Famously, youthful Americans in the 19th century were advised to “go west, young man”.
For many, this advice was sound. The vast, uncharted landscapes of western America offered boundless opportunities for settlers to farm their way into fortunes.
In a small and crowded island like ours, with strict planning controls on every inch of our land, today’s settlers in the south west of England face very different circumstances.
Unlike their commercially-minded American predecessors, they are, by and large, highly eco-conscious. They typically aim to adopt a low carbon-footprint and live in close touch with nature.
But, often enough, their desire to engage in subsistence farming can be seen by others as an unfair way of getting round the normal planning laws — enabling them to build and inhabit dwellings on tracts of farmland where construction would otherwise be strictly prohibited.
This is becoming more and more of an issue in West Dorset, as more people take up the idea of fashioning a lifestyle based on micro-agriculture.
I doubt that our present planning laws will really be able to cope with this trend. Our laws were designed principally to allow for standard commercial agriculture. So they lets the farmer build a house — but only if there is no other way to manage the farm, and then only if the farm has the prospect of being financially viable.
The new pattern of eco-farming makes these tests virtually redundant because such lifestyle-farming inevitably necessitates living on the land and, if subsistence is the test of financial viability, then almost all such operations will be defined as viable.
So how should we change the law to reflect the new trend? When is eco-conscious subsistence farming a basis for permission to build a house, and when not?
I think the only way forward is to let the matter be decided by truly local opinion. If the neighbours are happy, why object? But, if the neighbours are unhappy, how can one really justify ignoring their feelings?