Hopefully a woman at the head of the Farmers’ Union will stop our countryside from becoming a theme park for pheasant shooters and designer farmers

The Farmers' Union has made history this week by electing their first female President – something the Labour party can’t match.

Minette Batters sounds feisty – she decided to become a tenant farmer, built up a herd of 300 cattle, then diversified – hosting weddings and events, running a catering business and a horse livery company, employing two full time and 20 part time staff. She sounds like someone who understands how most farmers survive in 2018 – turning their hands to anything that generates income.

Batters co-founded Ladies in Beef – women who care passionately about the beef they rear – and launched Great British Beef Week. I think she might turn out to be more than a match for Michael Gove, who seems to think that hugging pet dogs and spouting stuff about animal welfare sends the message he understands the tough slog of farming.

A huge number of Tories love the land – many of them go shooting, own second homes in pleasant rural areas, and a few are farmers, though not generally the kind who are out in all weathers rounding up sheep on wet hillsides.

Minette Batters has the challenge of representing 50,000 farmers who have very little in common, from the wealthy “barley barons” of the south to the poverty-stricken hill farmers of the north east who exist on an income of just over £22,000, £3,000 less than the national average. She also represents another faction, the newly rich landowners, the latest people with a vested interest in how the countryside is run, because many are hell bent on turning large swathes of the most remote and unspoilt areas into theme parks for sport shooting.

Since the late 1970s, I’ve had a house in a remote part of the Yorkshire Dales. In that time, the number of farms has shrunk by half, as milk prices plummeted and tenants got ejected by new landowners who wanted to sell the buildings for housing and develop the grazing for shooting or rare breeds – designer farming that looks good for visitors.

The number of pheasants put down for sport has doubled in recent years. Grouse are wild and a challenge to shoot, but pheasant chicks are reared and then introduced and fed intensively until a bunch of expensively clad people come along and stand by the side of the road and shoot these dumb birds at short range. It’s estimated that 100,000 game birds a day are shot during the shooting season – grouse, partridge, duck and pheasant.

I’ve nothing against shooting for food, and enjoy the meat, but the waste is repellent – dozens and dozens of pheasant carcases get chucked in garbage bags and turned into pet food or worse. Butchers can’t afford to pluck them and shooters aren’t interested in taking them.

Now, animal rights groups are campaigning to stop shooting on public land in Wales, and they have successfully persuaded Bradford Council to ban shooting on Ilkley Moor.

Shooting provides extra income for the local beaters in areas of high unemployment and poverty, it also brings wealthy people who spend money on food and lodging in local hostelries- – albeit for only a couple of days at a time. These shooters don’t walk, don’t explore, don’t connect with the beautiful environment except down the barrel of the gun.

Shooting also means that other wildlife is under threat. Raptors mysteriously disappear, shot or poisoned by game keepers because they might threaten young game birds. Other species, from birds to small mammals, have to compete for food against up to 20,000 pheasants in a very small area. I hope Minette Batters will see that indiscriminate shooting has its downsides, that there should still be a place for hill farms and sheep – before the wealthy nouveau landowners eject them off all the moors and plant acres of new woodland for the birds to roost in.

She also has to persuade Micheal Gove that covering arable land with solar farms constitutes environmental pollution – nothing justifies covering gorgeous grass with plastic panels, they are as evil as on-shore wind farms with their concrete foundations and which emit a hideous noise. This clean energy comes at a dirty price.

The countryside is our most precious asset, it’s right up there with the Royal Family, our inventive and creative genius and the British sense of humour. The Farmers' Union has a key role to play in safe-guarding our landscape for the future, ensuring that farmers are properly rewarded for their stewardshire, for ensuring hedgerows flourish, dry stone walls are protected and that trees are sensitively managed.

As for Brexit, I can’t understand why 58 per cent of farmers were in favour, because it will bring even more uncertainty. At least the EU provided them with 55 per cent of their income in subsidies –the Government says that subsidies are protected until 2020 – but what happens then? Farmers will be competing with the NHS and education for funding.

As for trade, farmers could be competing with imported food from overseas which is reared in far less stringent conditions and which could undercut home-grown produce. Farmers send 73 per cent of their exports into the EU – what will happen if they face import tariffs of up to 30 per cent? And where will they get the seasonal labour to pick and pack crops like fruit and vegetables?

Farming and food processing are responsible for 13 per cent of our GDP – more than car manufacturing. The Government doesn’t seem to understand that farmers, like fishermen, should be treated with respect – there have been three Defra ministers in two years, which hardly builds confidence. With the appointment of the feisty Batters, May and Gove might have to sit up and pay attention.