A SURVEY conducted by farming and various rural groups has concluded that there is a "worrying disconnection" with the British countryside, particularly among people in towns and cities.

It certainly makes grim reading. But for those among us who monitor such trends, none of it comes as much of a surprise.

Despite the fact that we now live in a world of instant communications, it would appear very little has changed since the middle of the 19th Century, when the inhabitants of those dark satanic mills never ever saw sunlight or breathed fresh air, let alone gazed at a herd of bullocks in a field.

Campaigners claim that a growing number of people are so out-of-touch with the land that they think rice is grown in Britain, and have no idea that beer is made from barley.

Among the findings in the survey of 1,000 people were that only nine per cent of respondents had a relative who worked on farm, compared with 23 per cent of their grandparents' generation.

Only 35 per cent of those quizzed had ever met a farmer and there was widespread confusion about food production, with nearly one in 10 people unaware that tomatoes and onions are grown in the UK.

And so it goes on, this litany of ignorance.

To those of you who might view such developments as being symptomatic of today's relentless pace of change, and quite possibly a good thing, I would urge extreme caution. For by distancing ourselves from the countryside, we are in effect alienating ourselves from nature and denying the spiritual side of our existence.

For example, take my prophecy that there would be more fires on the Malvern Hills. All right, hardly Nostradamus, I grant you. But it's not so much that these things will inevitably happen, rather the increasing frequency of such events that bothers me.

There have indeed been more fires - everywhere. Three recent blazes on the Hills recently tied up to 50 firefighters. Alec Mackie, spokesman for Hereford and Worcester Fire Brigade asked people walking on the Hills to be careful of smoking and dropping litter.

This was not the first time he had expressed concern. The day before, the Evening News reported him as saying: "You can start grass fires in any manner of ways - dropped cigarettes, broken glass or plastic catching the sun's reflection.

"While we're fighting grass fires, we could be saving lives."

Meanwhile, another threat to the environment emerged after shepherd Richard Smith announced he aimed to take photographs of irresponsible dog owners after three more of his flock were savaged by out-of-control dogs roaming on the Hills.

Now, it looks as if llamas will be protecting the sheep. Bizarre, yes - but as the public's ignorance increases, so does the proportion of levels of ingenuity required to meet the problem.

Meanwhile, David Whitehorn, conservation officer for the Conservators, said information boards were being drawn up by consultants. The aim was to inform people, rather than instruct them, he added. Hopefully.

These are just a few examples of the lengths that must now be taken to combat the stupidity of the general public. This ignorance is undoubtedly the product of the same low level of awareness that manifests in the woeful lack of knowledge about Britain's staple crops.

But you don't have to look far to see the reasons for this. Over the last few years, there has been a dramatic shift in emphasis from the natural to the manufactured world. We no longer grow our own food, preferring the instant fix of the supermarket.

What gardens we still possess are arid, sterile deserts of stone and decking, where everything is pinioned by the straitjacket of human control. Television programmes nurture and encourage the idea that a garden is really just another room, only without a ceiling.

But there is no space for wildlife in these open-air plastic and stone monuments to vanity, these grotesque parodies to designers' preposterous conceits.

As our backyards become extensions to yet more bricks and mortar, the more divorced we become from the simple pleasures of the natural garden. We no longer take solace in the backyard patch of green, our ears deaf to the blackbird's boastful song, sightless eyes that cannot see the wren creeping in the ivy.

And still we cannot understand what is happening. Perplexed by the disappearance of sparrows, we wonder where they have gone, and write earnest letters to The Independent, which has naively offered a reward to anyone who can explain the birds' decline.

The fact that sparrows cannot live on stone, plastic and decking never seems to occur to anyone. Not even to highly paid newspaper executives.

More bizarrely still, have you noticed that no one cooks at home anymore, let alone grow vegetables? And yet, incredibly, the TV is awash with cookery shows... while takeaways do business like there is no tomorrow.

Our lives are now controlled by global food production, our attitudes conditioned by the instant visual media in the corner of our living rooms.

Small wonder then, that when we venture out into the natural world, we do not know how to behave. In this strange environment devoid of electronic stimulation, a farm gate is something to be left open, not closed.

Our dogs run loose, and once again succumb to the primitive urges that lurk just below the surface of this domesticated wolf. When sheep are mauled, we are either amazed or callously indifferent.

And litter is left everywhere - after all, that is how we behave on the streets, innit?

Without fail, the cigarette end is thrown into the undergrowth, this perfect, red-hot firelighter that's just itching to make sweet music with some willing dried grass or bracken.

The result is the all-too-familiar headlines that appear in newspapers every spring after a few weeks without rainfall.

At the same time, town-dwelling worthies massage their consciences with regular pronouncements on, say, foxhunting - yet manifestly fail to see the bigger picture of an impoverished countryside whose only inhabitants are the middle classes in their shiny 4X4s, themselves grateful refugees from Britain's sprawling cities and their attendant spiralling crime levels.

On the riverbank by Worcester's Ketch Inn, a woodland walk is ruined by contractors "pollarding" trees. Part of the Severn corridor is thus rendered sterile. Stupid, thoughtless or just plain arrogant? A bit of all three, I would suspect.

More and more, bit by bit, we are becoming detached from the umbilical cord that joins us to our universally shared rural past. But as we congratulate ourselves on our new-found sophistication, we must also face up to the consequences.

And that will be more fires on our hills and forests, increased attacks by dogs on livestock, litter, arson and ever-more wanton vandalism.

Our ignorance has become a prison and - for the moment - we appear to have mislaid the key.