FARMERS are being continuously urged to diversify. This is for the obvious reason that the activities they normally undertake, namely growing either animals or plants, are losing money at the moment.

Some years ago, a more than usually shrewd individual remarked to me that if you need to diversify you cannot afford it, and that if you can afford it, you do not need to diversify.

Over the past few years, and particularly since the foot and mouth outbreak, the calls from Government to start new enterprises have reached a crescendo.

It has never been entirely clear to me why farmers should establish a new, presumably successful business, and then use the profits from that to prop up the unsuccessful core business. They have to believe that the core business is going through a bad patch, from which it will recover. We all live in hope.

There has been a large expansion of schemes to help support the environment and to improve the beauty of the countryside. I think that most of it looks pretty good now, and that it looks as it does because of the efforts of those farmers and landowners who have looked after it for centuries.

They have not needed schemes to encourage them to plant trees in the past. They were making profits. If they were making profits now they would not need encouragement. But we will let that pass. What we have is a series of schemes, for example, to encourage the planting of trees.

Since direct sales to the public have become the flavour of the month, there is also pressure to open farm shops or to convert redundant buildings for holiday lettings.

Both of these provide extra rural employment. Unfortunately the planners do not always see it in quite the same light. It can be almost impossible to get permission for even the most straightforward of schemes.

Problems of local opposition to national policies have not been tackled, never mind resolved. The Deputy Prime Minister, who seems to be in charge of planning at the moment, says that housing densities must rise to help tackle the obvious shortage of new housing stock.

That is all very well. Locally a small application was reduced in number of houses because of local opposition. When national and local views are in opposition, which should prevail? As things stand, nothing much is getting done.

Those who develop building sites in cities such as York are used to having the site checked for archaeological remains before development can go ahead. There is every likelihood of there being something of interest to those who concern themselves with such things, and tourism might be enhanced.

I recently heard of a case where a farmer applied in the approved manner to join a tree-planting scheme. His farm is completely flat with no apparent relics of any sort. He has been told that an archaeological exploration must be carried out before any tree planting can take place. This exploration will have to be at his expense.

If building is taking place there is a serious uplift in value that finances such a dig. This does not happen with tree planting.

The ridiculous part is that had he not applied for a grant, he would not have had to apply for permission. So he is being denied an opportunity for modestly increasing his income, and the environment is being denied extra trees, on the outside chance that some Roman has dropped a coin or two.

We were promised joined up government. I wonder when it is going to start.

Updated: 12:31 Tuesday, November 05, 2002