By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent

Significant numbers of UK farmers will continue to leave the industry, according to one of their former leaders.

Sir Simon Gourlay, a past president of the National Farmers' Union (NFU), says the government should help them to move on.

His forecast comes as the NFU holds its annual meeting in London. It is debating the future for farming following years of crisis.

Sir Simon, who was president of the NFU from 1986 to 1991, was speaking to BBC News Online.

Accepting the inevitable

He said: "I think the numbers of farmers will go on declining quite steeply. It's happening all across Europe, because unless the farms are fairly large it's very hard to make them viable.

Across Europe farmers face problems

"If I were still president I'd acknowledge that there'd be fewer farmers, and try to persuade the government to support schemes for voluntary retirement.

"I'd accept that funding must be switched away from subsidising production - 90% of it still goes there.

"I'd love to reactivate the idea of the farmers' bond, something backed by Brussels they could sell to raise capital. But they'd have to agree that in a decade there'd be no more production subsidies, only grants for the environment and rural stewardship."

The present leaders of the NFU, which represents farmers in England and Wales, insist that the industry can have a bright future.

The current president, Ben Gill, told the delegates the recent foot-and-mouth disease outbreak "must lead to a recognition by the whole farming community of the need for change".

He said: "We need to understand that no-one is going to hand us a living on a plate.

Wildlife before food

"We need to determine our own destiny - for no-one else is going to do it for us. And we need to do that in a way and with an intensity that we have never seen before."

Grants are wedded to harvests

Mr Gill said the report last week by the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food, chaired by Sir Donald Curry, had "missed some key opportunities".

Its recommendations included redirecting subsidies to protect the countryside, and increasing organic farming.

But a survey of almost 1,000 people in the UK, commissioned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), suggests widespread support for the commission's approach.

The survey's findings include:

• 70% of those interviewed value the countryside for providing homes for wildlife
• 63% value it for recreation or tourism
• 46% say paying farmers to protect wildlife and the environment should be a government priority
• 33% value the countryside as a source of much of our food.