I sometimes wonder how we keep going

THERE are times when I look around the world of agriculture and marvel at the fact that it continues to function at all, given the degree of incompetence, inefficiency and indeed stupidity which I see displayed on an almost daily basis.

Indeed I can think of no other sphere of economic activity where such characteristics are quite so abundantly visible.

And I am driven to the conclusion that it is only the sheer, dogged determination of farmers to keep going whatever the circumstances, rather than any high-quality, principled leadership, that allows our industry to survive.

Just consider what has floated across the radar screen in recent days. If you supply milk to Arla you will have been informed that there will be a price drop of 0.9ppl this month because of “inflation costs” – whatever that means.

At the same time a Cornish customer at the other end of the supply chain has been informed of a six pence increase in the price of a small pot of cream and another two pence a pint increase in the cost of her milk.

She queried it with her supplier, as did another customer in Hampshire. Both got the same reply from the milkman: the increases had been imposed because Arla wanted to pass more money back to the farmers.

Then there’s the business that has been taking place at the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) where desperate measures are now being resorted to in order to plug the growing number of holes in a sinking vessel. It’s already been weakened by the horticulture and potato sectors jumping ship after successfully challenging the compulsory levy but now has hastily rewritten the rules to prevent dairy farmers following suit.

Having already been told by the red meat sector that the advice it hands out in return for the levy isn’t wanted because it’s generally useless, the AHDB is now under siege from all sides.

And while we are on the subject of failing (in both senses of the word) farming organisations, what of Red Tractor? What indeed.

Its latest coup has been to join in the celebration (such as it was) of national burger day last week by urging the nation to sink its gnashers into a succulent Aberdeen Angus burger seasoned with salt and cracked black pepper – and duly used an image of a twin-pack in its publicity campaign.

However, you didn’t need a microscope to be able to discern the fact that the pack bore a March 7 sell-by date. What sort of message would that have sent to consumers in August? Would it not have been a more sensible course to present a pack with a current date on it?

And anyway, applying salt and black pepper to meat counts as processing it. And as the law currently stands – and as Farmers for Action discovered on a visit to a meat warehouse a few years ago – if the seasoning is carried out in this country that allows for imported beef to be sold as a British product.

In other words, Red Tractor’s juicily succulent burgers could have been made from beef produced anywhere in the world.

I refer the court to my remarks in the opening paragraph and rest my case.

Burgers could have been made from beef produced anywhere in the world