To just ask you all to either wear some proper wellies and walk on the footpath, or stick to the sodding pavements

[flamingflamingos]

This is my field. It's winter wheat - it's been ploughed and pressed and drilled and rolled and just as it's starting to grow into what will be harvested for flour to produce bread, the general public have trampled it into the ground.

I understand the need to get outside, absolutely I support this country's network of footpaths - we have 6km of footpaths on this farm which are maintained so that everyone can enjoy the countryside.

But this is taking the piss. If you don't want to walk in the mud, don't walk in the countryside in January. Please, stop this. We are all accountable for how we behave.

I don't blame you OP (re the fence). Sad but necessary.

I have also had 'interesting encounters' with farmers who have felt resentful about PRoWs on their land.

Once was in the Cotswolds where I politely asked a farmer where the path was and she smirkily said she didn't know. I ended up trying to figure it out and having to give up and walk along quite a dangerous road instead. Later in the local pub, I asked where I should have gone and was told that this particular family resented walkers, removed signs and didn't maintain paths.

Another was a gate near Bakewell. It was supposed to open and close (there was a sign saying 'please shut the gate'), but someone (presumably the farmer as it had several generations of twine on it) had tied it up tight with baling twine that I could not undo. I was younger then, lighter and more agile, so I climbed it.

I've also been surprised to find bulls in fields with no signage (and I'm not sure they should have been there anyway although I can't tell the breed by sight).

There are others where markers disappear and so-on.

But on the whole, these experiences are a minority and I mostly feel for the landowners who have idiots traipsing their fields.

The photo from Liverpool is shocking.

flamingflamingos

I so feel for you, I'm finding all of this heartbreaking. I've been a walker/runner all my life, in my 50's, never seen anything like it this year, honestly it makes me want to cry. People are so wilfully ignorant, I've seen signs in places that have never ever had to spell out the bleedin obvious, don't walk on the crops, don't leave the gates open, don't throw rubbish in the fields ffs. I wish they'd all bugger off back to the shopping centres as soon as possible. They've all bought dogs too, no idea how to care for them - it's just so utterldepressingg.

Once upon a time we learned something about the Countryside Code at primary school, (along with joining the Tufty Club to learn about road safety and being scared away from / attracted to railway tracks by the infamously grisly public safety films).

Lots of people just don't know about footpaths any more. They've never been taught, or given it any thought. Young wheat looks like grass and grass is for recreation, in most people's experience.

There needs to be some sort of widely available 'country recreation crash course' campaign for the lockdown era.

Practically, could you stick in some of those metal posts with loops and a length of string (like electric fence but not) as a relatively low-cost indicator of the path edge? And/or put up an explanatory note at the entrance points to your land? Most people will follow requests if asked nicely, with a brief explanation of the issue. I know some won't but once a critical mass do, you get some level of social pressure to conform.

@ekidmxcl

OP I can see it is very frustrating, time consuming and expensive. However people simply do not have any idea of how to behave in the countryside. The majority of the problem is lack of education. Farmers round here laminate signs and have them everywhere telling people all sorts of basics. Really in defence of people who are ignorant, they just don’t know about a different environment.

Honestly, I don’t see this. Not only did I grow up in a city, but a city in a country that doesn’t have a network of cross-country of rights of way across farmland at all (a few long distance routes in recent years, but nothing like rural England — in general if you walk in the country, you’re walking on roads).

Still, when I moved to rural England — a particularly clayey part in winter — it was plain common sense to wear proper footwear, shut gates, not trample through crops, not feed people’s horses, not litter, stick to the line of the path, recognise that I’m walking on someone’s land.

Someone might not have come across the Countryside Code, and might live in a town, but assuming they’re an adult of average intelligence, it doesn’t take any particular knowledge to grasp that the countryside is not their personal theme park.

OP to be clear I'm not saying yabu (you clearly aren't being unreasonable) more trying to suggest actual solutions given asking people not to be twats on mumsnet isnt actually going to stop the people doing this to your crops.

I do think a big issue is the history of what rights of way were really for in the past (it's about maintaining access so that where some needs to traverse a long established route, they can do so free of obstruction). I don't think it was historically about providing recreational ramblers with a choice of scenic walking routes for a day out.

I absolutely agree with you OP, but the solution is to fence it off and ideally put some hardcore down with the local authority paying for it! As if thats ever going to happen, but thats what happens in other countries.

It is difficult to find places to walk or run off road in this country. I have a PRWO going through my land and I did fence it off and surface it, and I have no more problems, other than the occasional loose dog (despite signs to keep them on the lead).

But I am the exception. Round here, public footpaths and bridleways have been ploughed up by agricultural contractors who only care about large fields where they can use large machinery. So many hedgerows are gone. Its ugly countryside with few natural features, and it produces crops all year round, year after year, with an artificially high yield. No one seems to farm their own land - its all contracted out.

None of this is true countryside. Its like living in a factory, just one which produces wheat, beans, etc..

Very sad that it has come to putting up an electric fence but I can see your reasoning for it.

Maybe you could also put up some kind of signage explaining... I think the problem is that people are just really ignorant of how to behave in the countryside, as other posters have said. Half of them aren't being deliberately disrespectful - they just literally don't know these things.

Lockdown has led to people who wouldn't normally think/ have time to go out walking, being out in the countryside, and there is extremely poor education about these things in schools and society generally.

So I wonder if a polite sign explaining the main points of the 'countryside code' wouldn't go amiss? Then people can also learn for other places they walk as well!

We will be fencing it today with electric fencing just to mark the path. I'm already dreading the backlash on the local Facebook page though

Maybe if you pre-empt the negativity by putting up a FB post first, explaining why you’re having to fence the crop off in the least “get off my land” way as possible, then surely that should minimise any backlash. You know, along the lines of “I’d love for people to be able to avoid the mud but regrettably...dead wheat...less flour… Sorry...etc”. It’s annoying but you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar and by making it easy for people to do the right thing (and harder for them to do the wrong thing), like @kungfupannda’s farmer example. Plus, as has already been said, people don’t know what they don’t know, so education is key here.

Lots of people just don't know about footpaths any more. They've never been taught, or given it any thought. Young wheat looks like grass and grass is for recreation, in most people's experience.
@lottiegarbanzo, exactly. People who have only encountered council-maintained parks won't automatically see a field differently. Plus as many people are so detatched from where their food comes from they won't see a field of green stuff (that looks like grass to them), and think "future bread or cake".

Its really not that hard to put up proper wooden fenceposts and some other kind of fencing. Much better than electric fencing.

Have you got time to put any electric fence up? Even just one strand would do, just alongside the most used paths. We are lucky that we don't have any footpaths across our land. It must drive you mad.

I absolutely agree with you OP, but the solution is to fence it off and ideally put some hardcore down with the local authority paying for it!

Totally unrealistic @GreenlandTheMovie!

Have you any idea of the cost of fencing? far more than the £700 a wheat lost.

Have you actually been in the countryside? Most fields have hedges as a boundary - some have dry stone walls- and few have wooden stock fences where there are animals.

Many people access a field via the hedge if there are gaps. hedges support wildlife and are part of the food chain and ecology. Fences are not.

It's hard to imagine how there can be a fence on a field used for crops when huge combines have to turn right round to harvest.

As a walker, one issue I have is that agricultural machines often over step the farm boundary and churn up a public footpath- has happened to me - where the PF is now impassable because of deep water-filled tyre tracks.

It works both ways and as for the council paying for hardcore- nope! Farmers get enough subsidies which other private businesses don;t.

@GreenlandTheMovie

Its really not that hard to put up proper wooden fenceposts and some other kind of fencing. Much better than electric fencing.

So how do combines turn round when harvesting if there is a fence? Have you townies ever seen combines and how much space they need?

If there was a fence, a huge strip of the crop would be impossible to harvest and the loss in income more I suspect than from that lost by walkers.

@flamingflamingos Rather than a fence, why don't you

Get some signs up ie 'Crops- please do not walk here

AND

Get some communication going with local schools so the kids are educated about the countryside. Go into schools and talk to kids in assemblies.

Talk to local radio and do an interview with them- very topical discussion at the moment.

You need to start educating the next generation, because sadly too many people are not aware of how to behave in the countryside.

@GreenlandTheMovie I have already explained on this thread why it is not possible to permanently fence an arable field.

Also - as already stated - this farm has 6km of public footpaths. Do you honestly not understand the thousands of £s it would cost to do this?

We are all accountable for how we behave and it's depressing in response to your plea, you are being asked to put signs up/physically block people from trampling your crop.

Walkers showing a complete lack of thinking and care.

It may not be “hard” to put up proper wooden posts but it’s certainly expensive and time consuming.

You can't put electric fencing up if the aim is to keep people off...it's illegal and if someone gets hurt you'll get taken to court. It's really not the solution.

I wonder how these people suggesting that ootpaths across fields are ' maintained'??

its a field. and a footpath. if its wet it will be muddy. That doesnt make the whole field the footpath, it means be prepared for mud if you use that footpath in the wet.

in a cropped field the width allowed is 1m, on glassland it is 1.5m width

are you suggesting we tarmac across afield? how long do you think a bit of hardcore / gravel/roadstone lasts on mud? about 20 mins before it sinks and spreads. That is if the council would even allow it as 'upgrading tracks' require planning permission.

putting an actual walking path in costs thousands and involves digging down several feet, drainage, supports, infill. It is absolutely prohibatively expensive and not in keeping with a cropped field as how would you plant it.

Never mind, soon it will be dry and it will be lambing time, and we will have last years lockdown problem of dogs frieghtening sheep to contend with

You can't put electric fencing up if the aim is to keep people off...it's illegal and if someone gets hurt you'll get taken to court. It's really not the solution

Bollocks.

www.geppsolicitors.co.uk/site/blog/agricultural-law/electric-fences-whats-the-buzz

@Lockheart

People have no idea how to behave in the countryside and too many seem to think it's there for amusement. Parking all over the place, peering through house windows, leaving gates open, leaving litter, and then this.

Could you put up signs demarcating the path which at the same time explain that it's a crop and asking them not to be selfish bastards?

No, some people have no idea how to behave anywhere. I’ve been doing regular litter picks around my city home recently. Parking is a pain. And guess what, people look in my windows too.

Part of the problem of these debates is that they are always positioned as a battle between town and country. But plenty of town people walk perfectly legally and correctly down public footpaths that are blocked, roped off, overgrown or not maintained by farmers and country landowners. It’s not just a “townie” problem.

I live rurally and it's exactly the same round here. How some people treat the land is a fucking disgrace.

Let's be fair, the majority of us who know how to behave in the countryside haven't studied the Countryside Code in detail. We were taught by our parents, usually people who grew up rurally themselves, and/or we got all our inconsiderate behaviour out of the way as kids when farmers could legitimately shout at us for messing with their barbed wire fences. For people who grew up in cities in families that didn't do country walks, they won't automatically know this stuff and they won't know that the CC exists to go and read it because no one has ever told them. Some things (like closing gates) are obvious, but if you arrive at a footpath and see that everyone else has been detouring round the muddy bits, you'll assume that's what you do and follow suit. Calling those people stupid is not actually going to solve the problem. Putting up a couple of laminated signs explaining that the green tufty things are actually a food crop and won't grow if walked on won't stop the minority of actual arseholes but most people will respond positively.

We should be protective of our countryside but remember it's a living landscape, turning it into either a sterile food factory or a theme park helps no one.

@GreenlandTheMovie

Its really not that hard to put up proper wooden fenceposts and some other kind of fencing. Much better than electric fencing.

A proper fence means that the tractors and other plant won't be able to reach the strip on the crop side of the fence meaning a permanent loss of crop. An temporary electric fence is quicker to put in and quicker to take out again when it's not needed or when the plant needs to access the field. The farmer in question may have electric fencing available on his farm, so no extra cost, whereas he'd have to buy a proper fence and may well have to pay labourers to install it.

If you are born and live in the city you have no idea about this stuff. It doesnt make you a twat it makes you uninformed. I am so sorry to hear about your crops but it just wouldnt occur to me that there would be crops there. I think better signposting is needed and it should be the council's responsibility to handle this

There is a handy thing called Google. If you have never walked in the countryside before this will help you know what to do. Anyone with any sense would do this.

We have a problem with dog owners not picking up poo in the grass pasture next to us. It’s used as a dog loo. So bacteria from the dog poo are all over the grass and then the pregnant sheep coming into graze in winter could abort. The grass can’t be cut for hay because it’s so contaminated.