A WEST Devon farmer who was fined £1,000 for fertilising moorland at Vixen Tor near Merrivale has challenged her conviction for environmental offences in the High Court. The court was told that between March 31 and April 13 2003, Mary Alford applied calcified seaweed and farmyard manure to the four fields, in an attempt to make the grass palatable to cattle, with the intention of grazing 40 suckler cows on the land. Plymouth Magistrates Court last June found Mrs Alford guilty of four offences contrary to regulation 19 of the Environmental Impact Assessment (Uncultivated Land and Semi-natural Areas). She was ordered to pay £5,000 costs to Defra, in addition to her fine. In the High Court, the judge found that prior to 2002, the land had been effectively abandoned, before Mrs Alford repaired boundary walls and fences and made it stock-proof. She had not applied for a ?screening decision? ? an environmental impact assessment ? nor had she received permission from the secretary of state to apply liming material to the land. These steps have to be taken if a project involves use of the land for ?intensive agricultural purposes? and the Plymouth judge had concluded this was the use in Mrs Alford?s case. Mrs Alford?s barrister, William Batstone, told Lord Justice Brook and Justice David Steel that the Plymouth judge was wrong in finding the phrase meant an ?intensification? of agricultural purposes and said it distorted the ordinary, natural meaning of the word. But Peter Blair, for Defra, said Mrs Alford had been properly convicted of the offences and said her cause sought to focus and ?overplay? the significance of the phrase. Recognising the importance of the case to the environment, and the farming industry, the judges reserved their decision on Mrs Alford?s appeal until a later, unspecified date.
