RIBBLE Valley farmer Barry Barnes's plans to combine two dairy units and set up a single modern milking unit are meeting with objections from residents of a newly-developed housing project nearby.

Claiming cows will be cooped up with 'zero grazing' and that calving and milking will go on round the clock in sheds the size of a supermarket, they say their concern is for the animals' welfare.

Oh, really? Could there not also be a little misguided nimbyish concern for themselves in all of this?

Farming, after all, goes on in the countryside - and the non-farming folk who go to live there should understand that it is an industry that has to make a living like any other and not always the picturesque idyll they desire.

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