Country Living Britain on Film

The Royal, more than anything,

reflects the changing face of British agriculture.

Every new idea, every invention,

every technique that's bang up to the minute, they're all here.

This is the age of power farming, of push button agriculture.

When machines take over the big jobs.

It may look like something from outer space but dig that ditch!

And there's plenty for the automatic reed cutter to do.

Long-haired operators beware!

And it's also advisable to keep your distance

when the manure spreader's about.

In the war against plant, pests and diseases, the whirly bird is

one of the finest weapons, spraying or dusting crops with insecticides.

Or even, if need be, laying a top dressing of fertiliser.

Agricultural aviation is here to stay.

With farming a branch of engineering science these days,

farmers must be up with the times.

Bill Banks' farm near Spalding covers 2,000 acres

of rich Lincolnshire land.

To keep in touch, Bill has his own radio station

linking the farm office with his own car and the farm foreman.

Sometimes, Bill deals with farm problems

when he's 20 miles away at the market.

Colin here.

Yes, Colin?

We're a little bit concerned about the potato markets this morning.

The prices are not so good.

Once they said that combines like these couldn't operate in Britain.

The fields were too small, the land generally too hilly,

the climate too wet.

So said the pessimists.

Today, 40,000 combines like these bring home the grain.

It's hard to remember what a team of Clydesdale horses really looks like.

Nature, machines, man's ingenuity go hand in hand.

And the end product is a store of grain

stacked high in the nation's silos.

Farming progress would never be possible

without the backroom men and women.

The botanists, the soil experts, the chemists and engineers.

And here's one of the results of seven years of experiments.

A tractor a baby could drive. Well, almost! No gear box. It's easy.

As this scientist's secretary knows, it's simpler than typing.

Here, the human aspect of machinery is important too.

In this case, the comfort and health of the tractor driver.

For a day's work on an average tractor seat can be like

riding a switchback railway - or worse!

These rough conditions are simulated on a test rig.

Here fitted with an old type tractor seat.

And it's a rough ride for the test driver.

The pounding the driver's body has to put up with

is recorded on a graph.

In the institute's laboratory, the driver's rough ride

can be transferred to a computer.

And then, by varying the tractor design on the computer,

the ride can be improved.

These design suggestions are passed on to the tractor manufacturers.

If you're wondering what they're harvesting, here's your answer.

This is one of the largest intensive feeding units in the country.

This is a barley beef production line,

as precise and scientific as a car line at Coventry.

And never surely were the customers more obviously contented.

Already in Britain about one in every ten of our beef calves

is reared on this intensive system.

Keeping cattle indoors is common place in many parts of the world.

Often in conditions nothing like as scientifically controlled

or as good as they are in Britain.

It's a way and only a way of putting up our beef production.

For, as standards of living go up all over the world,

so, more and more beef is being eaten.

And there just isn't enough to go round.

The housewife too is getting new ideas.

Today, she likes lean beef and smaller joints.

The choice is hers.

So, a new farming industry is growing up.

Intensively-reared barley beef designed to produce

the finished job in the shortest possible time.

It's just one of the many changes

that are going on in the farming world.

Market research has shown that British housewives are prepared

to pay more for potatoes that are well dressed,

so, every week, 200 tonnes of the best quality potatoes

are now going through these automated cleaning and grading lines.

Hand-picked for size and shape, without blemishes or bruises,

only the best go through for weighing and packing.

These more expensive, prime potatoes are proving popular.

The greater the demand for them, the more we shall see in the shops.

Potato crisps are one of the reasons why Britain's consumption

of potatoes has gone up over the last five years.

Today, we are eating 300,000 tonnes of potatoes as crisps every year,

and this figure is still on the increase.

The reason, say the crisp producers, is that we're getting

more and more into the habit of eating snacks.

During the last war, people in Britain

got used to what's now called instant potato.

Simply potatoes in powdered form.

Water or milk is added to reconstitute.

Even today, one in 100 people buys powdered potato.

Today's housewife demands a milder tasting pickled onion,

but if the vinegar is weakened too much, the onions go soft.

The answer was found to be in pasteurisation.

Applied to onions for the first time

in laboratories at research stations.

This is only one of hundreds of research problems

tackled here every year.

The very latest method of preserving food has been developed

at the Government's experimental factory at Aberdeen.

This method is known as accelerated freeze drying or AFD.

A wide variety of dried food has been produced

from roast beef to milk puddings.

Ever thought of having six penn'orth of dried fish and chips?

Well, you can't buy them in the shops yet

but that's what's going through the production line here.

When the chips come out of the dehydrating chamber,

they look much the same as when they went in.

But they're less than a quarter the weight.

And, so long as they remain dry, they'll keep indefinitely.

AFD foods are prepared by adding water and cooking in the normal way.

-Oh, boy! Food!

-You're right there.

Everything's either been pre-cooked, dried, bottled, frozen,

tinned, vitaminised, homogenised, preserved, coloured,

defatted, sterilised, concentrated, powdered, or starch reduced.

Food really is becoming rather a bore!

Food gets so bad, it makes you think

there's something wrong with the cutlery.

The village, like the city, takes Sunday quietly.

The roundsmen, whose work goes on seven days a week,

deliver the milk.

The car park outside the village pub is deserted.

Sunday still hasn't woken up.

But, as it gets nearer midday, there's a stir in the air.

A man and his dog can be seen out walking.

For noon is the time when the pubs open.

When, for masses of people, Sunday turns from rest to recreation -

to getting out and about.

One thing never seems to change.

The Sunday pint in the village pub is part of the English way of life.

Market day. When the farmer and his wife come into town,

eager to enjoy their day out.

It's the jolliest, busiest day of the week

in the life of a country town.

Some of them have grown old standing around the markets

and some of them not so old are learning fast.

It's the jostling, exciting day when a man has time to meet an old pal.

Time to get into a huddle about the crops or the markets.

When there's a break for a yarn and maybe a good old grumble.

For farmers have always had an excuse for a grouse.

Even if it's only about the weather.

It's a race against the clock and the weather

in an unforeseen role for the RAF.

Squadrons operate from dawn to dusk to save marooned cattle and sheep.

And this farmer's in a hurry

to help them land safely to pick up animal fodder.

Now to find the animals.

The deer down there will have to do as best they can this time -

this mission's to save farm stock.

And there they are - scared of the helicopter

but soon they'll come back to feed.

Rescue has come none too soon.

Some of Britain's new forests, like this one near Aberystwyth,

are so large that they have their own self-contained forest villages.

Foresters, foremen and forest workers

are supplied with houses nearby the woods they look after.

There's a school for their children up to the age of 11.

And the village shop is almost a club for their women folk.

The simple open air working life of the forests is attracting

many town people too.

37-year-old Dennis Lake for instance,

getting ready for work in the Dovey Forest, was born in London.

He's been a clerk and worked in a factory, now he's settled

with his wife and three children in a forest village, for good he says.

MUSIC: "Greensleeves"

Could you break out into a life like this?

Air to breath, room to move - what a life for the kids.

Ralf Human has done it, made the break, he and his wife.

A tiny farm, six Hertfordshire acres, that's all.

Impossibly uneconomic you'd be told, yet they're making it pay.

It can be done but be warned, it's a vanishing way of life.

PIGS GRUNT

This is the man of the future, who's here today

and in increasing numbers.

The new farm worker.

Farm worker, living in an £8,000 house,

running a brand new car, earning over £1,000 a year?

Yes, Don's a farm worker, but it would be nearer the mark

if you called him a farm technologist.

Arriving for the day's work.

He and his mates have no less than 1,000 pigs to look after.

Mates? What mates? There aren't any.

Don's entirely on his own.

A switch or two to operate, a basic minimum of physical labour

that the machines haven't yet got round to doing, but they will.

And the day's work has begun.

Waiting to be fed, greedy pigs.

And breakfast is served.

He'd like to be a pig man when he grows up.

But by that time, there'll probably be machines to press the buttons.

The odd man is still to be seen here and there among the machinery,

but more and more he seems the odd man out.

Already there is no technical reason why a farm

should not be totally automated under electronic control.

"It can't happen in my lifetime,"

how often have we said that and been wrong?

HUNT HORN SOUNDS

Fox hunting, for centuries a part of British country life,

has never been so severely criticised as it is today.

Yet never has it been so popular.

Since the war, the number of hunts in Britain

has increased from 150 to over 200.

More than 30,000 people now ride regularly to hounds

over the five month winter season.

HOOVES CLIP-CLOP ON PATH

Before the meet, so that foxes can't quickly dive for cover,

all fox holes in the locality are stopped.

A practice some people object to.

Members of the League Against Cruel Sports,

one of the six anti-fox hunting societies in Britain,

work for the fox by laying false trails

of a chemical compound through woods where the hunt will be that day.

Hounds hunt the fox by scent.

Despite all this, meets of fox hounds are getting bigger.

HOUNDS BARK

The doctor's here with his wife, the radio mechanic, the vicar,

farmers and the company directors.

Hounds are getting impatient now, horses edging this way and that.

It's 11am and the hunt moves off.

BUGLE SOUNDS, HOUNDS BARK

The chase is on, maybe for 10 or 15 miles.

HOUNDS BARK

HOOVES THUNDER

It's a chase that tests horse and man alike.

The fox may double back, run through sheep to lose his scent,

often pause on rising ground to look back.

Only one in every five chased by hounds is caught.

FRENZIED BARKING

HUNTSMEN CALL OUT

But this fox is unlucky and the hounds close in.

It's soon all over. The fox is dead.

But the question still remains.

Is this the best way of keeping down foxes?

HOUNDS BARK LOUDLY

Britain's main stronghold for red deer

is still the Highlands and islands of Scotland

where the Red Deer Commission was set up in 1959

to conserve and control them.

If there are too many deer in a given area,

natural food becomes scarce and herds either raid the crops

or die of starvation.

So some control is necessary.

So where there are too many deer,

the commission states every year how many each estate must kill.

I first went stalking with my father at the age of eight,

it was a terribly long time ago.

And I've done it more or less ever since

with the exception of the war years.

And I consider it the finest sport there is.

What we're looking for is poor quality stags,

old ones that may not survive the coming winter.

Of course, the good quality stags are the ones we want to keep.

Indeed, we treasure them from year to year,

as they're the ones that will increase the standard of our herd.

A day on the hill to me, it means getting away from it all.

And it gives one a wonderful sense of freedom,

the higher one gets up the hill.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

HORSES HOOVES THUNDER

This is Hampshire county.

Not Hampshire in the Wild West but Hampshire, England. Yes, England.

It's part of the cowboy cult that's sweeping Europe today.

At Britain's Flying G Ranch,

they not only look like genuine cowboys,

they're encouraged to talk and act like them.

And, of course, it's not surprising that there are cowgirls too.

For in Britain, as in America, there's nothing like a dame!

HARMONICA PLAYS "Home On The Range"

In the New Forest, the modern cowboys have 93,000 acres to roam.

They seldom hit the same trail twice.

And more and more are following the trend towards one horsepower

Western-style as an escape from the mechanised world.

For years people have been talking about preserving the countryside.

Much has been done, but there's no room for complacency.

The New Forest in Hampshire contains 144 square miles

of magnificent country and woodlands.

And during peak periods it receives 70,000 visitors a day.

But those who do this sort of thing aren't welcome.

The refuse collectors, who travel 100 miles each day,

picked up last year 800 tonnes of soft litter left behind by people

out for a day in the country.

As well as 25,000 bottles of various sorts.

Britain's countryside is so popular with holiday makers

and overseas tourists that, today,

the sheer weight of numbers of people and cars crowding into it,

is threatening the very things these people come to enjoy.

The problem is, how can Britain have her cake and eat it?

Out of the chrysalis, a butterfly is born.

However hard you look,

butterflies seem to be much more elusive these days.

There are fewer of them

even in gardens full of buddleia bushes, which always attract them.

Why are there fewer butterflies in Britain today?

The spraying of crops with insecticides

may partly account for it.

CHOPPER BLADES WHIRR

Another reason could be the cutting back

of grass verges in the countryside.

But scientists say a more likely cause is the loss of wild plants

on which he butterflies feed,

as more fields are cultivated or built on.

Also increasingly sunless summers could mean less breeding.

One thing is certain, the shortage is not caused

by too many butterflies being collected.

Some people think too much fuss is being made

about the shortage of butterflies.

Maybe next year, they say, the balance will have redressed itself

and they'll be back in greater number.

Butterflies are one more example

of the wildlife of the British countryside

which is being threatened by modern developments

and public apathy.