Bellis has spent five years living among sheep farmers in the north of the country. A book of her photographs, On The Edge, is published this month with text by Michael Simmons. When the two began the project, foot and mouth was a memory from the 1960's. When they finished, it was an all too present horror. Formally, the foot and mouth crisis ended last week when Northumberland, the last remaining "at risk" county, had it's restrictions lifted. But the anguish and heartache goes on for Britain's farming community - and will not go away for a long time. Some farmers have given way to despair and committed suicide; others have gone bankrupt and are leaving the business that has been in the family for generations. The profile of the countryside has changed out of recognition. At the Derwent Rural Counselling Service, based in the Derbyshire market town of Bakewell, they routinely get "several hundred" calls for help every year. "But last year," says Marian Fuller-Sessions, one of the team, "84% of our calls were from individuals affected by foot in mouth. An awful lot of them, even now, are just keeping going; they're struggling and it's constantly on their minds. The children are suffering too, and there will, I am sure, be long-term anxiety problems for them." In Cumbria, the crisis was devastating. Half the country's 6,000 farmers were hit by the disease. At its height, Caz Graham, herself from a farming background, ran a late night phone-in programme for BBC Radio Cumbria and every night from 10pm to midnight, for weeks on end, she was inundated with calls. "Many were in tears and just didn't know what to do," she says. "What can you say to a farmer, or a farmer's wife, who breaks down as she tells you that he's just lost 4,000 animals?" Now Graham has brought together the words and thoughts of 50 Cumbrian men and women involved in the crisis, in all sorts of ways, and has turned them into a book called Foot and Mouth:Heart and Soul. The first edition sold out in a matter of days, but it is being reprinted. Dip into any page and the enormity of it all slams home. Pamela Brough, an Ulverston-based writer who for many years ran a small hill farm in the Derbyshire Peaks, tells of a slaughterman who was finding it "hard to cope" with the mass killing. He talked, she said, of having standards, of respecting the animals and of giving them a "decent death". Andrew Humphries, a well known figure in Cumbria, has been a teacher and adviser to local farmers for more than 30 years, and ran a helpline during the crisis. He reflects: "Babies were born and could not be shared with families. People died and could not be laid to rest in their own burial ground. Children and students were separated from parents and from education." In statistical terms, Cumbria suffered the worst of the crisis, while Derbyshire had just a handful of cases in the south of the county. But Derbyshire, like Cumbria, is a sheep county and a destination of tourists. Suddenly, for months on end, the movement and marketing of livestock - and the movement of people - was all-embracingly stringent. The county's biggest agricultural shows, important events for social as well as farming reasons, went ahead - but without animals. Livestock markets are still closed, but due to reopen next month. The movement of animals remains complicated and there is anger at what the farmers see as the "invisible bureaucrats". Unknown numbers of farmers have been financially crippled by the crisis; and the impact on tourism, in a county which in good times is visited by almost 22m people a year, spending well over £500m, has been huge. Most recently, it was announced that the countryside agency and Derbyshire county council were giving limited financial backing - £93,000 - to a number of schemes to refurbish the tourism infrastructure. In a recent issue of the Derbyshire Times newspaper, farmer Hugh Meredith wrote: "No part of our rural communities has escaped and we, as farmers, must appreciate the price paid by the tourist industry on our behalf..." He is convinced the smaller farms will survive and retains this certainty despite the fact that, according to the National Farmers' Union, the income of the average farmer, even before foot and mouth, was just £5,200 a year. Looking at such figures, other observers are not so sanguine. Last October, a conference was held in Ashbourne by the Peak District Rural Deprivation Forum, ostensibly to discuss the rural white paper but in fact to compare crisis notes. The event had been postponed more than six months because people wanting to attend had been barred by foot and mouth from leaving their homes. A common theme was the remoteness of officialdom, leading to its inability to understand local problems, and a consensus that a new voice had to be found for farming interests. The Derwent counselling service also convened a conference, bringing together professionals dealing with farmers and their families. Here again, the talk was of unrecognised stresses and strains, including emotional and mental health problems. Agreement was reached to hold a follow-up event, on similar lines, as soon as possible. Out of adversity, a new sense of solidarity was born.				^ Back to Top