May is always one of our busiest months. There is still the odd sheep having a lamb and half of the herd has yet to drop calf. Our four yurts need to be erected for the half-term, and this spring we have been building a new loo block for the campsite with a seemingly never ending list of finishing touches. In amongst all of this I had foolishly agreed to come into my old school at Camelford and give the year 11 Geographers a talk about the CAP – Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy.

As you can imagine the subject is dry as dust, but has hugely influenced the way we farm on the moors for the last three decades.

Following the years of post-war food shortages and rationing, the CAP was a system of subsidies for farmers introduced with the express intention of producing large quantities of cheap food. In meeting these objectives it was massively successful, and older readers might remember the days of butter-mountains and wine-lakes that were the direct result of the policy. In its heyday in the UK we were producing over 80% of the nations food needs.

This was all swept away in 2005 with a radical reform that meant that farmers are now only paid for environmental benefits and food production is left to market forces. This has already started to bite and now food inflation has become a hot topic (and one I fear it is here to stay), and we have fallen back to meeting only 60% of the food needs of a growing population. All in all, quite an interesting story.

My class of fifteen-year-olds were a fairly tough crowd and so in order to break the ice I projected onto the whiteboard a photo of myself at 14 in my old school uniform. I had hoped that the 1976 glam rock hairstyle might at least raise a snigger, or that the fact we all wore a blazer and tie draw a gasp, but they were having none of it. I only got a small reaction when I told them that back in the 70’s - under where the new Maths block now resides - the school used to have its own farm with pigs and sheep.

In desperation for some sort of interaction, I asked the Geography teacher what he was doing in 1976 – turned out he hadn’t yet been born! Now I really feel old.