Mid Sussex Times February 4 1999

Heroes feeding the nation.

Change places with the picture postcard image of the Sussex ploughman. 

You'd hold a position of importance on the farm with your tailor-made plough and horse team. 

Up at 4 am to feed the horses (Suffolks on the clay, Shires on chalk); home for breakfast, tack up up and out onto the fields where you'd plough a tenth of an acre an hour in  “furrow-longs”, or furlongs, turning the soil with your two strong team to bury stubble and weeds. 

Work till dark, feed your horses, groom and clean their equipment. 

Home for tea, back to the farm to bed down the horses; home to bed yourself. 

In 1900 there were nearly 25,000 working horses in Sussex. Half a million sheep grazed on half a million acres; now both sheep and grassland are reduced by four fifths.

A total of 50,000 acres were devoted to wheat (now halved). 3,500 to potatoes (down by three quarters), and 120,000 head of cattle (also halved).

There were 14 dairy herds in the Hurstpierpoint area alone just after world War II; now there is none. 

In 1900 agriculture played a vital part in the life of the community. Haywards Heath was one of the five towns to submit weekly returns under the Corn Returns Act of 1882. A corn market had been held every Wednesday at the Corn Exchange with the annual cattle and pig fair in November and a Christmas fat stock show. 

The towns market grew to be one of the 12 largest in the country, covering an area of nearly 8 acres where Sainsbury's is today and dealing with upwards of 100,000 head of stock per year.

The years between the two wars saw the import once again of cheap produce from abroad and many cultivated fields tumbled down to poor scrub infested grassland.

Viewed from Ditchling Beacon, the Wealden landscape would not have altered much between 1900 and 1945. But according to former Danny estate landowner, David Campion, farming practice in rural life had changed for ever. 

By 1939 mechanisation had ensured farmers were better prepared to cope with the food ministry demands for intensified production under the wartime dig for victory campaign. 

Lloyd George ordered 6000 Ford tractors from America in 1916 to speed production and by the 1920s they were in use on most large farms, nearly half 1 million by the 1950s.

After the war, the Agriculture Act (1947) guaranteed prices and capital grants encouraged ploughing of ancient grasslands and removal of woodlands and hedgerows. The great postwar changes in the use of land are chronicled by the people who live through them.

Penelope Greenwood tells how, as a 12-year-old schoolgirl, she milked a herd of cows, worked the bottling plant and helped the vet deliver calves and falls. Balkan fields which prewar yielded 1 1/half tons of acre postwar yielded four.

David Campion describes how local homes are now out of reach of the sons and daughters of those who originally made village communities so vibrant. Each village contains several butchers, greengrocers, a haberdasher or two, a dairy and a hardware store.

Peter Nelson, who still farms at Washbrook in Hurstpierpoint, remembers employing 142 men and 72 women full time in 1949, growing seeds for Britain's major merchants. Now the farm is run by Peter and his two sons.

“We grew flowers like sweet peas, delphiniums, lupins, larkspurs, asters, pansies and violas; vegetable and production plants like sunflowers and even the opium poppy for morphine”, he said. Postwar seed growing moved to Japan – the cost of airfreighting seeds to Britain was easily offset by cheap Far Eastern labour. Then growers in the Middle East – not beset by vagaries of wind and weather – took up production of the marrows, cucumbers and tomatoes. 

Now Washbrooks has successfully diversified into one of the counties first and most successful family farm centres giving largely urban Mid Sussex schoolchildren their only taste of life on the land. 

Other farmers have diversified into golf courses – there are now nine in mid Sussex – barn conversions and creation of small business units.

Research shows 40% of farms in England have some form of non-farming enterprise.

Former district council chief executive Bernard Grimshaw explained Mid Sussex had been administered under East Sussex county council until 1974. 

Its postwar designation as “Growth Area Six” which saw local authorities earmark land for development was only removed in 1983. 

And the London - Brighton golden corridor had been targeted for even more growth than had taken place to date.

He described how industry was attracted to Burgess Hill and population growth to Haywards Heath as expanding business was forced out of London and beyond the green belt.

Huge areas either side of Hassocks were developed to provide accessible and competitively priced housing for a postwar generation of commuters.

Farmers now think themselves in the limelight, rethinking their role in society.

Fifty years ago they were hailed as heroes for helping to feed the nation. After the UK joined the European Union in 1973 farm production was supported financially; now challenged by CAP reforms on the one hand, farmers are under fire from the environmental lobby.

Many have taken up the challenge, examined ways to alter farming practices, develop new sources of income, innovate and diversify.

People understand their anger at having to surf an unsteady market and demonstrate ecological credentials after twice obeying the call to feed the nation this century.

Although the history of farming has seen up and downturns, in the past a slump in dairying would have been offset by an upturn in barley or pigs. Now many farmers face 1930s market prices set against rising production costs.

Many have gone to the wall. Many others find it hard to resist lucrative options from developers hungry for land well within the London - Gatwick - Brighton corridor.

But the countryside is biting back. Conservation groups are powerful and well funded.

Bernard Grimshaw says the countryside is tidier than it used to be and land-use is after all – the result of democratic choice.

Not all change is for the worst, he believes and no one can honestly defend rural poverty as an acceptable price for the “cultural icon” myth of country life.

But he believes the future of the countryside is in our hands.

And he urged: “Join your local amenity group, take part in community life, attend parish council meetings, speak up for what you believe in”.

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As William Morris wrote more than 100 years ago “Surely there is no square mile of the earth’s habitable surface that is not beautiful in its own way if we men only abstain from wilfully its beauty”.