AS CENTRAL Europe risks being parched by climate change, Cumbria farmers could stand to benefit from our changing weather.

Sir Ben Gill, the former head of the National Farmers' Union, told a packed Penrith conference on farming futures that the region could do "pretty well" in a warmed-up world.

As long as the Gulf Stream remained, North West England would retain a climate suitable for livestock rearing on grassland and for growing increasingly important fuel crops, argued the pragmatic Sir Ben. At the same time farmers in France, Spain and Portugal would be increasingly blighted by drought, giving UK farmers the competitive advantage.

"George Bush shows he is out of touch with reality in denying climate change," Sir Ben declared. "The evidence is here. You near Carlisle saw it in the last few weeks.

"We will go back to a more pastoral landscape and be more focused on grassland production. We will do it well and that is good news for ourselves.

"We must, as a county, be organised to exploit this to make sure the benefits come back to us."

Sir Ben's comments were made in the week when Environment Minister Elliot Morley urged farmers to consider how they would cope with climate change.

According to Government predictions, southern and eastern Britain will become increasingly hot and dry. Among the existing trends that will accelerate is the movement of grazing animals such as sheep and cattle further west.

"Although livestock might move west to get the best grass, we might find we are making more cheese because the French can no longer do so and getting a bigger share of the lamb market," said Mr Morley.

Northern areas are likely to become more important agriculture regions as Britain's richest cereal growing areas in East Anglia and Lincolnshire suffer inundation and salt soils because of increasing storminess and rising sea levels.

But, while there might be some flipsides to the shifts, the Government's message was climate change would mostly be bad news for Britain.

With high temperatures will come more insects, more parasites and extreme weather of the kind that ripped though Cumbria last month, inundating Carlisle and tearing down trees.

Scientists are also divided on whether climate change will end the Gulf Stream. Without it our region's weather would match Quebec in Canada where temperatures slump to minus 30 in winter.