Help your countryside cash in

Maybe it's just me, but would you honestly reply to an advert saying 'Want to earn an extra £200 to £2,000 per week?' when it is plastered across the rear windscreen of a K-reg Vauxhall Carlton?

Surely if the opportunity to earn wads of extra cash is so simple they wouldn't be driving the motoring equivalent of your nan's three-piece suite. And if it isn't a Vauxhall Carlton you can bet your bottom dollar it's a Renault Fuego, or a Hyundai Accent.

The day that money-making notice is written along the bodywork of a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder is the day I ring the number.

Money, whichever way you go about getting your hands on it, seems to be more of a thorny subject than ever.

It could be something to do with the cost of living going through the proverbial roof; or maybe it is tight-wad employers inching salaries up by one half of one quarter per cent each year while secretly plundering the pension fund; or greedy Chancellor Gordon Brown screwing the country on tax because he hopes the walls of Number 10 will protect him from the criticism.

So although there may be no tangible recession "gripping the nation", the tightening of our collective belts is reflected in the fragility of our rural economy.

We may have millions of pounds of funding pumped in at various stages and in different guises throughout the year but it doesn't take much to destabilise the county.

Ninety-nine per cent of you had nothing to do with sugar beet yet the closure of Allscott earlier this year cost us a cool £25 million.

The industry held its head in its hands and wondered how on earth it could survive. Some brave decisions later and the farmers are back on their feet, hoping the Government's renewed and rather urgent interest in climate change means the oilseed rape they've grown in its place might have a more stable future.

There are other big moves afoot. This week sees the opening of the lavish Ludlow Food Centre at Bromfield.

At £2 million, this food hub is something to behold; bringing together some of the best producers of quality produce under one roof. Yet will its arrival help or hinder the local economy?

On the one hand it should attract plenty of visitors thereby benefiting all who supply it, but what exactly will it do to the independent producers who have worked tirelessly up the road in Ludlow itself to create the very market which the food centre hopes to feed off?

Will this competition crush them and their business underfoot or will they all rejoice together in new-found wealth? It is difficult to tell.

Those who celebrate regional food see them as complementary, those small-scale producers fighting to pay their mortgage will think otherwise as the new boy flexes its rather impressive muscles.

In a perfect world there is a place for every entrepreneur and a market for all who believe in their destiny, no matter how big the dream is.

The reality is that natural selection eventually takes over. Money talks and only those with plenty of it can survive.

The only way you can make sure both flourish is to spend your money locally (and I don't mean in the local Tesco). After all, it saves everyone from ringing the numbers printed on the side of Vauxhall Carltons.