The world is full of contradictions, where what people want to believe seems to be the opposite of reality.

For example, we hear many highly intelligent people in positions of the highest influence casually dismissing farming as being less important than it used to be because, as a money maker it has been overtaken by other “businesses”, such as the tourist industry. I listen to comments of this kind, and look around at fields which are full of animals, and others, which will soon be full of crops, and wonder if there is something wrong with my eyesight. I have even heard a senior official of the Environment Agency say, at a Scrutiny Committee meeting, that the government stopped doing routine maintenance of the main rivers, because it was no longer important to prevent the flooding of farm land, as the decision had been taken to abandon the policy of making the UK self-sufficient in terms of food production. Well, food may be very cheap these days, but, have we got our priorities right if we value the services of other businesses more highly than the farmers who produce the food we eat? We can do without most things – including tourism – but we cannot do without food, and isn’t it our well ordered agriculture which makes our land fit for tourism anyway?

I have nothing against superstores in principle: what I object to is unfair trading by superstores.I understand that the main reason for the present plight of British farming is the effect that superstores have had in forcing farm prices down to ridiculous levels. I believe the decision not to maintain main rivers was taken some time in about 1985. So, perhaps I can be forgiven for being cynical. I wonder if our Whitehall mandarins at the time and afterwards have been manipulating inflation figures. If food prices go up, benefits would have to go up, and if benefits have to rise, so would taxes. So, if food could be bought cheaply from abroad, UK farmers would have to drop their prices, and the superstores could become the instruments of national policy in keeping inflation at a manageable rate – while the cost of fuel and machinery rocketed. Of course, somebody had to pay for this policy, and our farmers are still paying for it – very dearly.

One wonders where this process will end. Our ship building industry is gone: so has our heavy engineering industry. Our coal mines have closed down, and there is very little left of our steel production industry. Some people may say: well then, why should we grumble if our agriculture goes too? What does it matter to us – what’s wrong with buying our food from France or Argentina anyway?

So is it illogical to ask where the money will come from to buy food from abroad, if there is no industry left to provide the cash to buy it? And, is it in the national interest to send our money abroad to pay for foreign food, rather than to spend it in the UK and keep it circulating in the UK? How long can a nation of over 62 million people continue to live on borrowed money, services and tourism?

Am I wrong to think that a country which treats the people who produce its food badly is committing national suicide? Yet, there is a story ( I don’t know how true) that, when the Council Tax was introduced, every farm house was automatically put into Band “H”. Now, farm incomes are so low that council tax has become a serious issue for many farmers. Wouldn’t it be best to replace this unfair tax with a local income tax?

And finally, there is the Euro issue. Now, I know that, as soon as I mention the dreaded “E” word, I will be accused of blasphemy, and there will be such a howl of protest as may fill your letters column for the next 12 months! Suffice to say that on 20th January 2003 the NFU Council voted by a majority of 58 to 11 that UK farming would be better off with the Euro than without it. Now I also know how little credibility the NFU has with many farmers, but, with a majority of that size, I would have thought that there is at least a possibility that farming and the countryside might benefit from monetary union. It is, after all, mainly the exchange rate of the pound against the Euro which can make EU produce cheaper to import than it is to sell home grown produce.