Farm Free

This was the dangerous request I made at the consultation in 2006;

let's have some land which is free from farming, farm fences, barbed wire, farm livestock, farm management and farm grants. 

(Blacka was ideally placed for this as most of it had already gone many years without farming.)

At the time I didn't know that simple request was quite such dangerous thinking: but what's happened since has demonstrated that this idea was a serious threat to the closed minds who run land management and conservation in this corner of the Peak District. Some who saw themselves as 'on the side of' farmers tried to dismiss this kind of talk as anti-farmer. They still do. It's as if you are seen as anti something if you don't want it everywhere, in all corners of the land. Advocates of pedestrian zones in city centres have been called anti-car, objectors to a new supermarket as anti-business etc.

Another reason for considering farm free here was the poor quality of the farming that had been carried out locally with several instances of neglect of livestock.

I remember another  meeting of SWT's RAG a little earlier at which I warned that the managers were intent on treating Blacka as farmland. This was treated with scorn by representatives of Ramblers whose self- importance is only matched by their naivete. SWT typically stayed silent during that exchange. Several years on from there they and SMP and EMP have, culpably, in my view, incorporated farming and farmers into the heart of their plans. It's summed up in the documentation of the Eastern Moors Management Plan.

The farmers involved on site will adopt the role of land managers and be responsible for delivering a range of public goods and multi-benefit land management through appropriate grazing regimes. They will be key parties in delivering the site’s long term vision. ii. The partnership will share agri-environment income with the farmers in recognition of their role as land managers.

In other words not much different to every other farm.
This is after sixty years of increasingly intensive farming across the country has resulted in a mass decline in wildlife. Here was a chance to do the opposite and they, under the name of wildlife have turned a wilding area into another farm. Ah, they may say, but this is different, it's not intensive farming. But it's still destructive and exploiting with barbed wire, puddling and trampling and wildlife being marginalised.