Rural areas being saddled with 'misleading images'

said the Princess Royal yesterday.

These included the image of wealth, the impression that there was

already a mutual caring rural society, and -- most damaging of all --

the image of farmers and their families being entirely self-sufficient

and able to deal with stress and traumas.

''I have to say that the image that comes to me -- and this is an

impression from reading and listening to magazines and programmes, and

even from individuals that I meet on the way -- is that everyone who

lives in the countryside has lots of money.

''And if they don't have lots of money, they are still fortunate to be

living in the countryside. Therefore, they are all, in quotes, wealthy

and have no business to complain.

''This is not only an image that is relatively false, it is also an

idyllic picture which, if it certainly does not exist now, probably

never existed in quite that sense.''

There were very real problems in the countryside, she told delegates

to a joint National Farmers Union/National Federation of Women's

Institutes Caring in the Countryside conference at the Royal

Agricultural College, Cirencester.

These had been aggravated by the farmers' loss of their key role in

society as providers of food and raw materials for clothing, and the

subsequent drift by many rural dwellers into towns and cities. Further

problems arose from the increased costs, particularly transport costs,

incurred by the rural population.

EC farm policy had added a further dimension, with its system of

subsidies for the end product. While this may have made sense at one

time, and the subsidies went back to the people on the land, this was no

longer the case. There was little 'spin off' from the subsidies for the

people in the countryside.

''There must be scope for shifting the emphasis of the subsidy into

the wider rural community rather than in the specific end product.

''That is a question the NFU will no doubt wish to wrap itself around

-- and does so now to some extent -- because once you have started with

subsidies, the difficulty in shifting them is very very serious, and

doesn't happen easily.''

David Naish, president of the English NFU, said that 67 people were

leaving the farming industry every day. This meant that only those

people who could afford to, lived in the countryside and, in most cases,

this meant commuters to jobs elsewhere.

Those that remained in farming felt increasingly isolated, and

suffered from stress that could lead to suicide. This was in contrast to

the ''idyllic chocolate box image'' that bedevilled rural areas.

He called for a joint initiative from all those individuals and groups

with an interest in the countryside to force rural issues further up the

political agenda.