Rural Support Network and launch its new web site www.yorkshireruralsupport.org

The network was formed not only to raise awareness of stress suffered by those living in rural areas, but also to provide a co-ordinated response.

Since then, the traumas of BSE, increased legislation, and the devastation of foot-and-mouth disease have hit the countryside and made the network even more necessary.

"Today no one can be in any doubt that the chocolate box idyll of life in the countryside does not exist," said Judy Thompson, network chairman. "Life can be tough and the ever-changing demands made on farmers add to the stress of making a living.

"The network brings together those who provide help with the aim of signposting what is available."

There are 79 organisations involved in the network, including the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, churches, the NFU, Country Land and Business Association, health authorities, The Samaritans, Citizens' Advice Bureaux, Women's Institutes, Young Farmers, Yorkshire Rural Community Council and Yorkshire Forward.

The main speaker was Howard Petch, chairman of the Yorkshire branch of Farm Crisis Network and former principal of Bishop Burton College, who spoke of the enormous pressures and uncertainties facing many farmers and others in the countryside.

"Someone said recently that the problem with the present is that the future is not what it used to be. I suggest there is a wealth of meaning in that statement," he said.

The whole issue of food production and trade supported it. "We are in uncharted waters; history in a rural context will record this time as one of fundamental change," he said.

Over the last 20 years the pace of change in farming and the countryside had accelerated. Village populations had changed, tensions were sometimes caused and rural services withdrawn - but the greatest change was happening in farming and it bewildered many.

Mr Petch said 80,000 people had left the industry in the last six years.

One of the greatest threats was the way food supply was taken for granted and undervalued. "The perception that it does not matter where food comes from, as long as it is cheap, is a dangerous view held by too many people," he said.

The viability of farming had been undermined by many things - "in particular by shifts of power in the food chain where the price of food has gone up 27pc in seven years but the price paid at the farm gate by only 2pc," said Mr Petch.

Forty farmers a week leave the dairy industry and he cited research which claimed dairy farmers' earnings over the last few years had been just 5p an hour.

EU enlargement would see 3.2m farmers feeding 300m people, but the number of buyers between them numbered only 110.

When people tell him they have nothing to do with agriculture, he tells them they do, if they eat food.

The burden of regulation, administration, business skills and technical skills on today's farmers was enormous. They usually had to cope with matters alone, whereas companies had huge resources to cope with the same demands.

"The reality is, of course, that some will cope with these pressures but others will need support," said Mr Petch, " From my experience of the farming community, the ones who need help are not the ones who readily ask for it."

There were many examples of real entrepreneurial flair in the countryside.

Mr Petch said in his experience the most successful people were not always those who knew the most, but those who could harness sources of information in terms of their own business.

"A significant part of coping with stress and change is having a clear view of what is needed to make changes," he said. "It would, of course, be good if the network was not needed and perhaps the aspiration should be to work ourselves out of a job - but it is needed and long may it continue with its work."