FOR many readers it will be hard to look on 2001 with anything like a fond backward glance. For the farming community, and all those whose livelihoods are linked to it in some way, it was a disastrous year.

Foot-and-mouth was truly horrendous in industry terms, but also in the way individual families and businesses were simply wiped out. The timing of the outbreak could not have been worse. British agriculture was showing some small signs of recovery following the BSE crisis when foot-and-mouth struck in February.

While there have been no new cases for many weeks now, the effects of the outbreak are still keenly felt. Restrictions remain in force in a number of areas and the mart sector is still largely inactive. The rural economy is still in a state of partial paralysis.

While the catastrophic effects of the outbreak should be dwelt upon (appropriately so by a properly-public inquiry) the silver linings in the clouds of the crisis should be sought.

Chief among these is the coming together of the rural community to survive. Extreme adversity has bred co-operation where perhaps it did not exist before. New partnerships have been formed which should produce lasting benefits for the countryside.

Perhaps most importantly, the necessity of an effectively-functioning agricultural sector for the overall health of rural Britain has never been so clearly underlined. If there were some souls, in government perhaps, still clinging to the notion that farming was not absolutely central to the rural economy, they will now have been firmly disabused of the notion.