I try to visualise British farming 30 years from now and wonder how it might look.
What sort of industry will be left for our children if they too fall in love with this way of life and follow in our footsteps?
My hope is that farming will remain meaningful and viable in the long term, though I can't help but worry that the relentless drive for productivity and compeition from foreign alternatives will force a gradual erosion of the integrity and sustainability of British farming.
I sometimes joke that in years to come farming as we know it will feature in the countryside skills section of the local village fair, somewhere near to the heavy horse and plough, where we'll demonstrate to baffled onlookers how food was once produced on home soil before our beef came from Texas and our milk from China (now boasting industrial mega dairy farms with up to 100,000 head of cattle).
Could it be as the old adage goes, that many a true word is spoken in jest?
I hope not.
In 30 years time, how many farming homesteads that have come onto the market - the sorts that have been farmed traditionally and by the same families for hundreds of years - will have been retained by young farmers trying to answer their calling to farm?
A handful perhaps?
Most will have been outbid by wealthy professionals longing to escape city life, for the weekend at least, to dabble in livestock or rewilding.
And how will the landscape itself have faired after another three decades of land grabbing for carbon credits to absolve big businesses of their huge footprint?
I wonder what semblance of the British countryside will remain when productive farmland has been left to rewild, covered with trees or compulsory purchased and developed?
Or when our moors have been destroyed by wild fires because management control has shifted from knowledgeable game keepers, crofters and farmers to well meaning but disastrously misinformed environmentalists.
The delicate balance that underpins British farming and the countryside is becoming increasingly apparent to those of us living and working in it, but still it seems to escape our politicians.
Decisions have consequences and I cant help but wonder how the implications of some of their more recent choices will play out.
I don't hold out enormous hope but I desperately pray for them to start doing better for farmers and the countryside.
What a tragedy it would be if the future of farming promised nothing rewarding or enticing for our young farmers to be part of.
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