NORTH Wiltshire beef farmer Nigel Maidment will take his place in the Liberty And Livelihood March in London on September 22 to defend the future of an ancient way of life.

Next week, Mr Maidment's son, David, turns 21 and is eager to follow in his father's footsteps by working on the farm.

But Mr Maidment, 52, who owns Street Farm in Cleverton near Brinkworth, and has been farming for 36 years, doesn't know if he will be able to take him on, as the 70-acre farm barely earns him an income.

Mr Maidment fears the future of the countryside is being dismantled because young people who should be working for the future of farming cannot do so.

He said: "I want to go on the march because everything I love, enjoy and am interested in my village, my farming and the countryside are all under threat of extinction. The English countryside is a unique quilt of fields and woodland and people want it to remain like that.

"There's a progressive crushing of everything in village life, from the closure of post offices and village stores to the lack of services like buses. I think everything in the countryside is alien to this Government. They don't think the countryside has a lot of voters so they're not supporting it."

Mr Maidment believes many demonstrators will march against a Government ban on foxhunting but no single issue binds the protestors.

He said people have a variety of personal grievances but feel a common threat to the traditions and heritage of the rural way of life.

He says he is worried about the future of agriculture in the UK because of the Government's insistence on rigidly enforcing EU regulations, which he said other European countries ignore.

Mr Maidment said the reluctance of the National Farmers' Union to 'rock the boat' had lost the confidence of farmers frustrated with uncompromising European legislation.

In the long term, Mr Maidment hopes the march will encourage organisations like the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to work with farmers to make the rural way of life sustainable.

In the short term he would like the Government to reconsider a ban on hunting and accept that people who live and work in the country should be left to manage it, but he is not optimistic.

He said: "Farming has changed in the past ten years. The paperwork has quadrupled and farmers are not paperwork people. Over the years various governments have progressively supported British agriculture less and less.

"When I left school, my father, brother and myself all lived and worked on the same 84-acre farm, and my father could plan five or even eight years ahead. Now I can't even plan two years ahead because I don't know how the rules and regulations are going to change from one year to the next."

According to the Countryside Alliance, the rural pressure group organising the march, farm incomes have fallen by 72 per cent since 1995.

In the last two years 40,000 farmers have left the industry.