Fundraising mission to assist farmer in his 80s who’s going through a £40,000 invoice after fly-tippers dumped 200 tons of garbage on his land

A campaign has been launched to help raise money for a farmer who was hit with a £40,000 bill after fly-tippers dumped 200 tons of rubbish on his land.

The farmer, who is in his 80s, had recently lost his wife before he discovered the illegal waste which was illegally left on his field in Hertfordshire last summer.

After a desperate search to find the culprit came to no avail, he has been forced to foot the bill for the cleanup.

The farmer was quoted £40,000 to remove the waste from his land because of fears over contamination from toxic substances. 

In a further blow, the farmer could face prosecution by the local council if he does not clear the waste from his land.

The heartbreaking story was seen by Archie Ford, who decided to set up a fundraising page with the aim of raising the money to clear the farmer’s field.

He has set a target of £45,000 to allow the farmer to ‘clear his land, retain his livelihood, and better secure his land from anything like this happening again’.

Mr Ford added: ‘The plight of farmers has been well-documented recently, please help me assist someone who forms the backbone of our country through his work.’ 

As of Monday night, the page had already received around 300 donations totalling more than £7,000.

The Hertfordshire farmer previously admitted that there was no way he would be able to afford the cost of the cleanup on his own.

In a statement to the National Farmers Union (NFU), he wrote: ‘It is just devastating. This is not covered by insurance and there is just no way that I am going to be able to pay this – I don’t know what I am going to do.

‘There is a week’s work here to clear it all as well. I have fly-tipping here every week, but I’ve never had it on this scale.

‘The situation is getting worse and it disrupts our ability to produce food and care for the countryside.’ 

His neighbour Will Dickinson said the mess, which included roofing material, bathroom and kitchen fittings, and house clearance rubbish, was a stark example of the reality facing the nation’s countrymen.

The sixth-generation arable farmer said: ‘It is unjust. The trouble is with these criminals, they’re not stupid a lot of the time. They’ll normally go through waste with a toothcomb to remove anything identifying.’

He added: ‘He phoned me up last summer and he was distraught.

‘He has a field under a government scheme for growing wild bird food and it only requires someone walking through the crop every ten days to check the growth.

‘But a large two-ton concrete block covering the gateway, which he thought made the land secure, had been pushed out of the way.

‘We counted 40 loads of rubbish. Bathroom suits, kitchens, house clearance items and a suspected asbestos sheet were in the dump to name a few.

‘But the scariest of all was evidence of drugs and clinical waste such as syringes, needles and swabs.

‘I’ve previously lost five acres due to fly-tipping which contaminated my fields with glass and asbestos – you don’t dare harvest any of that crop.’

Most illegal dump sites are situated in countryside locations, where they are hidden on what should be greenbelt land, and are usually run by organised criminal gangs, police said. 

The gangs make money by charging significantly less than official operators to take and bury waste. 

Government data estimates waste criminals cost the economy £1billion every year – with the amount of waste annually collected able to fill Wembley Stadium 30 times over. 

Mr Dickinson added: ‘Fly-tipping really doesn’t help when the costs of running a farm have escalated almost stratospherically and the price of crops has fallen.

‘There’s no cross-authority knowledge. If it’s hazardous, you go to the Environment Agency. If it’s not, then it’s your council.

‘If it’s in a dangerous place, you tell the police but if it’s a few bin bags, then it won’t get reported.

‘Despite this being 200 tons, the Environment Agency decided it wasn’t big or dangerous enough for them to get involved.

‘The judiciary need to stand up. They need to enforce fines and prison sentences on people. It worked with hare coursing, another issue which impacts farmers.

‘We need to be encouraging responsible behaviour at the very least – making it easier to get rid of waste in the household at tips.’

  At a debate in the House of Lords in January, Baroness Hayman of Ullock said: ‘It is important to say quite clearly that the government do not believe that the status quo is working.

‘We need to make changes because it is getting out of control. We are looking at the best ways that we can make changes to improve the situation.’

The NFU is calling for all authorities with responsibility for tackling fly-tipping to work closely together to secure more proportionate arrests and convictions.

They are also asking for a simple reporting mechanism to be developed and for the government to educate householders on their responsibilities for their waste.

NFU Hertfordshire chair Robert Law, who farms at Royston, said: ‘I think fly-tipping is out of control.

‘This shocking incident in St Albans, where 200 tons of rubbish has been left rotting in a field for more than six months, is a clear example of that.

‘We are regularly seeing industrial-scale fly-tips being carried out by organised criminal gangs.

‘This devastates the countryside, damages the environment and is costing the industry tens of millions of pounds in clear-up costs, with individual farmers left with bills of thousands of pounds to clear rubbish left of their farms, despite being the victims of crime.’