The culture wars have reached the countryside – but Radio 4 only got under the topsoil

In Battle Grounds, Anna Jones meets a range of men representing a gulf in rural politics – but such an important topic needed deeper probing

Alistair Macbeth was working as a fire-breather when, in a twist of fate that felt far from pre-destined, he landed an even scarier job. At the time, he was living on a farm near Buxton when the cowman who milked the herd went on holiday. He needed cover, and Macbeth was terrified of cattle. 
Hey, some of us know the feeling. I’d been yomping around the British countryside for decades when at some point in midlife I succumbed to severe bovinophobia. It could have been triggered by the calves giving chase on Anglesey or the bull defending his harem in the Quantocks or the innumerable herd of stampeding bullocks on Exmoor. Whatever. “I’ve developed an irrational fear of cattle,” I confessed to my late father. “It’s not irrational!” he said. “It’s perfectly rational!” Turns out he had it too. 
When we talk of country matters, nothing is perfectly rational. Macbeth – no relation of the Thane of Cawdor – soon dropped the fire-breathing and now looks after the herd full time, becoming that rarity among dairy farmers: not only gay, and dreadlocked, but also vegan. His was the opening – and most headscratchingly odd – story in Battle Grounds: Culture Wars in the Countryside (Radio 4), which considered the gulf in trust and understanding that grows ever wider in our green and pleasant landscape. 
The flashpoints it considered were various. Exactly how much right to roam do ramblers have? Which requires more protection: rare birds of prey or communities reliant on shooting? At what point can farmers say, “I’ve planted enough trees now so please can I get back to the day job?” There was much simmering tension in play. 
For each episode, presenter Anna Jones sought out people – all, incidentally, male – at the heart of these dilemmas. She met a lovely Flintoffian copper who’s not popular in parts of North Yorkshire for policing the persecution of raptors. Then there was a grouchy farmer so sick of dog-walkers abusing a field of his that he has confined them to a high-fenced pathway dubbed the Iron Curtain of Somerset. “It’s my land!” he reasoned. 
Unfortunately, such live and divisive issues merit deeper consideration than the programme was able to provide. This is a problem less of reporting than of formatting. Radio 4 often strips a series of five short episodes across the week. With the first 90 seconds devoted to the same intro, there’s barely 12 minutes a pop to cover a lot of complicated ground. Each episode had space to look at an issue from only one angle. There was nobody to defend the policy of ordering weary farmers in Mid Wales to plant more trees, and no gamekeeper spoke in favour of land management for pheasant and grouse shooting. Nor was anyone invited to make a passionate case for the right to roam. 
It wasn’t even really clear what the story of the vegan cowman was intended to illustrate, other than the miracle of moral compromise. In the end, wondering whether some farmers are simply too insular for their own good, Jones returned to the Shropshire farm where she grew up and exposed a small fissure between her hyper-local father who never leaves home and her mother who pined for the wider world. 
Jones concluded that city dwellers could usefully learn more about farmers and farming and, providentially, that very challenge was taken up in Ian Smith Is Stressed (Radio 4). The show was mainly a stand-up set from a Yorkshire comedian who is comfortable in his natural habitat, onstage in front of an audience delivering an excellent set of box-fresh gags about the north-south divide. 
But while this formed the pleasing bulk of the entertainment, to deal with his titular stress he also paid a visit to an eco-farm in Rutland where his main task was to learn to conquer – you’ve guessed it – his fear of cattle. “I think a cow is very dangerous,” he said on the way up. Why? asked his producer. “Weight and aggression.” 
When he spotted an Aberdeen-Angus bull his anxiety levels rocketed, only to dwindle when he was introduced to Poppy and encouraged to give her a self-soothing hug. “They’ve got a big energy bubble,” the farmer told him, “and as soon as you sit down next to them you’re inside that energy bubble and you can’t help but feel relaxed and grounded and peaceful.” It worked for Smith. “I’m going to have to come back every week,” he reported. “Never felt this calm in my life.” It didn’t quite work for a half-hour comedy show, because bovinophobia is not funny.