Consumed by trolley rage . . .

I hate you all, writes our Rural Affairs Editor Nathan Rous.  Sorry, not you, I meant supermarkets. I hate supermarkets.

I hate them with a searing passion only equalled by seeing Janet Street Porter on the TV, or receiving a call from BT, or opening the door to a guy pretending to be deaf selling pegs for a tenner (I always whisper an offer of a cuppa and if he says ‘Love one, mate’ I shut the door in his face).

Actually, I hate quite a lot of things: odd socks, Tony Parsons, hoovering, NIMBYs, energy companies, Premiership footballers, vodka and binmen to name but a few.

Yet in order of hatred, supermarkets sit proudly on top of my league table for provoking the real inner rage.

Unless you have already packed your cave in the Stiperstones with supplies and are sitting it out for the arrival of World War Three you will have endured the trauma of shopping in your local supermarket over Christmas.

Even those within ambling distance of Waitrose in Newport will have seen the serenity of their store destroyed overnight as the hordes descended.

These aren’t just ordinary shoppers, as Dervla Kirwan might say, but maniacal, crazed, aggressive shoppers who, in their quest for over-eating and drinking at Christmas, will stand aside for no-one.

The aisles could be littered with old ladies stuck on their backs like greying, twin-setted beetles but during the festive period they would have to stay there. It’s every man, woman and wheelchair for themselves.

And that’s if you can even make it into the car parks. I treated myself to the delights of Asda at Donnington Wood - not a cheery store at the best of times, despite the volume of its in-store greeter - and while I sat waiting for a parking space watched a six-year-old repeatedly flick me the Vs from the back of his mum’s Renault Scenic. If there was any justice in the world Santa would bring him a pair of mittens.

Of course, food shopping at Christmas has always been hell.

It’s grocery shopping at New Year that kickstarts the real battles as there’s hardly anything left on the shelves.

Like it or not, most of you will have fallen victim to the automated response which makes us restore fridge levels to capacity just in case Aunt Marge and Uncle Bert manage to make it over from Cambridge in their Morris Minor. And although many still have containers piled high with leftovers, that quest for something new drives us back to our supermarket masters.

But if ever there was an insight into how life would be like if our home-grown agriculture industry continues to nosedive then this is surely it.

You see, without British farmers and growers we don’t simply grab what we need from abroad and continue like nothing matters.

It doesn’t work like that.

In the coming years every country on the planet is expecting its population to spiral so why would they send their goodies to Britain if their own people need it just as much?

We cannot afford to let our farmers sell up their land and move out of food production because if they do it will fundamentally affect our very way of life.

Empty shelves won’t be a once-yearly phenomena but a regular occurrence. And all this means that the once-yearly hell of supermarket shopping will become a weekly one too.

It is time we backed our growers, producers and food entrepreneurs in 2008 because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Got any space in the Stiperstones?