The National Farmers’ Union estimates uncompensated losses to farmers at £965m.The losses suffered by the tourist industry are even greater. The English Tourism Council calculates that spending fell 6 per cent, with a total loss of £1.4bn in the first half of the year, and another £1.7bn in the second, and there were similar big losses in Wales and Scotland.There were big political costs too: foot-and-mouth brought about the end of Maff, the long-criticised Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Nick Brown was removed from his job as Agriculture Minister in June and his department merged with the environment department to create a unified Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.But perhaps the most long-lasting effects of 2001’s rural trauma will be indirect ones. Lord Haskins, the Government’s “rural recovery co-ordinator”, hinted at it in his October report when he suggested the true impact had been “emotional rather than economic”. The nightmarish images prompted the fundamental question: is all well with farming?The Government is opting for a root-and-branch review of agriculture, and three inquiries into the outbreak are under way. The most wide-ranging of these, the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food, is attempting to take an ambitious look at the place and role of agriculture in society.It is likely to suggest a changing role for farmers as guardians of the landscape and the environment as much as producers of food It is likely to mark a radical break with the past.

But after the images of foot-and-mouth disease of the last year, it could hardly do less.. Momentous is an overused word, but it accurately describes the 12 months that Britain’s railways have lived through. The year began in chaos following the Hatfield disaster, and it ends with the network arguably in deeper crisis still, following Stephen Byers’s decision to force Railtrack into administration. There is also the small matter of the e-mail sent out on 11 September by his special adviser Jo Moore, trawling for bad news to “bury” under cover of the attack on the twin towers.

Mr Byers’s subsequent decision to pull the plug on Railtrack on a Sunday night in early October, just as the bombs began to fall on Afghanistan, was widely seen as another example of his spin doctor employing her black arts.If the railways were in a mess before Railtrack went under, they are in a worse state now. Before the administrators went in, the network was showing tentative signs of recovering from the collective breakdown it experienced in the wake of Hatfield, which, at its worst, resulted in 1,200 temporary speed restrictions being imposed. In the three months since, the performance of the network has declined markedly, with delays attributable to Railtrack up by some 45 per cent, Railtrack warning that it faced penalty payments of £350m, and the administrators asking for £3bn to keep the network going until next April.The chaos on the network was mirrored by an upheaval among the men who regulate the industry. Tom Winsor, the Rail Regulator, was told that there may not be any room in the new set-up for him, and then Sir Alastair Morton, the chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority, quit early, lambasting Mr Byers for his lack of vision and funding for the railways.Richard Bowker, former chairman of Virgin Trains, was appointed in his place and quickly made his mark by announcing plans to halve the number of rail franchises from 25 to around a dozen, and by describing the way the railway operates as “bonkers”.