Britain’s Prince Charles says the countryside must be protected as if it were an ”ancient” cathedral.
The Prince of Wales – a long-standing campaigner on the environment – warned rural Britain was threatened by climate change, disease and ”insensitive development” and something needs to be done about it.
In a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference, Charles said: ”It is the people and what they do that creates the beating heart of our countryside, the vitality that comes from the busy village shop and pub, a thriving school, from the Church and Women’s Institute.
”It comes from the tractors in the fields, the skilled work of the stonewallers and hedgelayers, the livestock, the growing crops and the landscape’s biodiversity, now so much under threat from a combination of climate change, diseases of every kind and insensitive development, which is absolutely fundamental to sustainable farming and to the economy.
”All of these elements make up a living, breathing countryside which is as precious as any ancient cathedral.”
Charles said farmers had to work with nature not against it to ensure the countryside can thrive.
He added: ”This is why everything must be focused on making sure that farmers are able to keep on farming in a way that provides them with a decent living, and that they do it while working with Nature and not against her.
”For too long in the West, I am afraid, we have enjoyed something of a consumer’s holiday. Food above all else has been seen as a cheap commodity to which little value is attached.”