IN this country we are fiercely protective of our countryside and its wildlife. Both the National Trust and the RSPB have more paid-up members than every political party added together.

But we too often forget that the rural landscape is itself the creation of human economic activity. Hedges were planted to mark property boundaries and fence in animals. Woodlands were first coppiced to provide London with firewood and later harvested to supply Wycombe’s chair-making and furniture industry.

Today, footpaths and canals that once had just a practical purpose are an important recreational resource.

The rural landscape provides fewer people with a living (just look at an old census return and see how many people were once crammed into a small cottage) but a relaxation and a moment of tranquillity for millions.

Rural England has always been changing, and will change further. The countryside cannot be preserved in aspic and we are not going to go back to the days when everyone who lived in a village worked there too.

But I don’t think it would be healthy for Buckinghamshire’s villages and country towns to become just dormitory settlements.

Community spirit and indeed conservation rely in large part on our countryside continuing to be a place where people are able to live and work. In part that’s about making sure that land is well farmed.

In or out of the EU we will need to continue paying some subsidies to our farmers, though it’s right to link those payments much more closely to environmental stewardship than used to be the case.

As consumers, we can do our bit by buying local and British food when we can. We also have to face up to some tricky dilemmas.

Polytunnels aren’t very pretty. But using them means an English grower can extend the season for home-grown strawberries or tomatoes rather than leave the market to foreign producers.

Of course we also need to look beyond agriculture. The other day I called in at the Clare Charities Centre in Saunderton to meet the team running the local rural development programme.

In Bucks and the Chilterns, it’s helped about 120 businesses and created roughly 140 new rural jobs. Often, the money has helped a food producer develop a food-processing or retail operation.

Help has gone to a dairy in Lane End, a bee-keeping business in Bledlow, and an apple juice maker in Chartridge.

Other projects involve bringing our Chiltern woodlands back into profitable and sustainable use: wood for sawmills and fuel for wood-chip boilers.

Modern technology brings new possibilities. Business leaders leave me in no doubt about the critical importance of high-speed broadband. So it’s good news that the Government has just increased its funding to Bucks and Herts County Councils’ drive to connect up more rural homes and businesses.

The County Council hopes to pick a contractor by May and we could see cables being laid within the year. Broadband makes it possible for even the smallest business in the most isolated location to build up a national, even international, network of customers.

A dynamic, entrepreneurial business culture here in Bucks allied to the opportunity provided by high-speed broadband should be the basis for a thriving rural economy in the decades ahead.