I CONFESS that my scrutiny of the Autumn budget – which has dominated the media for what seems like forever – has been somewhat slapdash. Mind you, I have scanned the small print for what feels like a month or two.

The target of my search has been the treatment of forestry not just as a commercial or fiscal activity, but as any recognisable part of a strategy or plan for the future. Farming got the treatment, but not in any way that rural industry either wanted or deserved. So perhaps someone in government decided to adopt a low profile and hope everything in the woods will evolve along a better policy profile and all would come out okay in the end – or perhaps when the more general issue of climate change will provide a better juncture at which to become tree lovers. In the meantime, no money, no forests.

I come fresh from an environmental debate affecting this locality where land use and energy overtones look like coming to the same kind of conflict. Here a major plank of future energy supply and all manner of landscape and environmental issues seem to be heading for conflicts.

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Our Prime Minister keeps reminding us that there are difficult decisions to be faced. Forestry is a minor player in a land-use saga which has yet to unfold. Questions are beginning to appear to which there are no satisfactory answers. We started by mentioning land-use values and the tax treatments of farmland. Will forestry come under the same rules as farms and rural estates for, say, inheritance tax? Will woodland owners be pressured into premature felling of carbon-efficient plantations to settle with HMRC? On the other hand, could the concept of more rural and perhaps plantable land coming onto the market create opportunities for a whole new generation of forestry entrepreneurs, like we had in the 1970s and thereafter? The idea that forests, timber production and carbon and climate policy might actually come out of the present hiatus is attractive (if unlikely), isn’t it?

To give you some idea of the nature and depth of these subjects, last summer I diverted on a trip north to visit old friends in Skye to take in some plantations in Galloway, itself the subject of arguments over its possible status as a National Park. This attractive part of lowland Border country can’t even agree on what would seem to be a positive step in the countryside. There are some super commercial forestry estates around Gatehouse of Fleet and further west. I remember it well. The very large-scale commercial planting has produced some wonderful Sitka plantations, now largely in production, in which I played a small but key part, raising the cash in the City of London to buy the hill land and plant it. We fenced out the deer and sheep, ploughed it with a Cuthbertson plough (remember that, any of you?), planted the little Sitka transplants on the peaty furrows that drained the soggy hill – all entirely by hand. A good planter could plant, heel in and move on up to 800 plants or more in a day. They were all on piecework. One of the guys turned it into a family business, firmly planting on the furrows while his wife and 10-year-old son fetched, carried and laid out the bundles of little green and spiky Sitka so there would be no delay to the planting. One of the lads invited me to have a go, which I did, but soon found it pretty darned tough and gave up – to the general mirth of the planting gang.

These hardy little plants grew healthily past the Christmas tree stage, reminding us that the original import, at the inspiration of Prince Albert of Queen Victoria fame, was another spruce, its origins German but, for political reasons no doubt, called Norway spruce.

But their purposes were entirely different – one ornamental and the other commercial. Norway spruce, once past its Christmas tree market, tended to lose vigour and health in dry British climatic conditions, and its widespread planting as a nurse species for oak looked good at the start, but generally declined. In recent decades even the Christmas trees have been replaced by the lusher boughs of firs, especially Abies nordmanniana, which now dominates the seasonal market to the virtual exclusion of Norway.

Our diarist also took a look at the Autumn BudgetOur diarist also took a look at the Autumn Budget (Image: PA)

Meanwhile, in the Rhins and Machars of Galloway, whatever these might be, Yield Class 24 Sitka became a commonplace sight. Sitka spruce, freed from seasonal restraint, reached commercial sawlog dimensions in half the time that its hardier competitors took, and I was both impressed and delighted to see how well it had performed. Sitka spruce is forestry in the North. Without Sitka we’d be nowhere. So the idea that we should reduce its dominance is cloud cuckoo land.

But there is a cloud on the horizon. Its improbable name is Ips. This little bark beetle, which has already attacked the less resistant Norway, is a threat to our Sitka forests and could be a major player in the upland forests. So as you put out your Christmas tree for another year, get accustomed to the possibility of Ips spoiling your Christmas and be alert to the dangers of Ips.

More research money needed and needed now.

A very happy and healthy New Year to you all!