IT was a tragic year for farmers - of death, destruction and finally, a terrible uncertainty which hasn't gone away. ROB SIMPSON, of the Yorkshire and North east National Farmers Union looks back on the mayhem of millennium-plus-one

The year 2001 in Britain will not be remembered for Labour's second landslide General Election victory, or even for the England football team's historic 5-1 win over Germany and their subsequent last-gasp qualification to the World Cup.

It will be remembered above all for a disease which took hold of the countryside and caused an epidemic the scale of which had never been seen before - foot-and-mouth.

When the year first dawned, farmers were more concerned with trying to mop up the worst floods in living memory.

Arable producers were forced to abandon fields of potatoes and watch as newly-sown cereals rotted where they stood. Sheep and cattle churned up waterlogged pastures and farmers were forced to buy additional fodder.

But as the floods slowly drained away, the industry started to witness the first shoots of recovery and the talk focused on rising commodity prices and an end to the economic recession which had blighted the industry for the past four years....

Then, on February 20, like a cruel twist of fate, news trickled out about a pig in an Essex abattoir which had been diagnosed with foot-and-mouth disease.

The next few days proved to be critical.

The infected pig had originated at a Northumberland farm, but sheep and cattle on nearby farms had also become infected and they had been sold at auction marts in Northumberland and Cumbria. The virus had spread widely at the marts and infected livestock had been sold around the country even before February 20.

But livestock were allowed to be moved for three days after the first outbreak - a critical delay which contributed to the massive spread of the disease.

The disease had been brought into the UK in food from a developing country. Whether the infected food was in someone's suitcase or as part of a commercial shipment, we may never know.

But we do know it slipped past our under-resourced and inadequate border controls and we also know it could easily happen again.

What occurred in the ensuing seven months was nothing short of a nightmare for the whole rural community.

Mounds of animal carcasses littered the countryside and the subsequent pyres turned the air black. Countryside access was barred for months, and many rural businesses were forced to close.

The now defunct Ministry of Agriculture tried vainly to maintain control, but it was several weeks before the full scale of the disaster was known and by that time outbreaks were springing up throughout the country.

The scientists seemed unprepared for what has since been declared the largest outbreak in the world, and the more draconian measures which were successfully introduced around later hotspots were too late for thousands of farmers who witnessed the destruction of their lifetime's work.

Disease clusters sprang up throughout the north. The first case in North Yorkshire, at Hawes, sparked a mini-hotspot which dragged on for months. Elsewhere in the county, a massive cluster emerged around Skipton, Settle and over the border into Clitheroe.

A later cluster around Thirsk threatened to infect the most concentrated pig production area in the country, but disaster was narrowly averted.

And then, in summer, when many commentators were anticipating the end of the disease, a new disease hotspot emerged around Hexham, in Northumberland.

Nationally there were 2,030 foot-and-mouth outbreaks. The northern counties were the worst hit: North Yorkshire - 134 outbreaks, County Durham - 93 outbreaks, Northumberland - 87 outbreaks.

But by far the worst hit was Cumbria which witnessed 893 outbreaks.

Those figures were only part of the story though. In spring, the Government realised that the virus was still spreading, and a hugely contentious policy was introduced to slaughter livestock on farms adjacent to infected premises.

Nationally, more than 10,000 farms were 'slaughtered out' before the disease finally abated. Even now, the farming industry is still praying that we have seen the last disease outbreak.

The cost to the industry - disinfectant, movement licences, lower prices, and massive disruption - has been phenomenal.

Meanwhile, we must continue to await the re-opening of livestock markets and it will take years before the farming industry returns to any semblance of normality.

This time last year farmers were at a crossroads with an industry in crisis, falling returns, appalling weather and a rapidly shrinking work force. Farmers are still at that crossroads, weathering the storm, desperately wanting to know where they should go and who they should look to for direction.