THE report published this week which shows that farmers in Cumbria are now making more money from tourism than they are from their traditional activities can be seen as good or bad news.

If you are the sort who looks at a glass with 50% of its capacity taken up by water, and says it is half empty, then you are likely to weep and wail about the plight of farmers being so bad, due to the appalling treatment of agriculture by the powers that be, whether they are in London, Brussels or beyond, that they have to take in tourists.

If, on the other hand, the glass looks half full, then you are likely to sing the praises of the enterprising nature of the farming community for seizing the opportunities thrown up by a changing world, where tourism is king and the Government made money available for promotion and entrepreneurial responses to recent blows to agriculture.

The sensible response is to applaud the latter, while keeping an eye on the implications of the former.

There is no doubt that agriculture has been poorly served by generations of Governments who fail to think through the impact of their policies on the ground. Short-term thinking may be useful in a fast-moving world, where the ability to make policy on the hoof goes hand in glove with political expediency. But management of land, husbandry of stock and tinkering with the landscape has to take time.

Having cajoled farmers for more than half a century to produce as much food as possible, as quickly as possible and most importantly as cheaply as possible, it was not surprising that that is what they did, even if some traumatic crises like BSE and Foot and Mouth were inevitable consequences of mass production at any price.

Now farmers are adapting to a one-world view, which deplores subsidies in one country that disadvantage another, which treats the environment as paramount and which encourages a return to locally-produced quality food.

It is to the enormous credit of the farming community as a whole that so many of them have made the changes necessary to ride what some believe the biggest shake-up of agriculture and the wider economy for more than a century.

Nor is it just a matter of opening up a bed and breakfast, lucrative as that can be. It is those who have given added value to the tourist trade by developing activities allied to their traditional role who have made the real difference.

Gardening, walking and angling are Britain's three favourite past times. So who is best resourced to cater to those needs? Why, the farmer.

And who can provide the freshest, tastiest and most immediate supply of food for the breakfast table or cafe? The farmer, again.

If you add in the ability to provide land for the sort of outdoor adventure the tourists seem to crave, it is no wonder that South Lakeland has been bursting at the seams with visitors this week.

But all that should not completely disguise the need to have an eye for farmers' two core services to society, providing food for the table and taking care of the countryside.

A reduction in bureaucracy, rewards for the sort of land management appropriate for the local area, more controls of competition from parts of the world where the restraints are less stringent, and all the other wider battles for an even playing field are still there to be won.

But the really good news is that if we do end up in a world without government agricultural subsidies, the Lake District will be well placed, with the tourism making up the shortfall and bankrolling the agriculture instead.