Sheepwrecked - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 166

Strong as the case for change may be, agricultural hegemony is so
potent that to challenge farmers and landowners is almost taboo. In
Wales, farmers (both full- and part-time) account for 1.5 per cent of the
total population and 5 per cent of the population of the countryside:
44,000 out of 960,000 rural people. 48 Yet the countryside is governed
and managed almost exclusively for their benefit. Many of the ideas
and perspectives which dominate rural policy arise with farmers'
unions, which are often governed by the biggest and richest landowners.
The views of the majority of rural people who are not farmers - 95 per
cent in Wales - are marginalized. Elin Jones was minister for rural
affairs, not minister for farming, but the pen she brought to our discus-
sion was a cipher for her department's policies. Rural politics throughout
Europe and in much of North America suffer from the same blight:
their primary purpose appears to be to keep the farmers (or foresters or
fisherfolk) happy, though everywhere they are a small minority.
I am convinced that this can change, that if people were more aware
of how their money is being used, the needless destruction, the
monomania, driven by farm subsidies - across Europe and in several
other parts of the world - would come to an end. This, more than any
other measure, would permit the trees to grow, bring the songbirds
back, prompt the gradual recolonization of nature, release the eco-
logical processes that have been suppressed for so long. In other
words, it would allow a partial rewilding of the land.