THE Bishop of Blackburn has urged members of the church to back local farmers at a packed meeting in Preston.

The Rt Rev Alan Chesters told the Preston National Farmers' Union Women's Section that British taxpayers should willingly support the farming industry and that the church had a duty to act as mediator in disputes between land managers and right to roam campaigners.

Bishop Chesters, a member of the Countryside Agency and a senior Anglican spokesman on rural issues, was speaking at a meeting held in Higher Walton on Sunday. He said: "Farmers work long hours, not just to feed their families, but that we might live. They need our backing.

"The government and the rest of us must accept that a living countryside means a countryside in which food production plays the important role.

"Agriculture evolves - it must. The farmyard in which I played as a boy, the farmhouse in which my grandmother slaved over the kitchen range, is now an upmarket residence with a Range Rover in the drive and the green wellies of the upwardly mobile by the door."

He added: "To whom land belongs is a deep theological question. In these days, when access and rights of way are so hotly debated, surely we have a duty to bring managers of the land and those who seek to find refreshment and renewal together to find a common way ahead, and stop them digging themselves into holes from which it is hard to get out."

Bishop Chesters also called for renewed support for church and farming groups working to reduce 'the sad suicide figures among our farmers, the highest of any occupational group'.

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