Truxton and 80 tractors
Steve Reed the DEFRA Secretary, addressed the Oxford Conference at the beginning of January, in an effort to calm the waters with the farming community, and boy do they need calming. All around the country there were tractors everywhere, hundreds of them all protesting. The lady from the Halifax, or even, Rachel from accounts, has disappeared of to China, and was keeping well out of the way, so he was on his own.
After a lot of waffle, as an introduction, we are told that there is to be three strands to his strategy. The lawyer from Newham would have called them pillars and he had six!
His first strand was all about telling farmers that they all needed to be producing lots of good hearty produce, and his words, ‘they need to turn a decent profit’. However there were no instructions on how to do it, with supermarkets dominating food purchase, and facing massive costs from National Insurance and minimum wage increases, along with the rest of us, the chances of getter a fair price for our product is nil. The Government purchasers of food, schools and MOD, are to be told to make more effort, but we have been there before, several times, and nothing changes, this is naive.
The second stance is all about diversification. Farmers have been diversifying for generations, this old chestnut gets rolled out every time. The question has to be asked why is it that farmers need to diversify, to meet the needs of cheap food and ever demanding supermarkets and food service. There is a promise to tear up red tape, heard it all before, and nothing changes, promises of new barns, bigger barns, and grants to help. However, in our experience, all these promises tend to be gold plated, and the costs cannot be justified unless someone is prepared to pay for the food that ensues.
The third stance, we won’t call it a pillar, refers to the environment, and all the money that government is contributing to teach us how to farm in an environmentally friendly way. Those of us that have produced organic vegetables, for some considerable time, know all about this, Sir, we know all about no fertiliser and no insecticides. Farming our dairy non organically, we use no insecticides, and never have done. Why do we not produce milk organically, no one will pay the real cost of doing it! Food has to be paid for, we have 10km of hedgerows, and paying us 10pence a metre, does not even pay the cost of cutting them.
To conclude we are going to be offered a road map for the next 25 years, and the farmers are going to write it, apparently. Sorry but the Labour party have been in opposition for 14 years, and you might think they would have spent some of that time putting this map together so that it was ready to go, not something that might appear in two years time.
To be honest this is all just the side show, the only game in town, is ‘The Traitors’, and Rachel from accounts, is in both shows, as she stamps her little feet in a corner.
Having attended Hampshire Farmers Markets and Winchester in particular, for nearly 25 years, I am going to cut back to just the last market in the month.
Stoney Cross. After the breakdown with our pasteuriser in November, we have not a single Stoney Cross left. Sorry about this, however normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, probably mid-end January.
When the Lawyer from Holborn sat down to eat his Christmas lunch of turkey and vegetables, the Cranberry sauce may have come from miles away, but the turkey was probably local, he may have been given it. The vegetables looked wonderful and a whole plate of them, actually more than he could probably eat, but at 10 pence a bag they just had to be bought. No matter that lots of veg will end up going to waste, those lovely farmers, had worked diligently, so that the country could have fresh vegetables, so cheap there was no chance of anyone making a profit at that price. Yet the lawyer had a headache, he had had a headache ever since the Budget. He had left the budget to the lady form the Halifax, not knowing she had overstated her CV. She had gone out to get Business in a big way, including those farmers. He and she have yet to learn that you have to take people with you, yet week after week, he and the Lady from the Halifax, have this fascination with setting out to deliberately ostracise sectors of the population, that work hard, pay their taxes, and are the backbone of Britain. The atmosphere is now toxic, and his headache is getting worse. I have told him to stop digging holes for himself, but what does he do, he goes away and buys a bigger spade!
What is the matter with him, get a grip!
