Foot and Mouth Research
The James Hutton Institute
This page is no longer updated. The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute joined forces with SCRI joined forces on 1 April 2011 to create The James Hutton Institute.
This page has been mothballed.
It is no longer being updated but we've left it here for reference.
Foot and Mouth Research
Post Outbreak
Information and discussion on the aftermath of the Foot and Mouth Outbreak of 2001
Hundreds of farms are now facing a decision about their future following the foot and mouth crisis. In the longer run and on at least a regional scale their decisions may result in changes to the structure of agriculture and of the countryside, economically, environmentally and socially. Many sources of information are needed to help make these decisions and to predict the aggregate outcome for the countryside and rural life. That is what this website is about. Here we gather a number of information sources, specific planning tools, including some of our own, for farm structuring, analysis of change in the rural economy and the interactions between business and the environment. We also provide a discussion forum where questions, opinions, problems and advice can be traded. The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute is Britain's leading research organisation on land use and we aim to provide information and understanding for the strategic planning of the future, following the foot and mouth crisis.
In mid April, the Farmers Weekly newspaper surveyed victims of the FMD outbreak. They found nearly half warning that they plan to quit the industry or scale down their business after the crisis (FW 27th April 2001 p5). It is not just farms that are facing big changes, either. We all know that tourism and related service sector businesses in the countryside as well as downstream (e.g. cheese making) and upstream (e.g. feed sales) businesses are suffering. Even in areas untouched by the virus many of these enterprises, often run 'close to the wire' in fragile communities, are facing possible collapse. This raises questions about the most efficient means of seeing them through, and in the longer run, of strengthening the foundations of the rural economy to better enable it to withstand similar shocks in the future, lest they ever return. Our strategic perspective concentrates on the latter of these questions. Our starting point is that the aftermath of the foot and mouth crisis is also a time to stop and think, to reassess rural activity and to answer the question - how can we do things better?