20th March 2008, 11:09 AM
Unit, its is next to impossible to prosecute most farmers ploughing SMs because of Class Consents - there are a range of activities that are allowed on SMs without consent which include carrying out any agricultural activity which was carried out within the five years previous to the monument being scheduled - so SMs that were ploughed can go on being ploughed. The solution to this AT PRESENT is to pay the farmers not to plough, either by management agreement with EH or through Environmental Stewardship. Expensive and going to become increasingly less attractive to farmers unless the payments go up a lot as cereal prices have doubled in the last year, so growing cereals is heading for being profitable again (unlike all the other sectors of British farming.)