There is no doubt that the rural economy is in a mess. Equally, there is no doubt that those in that particular mess need not look to the agriculture minister, Dr Jack Cunningham, for help, a comforting word, or even much in the way of understanding. Dr Cunningham has already hinted broadly that there are too many farmers, anyway, and that a thinning out of the ranks would be no bad thing. For that reason, and because the government has not the slightest intention of intervening to alter artificially the persistently high value of the pound, it seems that farmers and those other parts of the rural economy which only exist because there are farmers will have to develop their own stratagems for survival.

It is, indeed, as serious as that. The beef ban must carry much of the blame and the latest statistics show that farming output in Britain fell by 6% between 1996, when the ban originated, until the present. The lifting of the ban on beef from Northern Ireland is very welcome, but efforts to extend it to Scotland must be intensified. Other statistics are equally gloomy. Farm incomes in Scotland fell last year by an average of 20%. George Lyon, the NFU president in Scotland, spoke worryingly yesterday of a threat to 150,000 jobs in Scotland. A useful rule of thumb for calculating the essential nature of farming for the maintenance of the rural economy is to recall that each farming job supports three other rural jobs in what might loosely be called the rural services industry. In that context, the sight and sound of Dr Cunningham claiming that the rural economy ''must go way beyond farming''

was neither helpful nor enlightening. He claimed that the government was focusing on such issues as rural transport, health-action zones, and the New Deal for the unemployed in rural areas. If his comment on rural transport is a reference to the pitifully small sum dedicated to rural bus services he might usefully recall that Mr Prescott plans an assault on rural life and transport in the summer through the imposition of even higher costs on motorists.

Apart from the beef ban, the core issues facing rural Scotland are the desperate need to reform the Common Agricultural Policy and the associated issue of EU enlargement. If Britain's presidency of the EU has moved these problems towards sensible resolution we have not noticed it. Neither can be helped by the much-loved solution of British commentators which consists of slashing the agricultural budget. There is a pressing need for a close examination of our food needs and export potential, and an equally urgent requirement for a serious debate about the aims and priorities of regional-aid programmes. It may be too late for the government to halt the electoral damage in Scotland which was hinted at yesterday, but that is no excuse for Dr Cunningham's chilling platitudes or the danger that our countryside's future consists in being one vast theme park for tired urbanites.