Our speaker on 10th February was DCC councillor and former dairy farmer Mike Lord. He said that farmers felt ‘frustrated’ with many rules and regulations rather than ‘angry’. He gave as an example the one rule for the whole of the country which specified the date for sowing crops and pasture, when conditions vary from north to south and coast to inland. Also it had been promoted that any ground sloping more than 10 degrees had to get a permit to be cultivated. Due to increasing land amalgamation into larger farm units there is now less contact between town and country than previously.He said that farmers sensed a feeling of unfairness in the implementation of rules affecting them as compared to the lack of implementation on urban organisations. He indicated that suicide was a much bigger problem in rural people because of pressures, and that it was not commonly made public.
