Two weeks ago I was asked to take part in a debate called “Get orf my land . . . how the media see landowners” in order to “draw attention to a popular and negative perception of landowner attitudes”. I was to put the negative side of the picture. Why? Because I had written a column saying that rural poverty was not generally as bad as urban poverty.

I said no to the debate, because, as I explained to the man from the Country Land and Business Association, which represents landowners and farmers, I don’t object to landowning or to farmers. “It seems to me,” he explained, “that our constituency’s public reputation has gone from one extreme (friendly yokel leaning on gate) to the other (environmental vandal pigging out on Euro-subsidy) in 20 years.”

Which was nicely put, I thought, but also wrong. The reputation of farming is a lot more complicated than that, and the public and media generally give farmers a pretty sympathetic hearing. This despite farmers doing themselves no favours by leaping up and complaining that everyone is against them.

Take the responses to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth in Surrey. Richard Haddock, chairman of the South West National Farmers’ Union, is the worst offender. He declared on Monday that farmers had been “shafted” by their own Government. “We are now left with the mess that someone else has created — and we are in no position to pay for it.” “What we want to know now,” Mr Haddock continued, “from a government which seems to have been taking delight in picking on farmers, is what are they going to do to put it right?”

I think we all know the answer to that. Estimates of potential costs swiftly rose from tens of millions of pounds to £500 million (admittedly the media play a part in inflating these). As soon as something happens to hurt the farming industry, everybody’s thoughts turn immediately to compensation — because we know that we shall have to pay it. Compensation for birds notionally culled if bird flu strikes, for sick cattle, for lost business while movement restrictions are in place, for flooded crops . . . time and again it is apparent that here is an industry incapable of sustaining itself.

When large parts of the country were flooded this summer, I saw local businessmen humbly grateful that somebody had lent them £500 to cover immediate costs, newsagents and grocers surveying wrecked stock and hoping they could keep solvent until the insurance paid out. There was no assumption that the Government would and should pay.

Farming is different. They don’t take out insurance for loss of stock. Fewer than 10 per cent of farmers have foot-and-mouth insurance, and even then it doesn’t cover the cost of slaughtered cattle – the Government does that – but subsidiary costs such as wages, rent and bank charges. Farmers generally insure their property and equipment, and take out liability insurance in case, for instance, they make anybody sick, but they do not cover for disease in crops or animals.

“The economics of farming really mean that they are not going to be economic,” explained a spokesman for NFU Mutual, Tim Price, yesterday. “People generally decide to take the risk.” So here is an industry economically incapable of insuring against predictable risks. No more farmers are insured against foot-and-mouth than were at the time of the last outbreak six years ago.

In 2001, the Government proposed talks with the insurance industry to explore the creation of a joint fund to mitigate future losses. There were working parties, talks . . . It never happened. Farmers’ leaders reacted furiously to suggestions that farmers should cover themselves.

And still the animals are unvaccinated, because farmers believe it would make the meat less profitable, and so the taxpayer picks up the risk again. Arguably, this is right: we pay a proper price for our meat in the end. Our chickens come home to roost.

I imagine many farmers would love to raise beautiful, organic animals in small, pretty fields and sell them and their milk and other products at realistic prices. If they cannot, then that is the debate we should be having. What we shouldn’t have is farmer railing at minister and media; complaining that everyone is against him and irritating taxpayers by assuming a right to immediate compensation for everything.

This outbreak of foot-and-mouth appears to be no fault of the farming industry and I am sorry for the devastated farmers. Their case for compensation is clear. It is obvious, as they lurch from one crisis to the next, that many farmers around the country are at breaking point.

Ministers know it too. Far from “taking delight in picking on farmers”, they are in my experience sympathetic to the problems. Many have farmers in their constituencies.

Unless the farming industry itself chooses leaders who, instead of posing as victims or rural angels who “feed the cities”, are prepared to engage honestly and realistically with government and consumer, then it is hard to see how the industry as a whole can be helped long-term. Sympathy will run out very, very fast if we see another mass cull of animals this summer, for instance, because farmers themselves closed off debate about vaccination. Instead of railing about how everybody hates them, farmers’ leaders ought to be directly challenging consumers more about what they are prepared to pay, and for what. How come we only see the inside of a slaughterhouse when it is empty?

Farmers are neither friendly yokels nor environmental vandals pigging out on subsidy. What they are, are businesspeople operating in a market economy in a sensitive area where consumer greed meets animal welfare and the environment. People — politicians, consumers, the media — recognise that. It’s the farmers who so often sound as if they do not.

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