This is the kind of view people are buying up farms for

Driven out by falling produce prices, foreign competition and crises like foot-and-mouth disease, farmers are abandoning the countryside in their droves and city dwellers are moving in for fresh air and the views.

Cornish farmer Michael Hart says it is changing the face of the country and has crushed his dreams of farming side by side with his only son.

Simon, 24, went to agricultural college and his father started looking around for a larger farm for them to work together.

It's got to the stage where we're all asking is it worth carrying on farming? Farms bought by city dwellers

But he found that there were few suitable farms available and even if they could find one, they wouldn't be able to make enough to cover the rent.

Now Simon is a builder and his father knows he will never return to farming.

"He can earn more in a week than I can in three months," said Michael.

"I'm a first generation farmer and I would have loved my son to work with me until I retired and handed it over to him.

"I was delighted when he chose to go to agricultural college. But I don't blame him for leaving farming - most of us are struggling to break even."

Inflated prices

The research by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors identified a trend in people buying small and medium farms with no intention of farming, just to live in the country.

Michael, who is chairman of the Small and Family Farms Alliance, said these buyers are artificially inflating the prices of farms.

"You get these people who have sold a flat in London or Birmingham and they're prepared to pay the same prices in the countryside.

City dwellers seeking rural retreats are outbidding local farmers

"The prices for farms now bear no relation to the agricultural worth of the land.

"I saw a 60-acre farm which had eight or nine flats in converted barns - the price tag was �1 million."

Michael rents a 120-acre farm near St Austell in Cornwall where there is also a ready market for a holiday homes.

The influx of urban cash has had a knock-on effect not only on farms for sale but those for rent as well.

"Farm-owners can make more money from renting to holidaymakers than other farmers.

"You can't blame someone for taking the chance to sell up. It's got to the stage where we're all asking is it worth carrying on farming?

"My wife works and we need working tax credits to make ends meet.

"If I owned the farm I work, it would sell for about �750,000. I can see that would be an attractive move."

Dormitories

Michael is concerned at the changes in country life the city folk bring.

"Some of the people buying these farms treat them just as a place to sleep.

"They still shop in the city, they keep their doctors in town. They don't even use the village post office.