ASE scheme pays for land protection.

West Penwith has been declared an Area of Sensitive Environment (ASE). The government is willing to pay farmers £24 an acre not to exploit their land i.e. becoming a custodian farmer, keeping the fields as they are, not to enlarge them, with no ploughing and retaining and maintaining stone walls and hedges, and no new fences to be built.

Today the President of the National Farmers' Union (NFU), Sir Simon Gorley, along with colleagues, visited Carn farm in Morvah, Cornwall, to see how an ASE works. Mr Gorley believes the scheme is a good one but is disappointed the government pay so little. With 17,000 acres of land protected by the ASE scheme 90% of Cornish farmers are involved in the conservation of land in some form or another.