Farming is the bedrock of the rural economy and fundamental to its success - 70 per cent of land in the UK is farmed and farmers have a role in caring for much of the rest of it.
In England alone, rural economic activity is worth £260 billion, according to Government calculations.
Add in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, then it is worth more than £330bn, around 17 per cent of the total economy.
In 2019, 9.6 million people called the English countryside home, that was up nearly 7 per cent on the 2011 figure. There are also nearly 1m rural Scots, while in Wales more than a third of the population is rural, which is twice the rate in England and Scotland.
The pandemic has highlighted the value of the countryside, with visits to local and green spaces up by more than 40 per cent on pre-virus levels throughout the last 18 months, according to Natural England.
Rekindled
This rekindled love affair with the countryside has led some to make big changes in lifestyle and move from the town to the country.
Estate agent Hamptons calculated in June that rural house prices had jumped 14.2 per cent over the previous year, twice that of urban housing.
Traditional hotspots, such as Cornwall and Devon, remain popular, but the greatest growth was the countryside around Lancaster, Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire, the Amber Valley in Derbyshire and Arun in West Sussex.
Hamptons added that it had seen registrations of interest in rural properties increase by 50 per cent.
Rural
Interest in rural holidays has also soared, with farm bed and breakfasts, campsites and holiday lets booked out for months, including into summer next year.
In 2019, nearly a fifth of English holidays, totalling £2bn, were spent in the countryside and the relaxing of Covid-19 restrictions this year will have boosted that number further.
The NFU estimates that a third of farms have some sort of diversification, with the Farm Retail Association saying farm shops and farmers' markets sell more than £1.5bn of produce a year.
Charles Trotman, senior economist at the CLA, said: "The value of the farming industry to the wider economy was highlighted during the pandemic.
"Other sectors such as tourism and hospitality were seriously affected, but farming had to keep on operating to fulfil the most basic need alongside healthcare - feeding people. As the economy has got back on its feet, the secondary benefits of farming have been recognised too in providing an environment for people to relax and enjoy the countryside."
Dr Trotman believed the pandemic had also proved that the theory of a free-market reliance on the ability to import as much food as the UK needs was a flawed one and that having a strong and resilient farming sector was essential to health and wealth of the nation.
He added: "What gives the farming industry its value and strength is not just its ability to produce food but its stewardship of the land. That land is becoming increasingly important in delivering a range of non-food services, including leisure, energy generation and climate change mitigation. That means the importance of farming will only increase too."
For farming to meet its full potential then it is important the current farm supports are managed in a way that allows farming businesses to thrive, he believed, and also there is investment in rural infrastructure, both physical and digital.
