Farm of the Week: Giving the tenant holders a strong voice

He is hosting an open day on his holdings, just off the A1, just south of Richmond, to underline the fact that in between acting as vice-chairman of the Tenant Farmers Association, he is just another tenant farmer, with only the fruits of his labours between him and the queue for a council house.

Various suppliers have turned up to lobby the guests. The guests are there to have a nose around. But the real purpose of the day is to have a bit of a shout about farming politics. It is still only week two of the new government and everything to play for.

Mr Wyrill's invitation said: "It is vitally important that those who interact with agriculture understand the broad range of land occupation that exists. A principal concern of the TFA is that those who develop agricultural policy unconsciously assume that those involved are owner occupiers and therefore able to internalise most or all of their responses to policy."

What he means by "internalise", he agrees, is absorb a loss because at least the land is still going up in value. For the tenant, on the other hand, income is everything.

Mr Wyrill is in the basic environmental stewardship scheme, because it just about works for him, but he says the government expects a lot for a little money – and anyway, it and similar schemes are all designed for farmers who can make their own long-term plans.

He adds: "Some tenants are forced into giving up their payments to the landlords, which in my view is wholly wrong. If you are doing the work, you should get the recompense."

A week after this conversation he is able to break the news, on behalf of the TFA, that the hill farmers' version of stewardship, Uplands ELS, has got off to a disastrous start, with only 10 per cent take-up – partly because of the obstacles put in the way of tenants and commoners.

Another of the TFA's big issues is the selling off of council-owned farms, which used to be a first step on the ladder for people who knew a bit about farming but had no land in the family. Mr Wyrill's dad was a cattle hand until he rented Leases Farm in 1963 – part of North Yorkshire County Council's dwindling portfolio. Stephen, now 46, took over the lease in 1993 and has it until he retires.

His parents, Ken and Jean, bought a neighbouring 50 acres in 1980 and built a house there, Westfield Farm, where they live with Stephen's younger brother, Graham.

Stephen's wife, Jane, brought to their marriage an interest in East Appleton Farm, another step up the same road, which belonged to her family and is now in the hands of her son by a previous marriage. Stephen became tenant of that and he and his brother run the three holdings, totalling 385 acres, with their dad still chipping in part-time and Jane looking after the calves when she is not working for Age Concern in Northallerton. You can see why the authorities are inclined to leave the complications of who owns what to the farmers.

On the other hand, their schemes should be designed to fit all the complications and nearly half of all UK farmers are mainly or wholly tenants, or contractors. It puts a trade-union edge on their attitudes and their language. Mr Wyrill is a lot less cautious than the NFU, for example, about challenging the political consensus that "intervention" is dead.

In a big world, "not intervening is a form of intervention," he comments. And the subsidy system, he adds, is already an intervention, designed to keep the farmers going along with a policy of using the market to keep food cheap

He says: "If the government wants cheap food and food security, it has to balance things out or we are going to go down the route of mass production farming, like America, and I don't think anybody really wants that."

His farm is a straightforward mix of old-fashioned staples – about 100 milking cows; a beef herd made up of home-bred sucklers and calves plus assorted stores bought in from Darlington, Leyburn, Northallerton and Thirsk; permanent pasture of about 35 acres, rotating to some degree with arable; and barley, wheat and maize on the rest. The milk goes to Arla and the beef to his favoured local markets, which he prefers to deadweight dealers. The crops, with prices down again, are mainly kept for winter feeding.

CW 12/6/10