Farmers have been urged to use the public's love of the land to enlist more support for British agriculture.

That was the main theme of the annual Falmouth Lecture given this year by Lord Mayhew, former Tunbridge Wells MP and Northern Ireland Secretary.

Speaking to members of Kent County Agricultural Society and guests at the County Showground, Detling, Lord Mayhew reviewed the parlous state of farming, saying that the average UK farmer earned just £2,500 last year.

Cereal producers earned on average 61 per cent less than the year before, dairy farmers earned on average £7,500, 17 per cent less than the year before, while lowland sheep and cattle farmers were typically in the red.

"The story for hop growers is no happier," he said. "Very many farm incomes are now below what it would be lawful for an employer to offer a member of his farm staff."

In the two years to June 2000, more than 50,000 workers had left the industry and the average age of "active farmers" was in their mid-fifties and "there is little evidence of the younger generation being willing to come forward."

The weak euro, the strong pound, allowing foreign meat imports had all caused the problems.

Yet there was hope, if only farming could "enlist the goodwill and custom of our consumers."

Few urban dwellers wanted to see farmland reduced to scrub. They should be recruited in the fight for survival and recovery, "imbued with the notion that it is the land that is in danger and that those who live by it and care for it need their patronage".

Farming needed a "sustained and united campaign of persuasion." That meant working on supermarkets as well as consumers.

"As the consequences of ever losing that battle come increasingly to be understood, I believe that those who live in our towns and cities will come to share in our implacable will to win it, and hence share in our eventual success."