THE foot and mouth outbreak that swept the country three years ago may no longer be making headlines but its effects are still felt by the East Lancashire farming community - particularly in the Ribble Valley.

Reporter DAVID HIGGERSON looks at how the rural disaster changed the face of farming for good. . .

AFTER more than 35 years farming on the outskirts of Whalley, John Townson never imagined he'd end up running a stables and pet store.

But for him, it was the only solution to surviving after the foot and mouth epidemic.

John and his wife Dorothy had run Brookhouse Farm, in Mitton Road, for most of their married lives and while it wasn't infected by foot and mouth, restrictions slapped across the area by the Government meant he was unable to do any business for the best part of a year.

The 60 beef animals and 250 lambing ewes he normally made a living from remained on the farm - and John was faced with the prospect of diversifying or going out of business.

The industry that emerged after the disease was a heavily dented one. British meat is still treated warily in various places across the globe, with cheap imports making it harder than ever to get a good price for animals.

Working with Lancashire Rural Futures - the regeneration agency set up in 1999 to help a rural community that was already struggling before the 2001 epidemic - he set up stabling facilities for horses, as well as a horse supplies store.

John, now aged 63, said: "I was already stabling a couple of horses and we expanded that. There is a real market for it and we also developed the supplies side of things. We sell all manner of things now, right across a range of pet supplies.

"All the time we need to look at doing new things because there just isn't the market for farmers that there was. We keep a few animals but the stabling and the shop is now what keeps the business going."

The role of Lancashire Rural Futures has been to help farms through the myriad of grants available for them to diversify. In short, before foot and mouth outbreak, there were too many farms competing. Post foot and mouth, many farms have realised that, even with compensation payments, they can't afford another crisis. It's a story repeated across the country.

The Bolton family, in Sawley, know this only too well. It's now 2004 and they hope it will be the year they finally return to farming. Since May 26, 2001, when foot and mouth took hold of Sawley, including the family's Bank Top Farm, they have been working towards bringing livestock back.

They lost 100 cattle, 100 calves and 21 sheep after Sarah Bolton, daughter of Michael and Linda Bolton, who run the farm, spotted one of the cows frothing at the mouth.

Sarah said: "We used to own 100 acres and maybe rent another 100 but now we rent very little and rent out our land for grazing.

"The effect of foot and mouth has been to wreck prices even more,. To be a successful dairy farm again, we'd need maybe 150 to 200 milking cows just to break even. A farm our size can't do that."

This year's return to farming - bringing a small number of sheep initially - will be to supplement other incomes, and Sarah expects it to remain that way. She said: "I have got a job working as a land consultant, while dad has worked as a sub-contractor.

"Things won't be the same again, ever. Basically, foot and mouth overnight wrecked everything we'd been doing for nearly 50 years, wiping out what my grandfather started, just like that."

Diversification isn't sold as a one-size-fits-all solution to rural problems but Lancashire Rural Futures is helping around 750 farms in East Lancashire find other incomes. One of the most popular is environmental management grants, where land is left to grow naturally and walkers allowed to use it. For those farms which do want to try something new - tourism, farm shops and equestrian centres are among the most popular - there are already examples of how successful diversification can be.

At Bashall, Simon Barnes opened up Bashall Barn Farm just as the foot and mouth epidemic was starting to take hold.

It wasn't perfect timing, the 36-year-old who gave up a lucrative job supplying car parts to Nissan to return to the valley admits, but with £100,000 invested in the venture - a diversification of the family's 30-years-old dairy - Simon believes he had little choice.

He said: "We didn't publicise it as much as we planned to but we slowly got going, building up a local client base. We wanted to open to show the Ribble Valley was still going but didn't want to drag in visitors or do anything which would worsen the foot and mouth problems."

Bashall Barn has since benefited from wide-spread publicity, attracting visitors from all over the country. A farm tea room has opened, and small brewery has also opted to open on the site, close to Clitheroe.

The shop specialises in selling quality local goods and Simon is now looking at developing a range of high-quality ready meals, as well as seeing if the concept of 'pizza farms' can be adapted to the Ribble Valley. Simon said: "Pizza farms are an educational thing really. Basically, you have a patch of land and you cut it up into pieces and on each piece you grow one of the ingredients you need for pizza. It is something we are looking at. Diversification for us has supported the existing business, not overtaken it, but it has made an important contribution to the local economy.

"We employ around 15 people, most of them from farming backgrounds who have had to come off the farm to work. It supports a rural economy which has had to grow and expand to meet challenges, like the fall out of foot and mouth."

At Little Town Dairy, in Thornley, the on-set of foot and mouth served to demonstrate how important their diversification was. Eileen Forshaw and her husband, Matthew, set up a yoghurt business at their farm in the mid-80s following the introduction of quotas, which limited the amount of milk they could send out.

Eileen, 58, said: "For us, that changed the way we operated for good and foot and mouth had the same affect for other farmers. Foot and mouth came incredibly close to us and we had made plans to install a second entrance so that the yoghurt production could continue if our dairy herd was taken out.

"We would have to bring milk in, which would have been a disaster for us. We were lucky in some respects because that never happened, but things won't be the same again."