There is a certain sound that stays with you when you live in the English countryside. Not the singing of birds, that’s too obvious, but the deep rhythm of things: the tractor coughing into life in the morning, Chameau’s boots crunched with stones, the horses’ hooves going out to be hacked, the soft hum of a village pub where everyone knows exactly why you’re there even if they’ve never seen you before.
I once had a house in the Northamptonshire countryside. Not a logical “recreational weekend”, but a place where life really happens. One night, over a pint of ‘landlord’ and with a bit of judgement, the village gamekeeper offered to teach me how to shoot. “You’re getting good enough,” he said, “and maybe you can join us for a day at the lodge.”
A couple of sessions on the clays with a good Purdey side-by-side and I was hooked, not just on target – I’m told my hitting rate was amazing – but globally. Quiet discipline. A sense of responsibility. The unspoken understanding was that this was not bloodlust or heroism, but stewardship. About knowing the world, respecting it, and finding your place in it.
That is why, as the year 2025 draws to a close, I find myself uneasy about the future of Britain’s rural economy, and the way of life embedded in it.
We have been told, time and time again, that concerns about farming, shooting, wildlife conservation and rural business may be unpopular indulgences or political dog whistles. Watch a few episodes of Clarkson’s Farm and tell me that again with a straight face. Take away the humor and the celebrity and what’s left is a documentary about an industry that lives forever, one crop that failed, one policy fix, one cost increase it scorned.
That contrast became painfully clear this year when the government looked at easing the agricultural inheritance tax. What began as a plan to end long-standing protections for family farms sparked outrage in rural Britain. As reported by the Financial Times, the subsequent backlash, raising the thresholds and softening the blow, was presented as a compromise. But uncertainty, once started, does not go away gracefully. It lingers. It stops investment. It speeds up the exit.
Family farms are not tax shelters. They are high-income, low-income businesses that generate their value tied to the earth instead of using capital. Treating them like piles of lying wealth instead of doing business is how you quietly dismantle the industry, without admitting you intended it.
And it’s not just farmers who are feeling the pinch. Animal husbandry, shooting and rural management support tens of thousands of jobs and support rural tourism, hospitality and the supply chain. A stark warning was sounded recently in The Telegraph’s analysis of the decline in animal husbandry, which highlighted how rising costs, regulatory pressures and political hostility are pushing away skilled farm workers.
This is not a culture war. Economics.
Add to that the sense, increasingly hard to shake, that rural Britain is not traditionally understood by those writing policy. Labor proposals on animal welfare and hunting trails have raised fears that the law is being shaped through an urban moral lens, while the Guardian reported warnings from rural groups that rural voices were being silenced rather than heard.
Meanwhile, the data tells its sad story. Farm closures continue to outpace new starts, as thousands of properties disappear under the weight of rising costs, labor shortages and unexpected returns, as highlighted by FarmingUK. When a farm goes, it rarely goes alone. The contractor loses his job. The server server closes. The bar is shortening its hours. The town is overflowing.
What worries me most is that this erosion is happening quietly, modestly, without the drama that usually forces political attention. There is no single criminal. There is no cliff edge. It’s just a short walk from work until one day we look around and wonder where everyone went.
The countryside is not a theme park or a TV backdrop. It is the economic system that feeds us, employs us and anchors communities. Once it’s gone, you don’t rebuild it with grants and slogans.
I learned to shoot because the zookeeper trusted me with his craft. That trust, between world and people, culture and modernity, economy and culture, is what is really threatened. If policy-makers continue to treat rural Britain as an emotional distraction rather than a strategic asset, they may wake up one day to find the countryside still beautiful… but no longer functional. And that, unlike a missed clay, is a mistake you can’t take.
