Politicians reluctant to help rural areas because farming is a ‘lifestyle choice’

Sue Pritchard, director of the RSA Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, said she had put together God’s Lone Country, a 12-minute film which challenges the romanticised imagery associated with the countryside, to show policy-makers what life in rural Britain is really like.

Speaking at a meeting about the future of county farms held by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology in Parliament this week (April 29), she said: “One of the reasons we made the film was because we wanted to show a much broader version of life in rural Britain than I sometimes hear talked about when I am sitting here in Westminster and Whitehall.

“There is a view that people in the countryside are living in idyllic villages, that all farmers are driving Range Rovers and frankly, if you live there, you are making a bit of a lifestyle choice, so it is down to you.

“That is so clearly not helpful.”