Star comment: Back our farms and buy British
The talk is all of signs of economic recovery. Politicians, economists, and commentators are being given plenty of airtime to talk it up.
There is one sector though that rarely is given any prominence and it is a sector that is of crucial importance in this part of the world. It is the agricultural sector. The farmer's voice is, as so often, not being heard.
It is only when things get really desperate, and farmers feel impelled to take direct action – as the dairy farmers did a while back when they were faced with a deal so lousy that making milk looked a permanent loss-maker – that the public gets to hear.
And the farmers are on the wrong end of a lousy deal again, this time with beef.
The price they are receiving from retailers has plunged to its lowest for over two years.
Helen Cork of the National Farmers Union in Shropshire says the market is being flooded with imports. So while British farmers are doing the business in terms of producing beef, they are not getting enough for it.
"The only way they are going to get paid a better price is if more people are buying the product," she says.
This is a problem which clearly has several layers, one of which has become a familiar theme – the price British farmers are being paid by supermarkets for what they produce. Then there are those imports which are coming on to the market.
What farmers could do with is some stability in the market to build up some confidence for the future, so that they can have belief that they too will share in the much-heralded economic upturn.
The call from Helen to consumers is to buy British beef. This has to be one of the easiest, most practical, and most pleasurable ways of supporting the farmers of Shropshire and Mid Wales that you can have. It only takes a second to look on the label to see if it is British beef, or to ask your butcher if it is locally sourced.
Where they are available or close, you could pop in to your local farm shop. Using locally sourced food, which has not had to travel far, let alone from abroad, makes environmental sense too.
British beef producers are under unwanted pressure, but so long as they continue to produce an excellent, high quality, delicious product, they still have an ace to play with consumers.
