Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Farming: it’s all about educating the public
Ro Collingborn catches up with people at the Brinkworth Show after a break for Covid
IT’S quite exciting to have a deluge of rain at long last. Here in Brinkworth, the weather gets set, and until recently it was stuck in a drought. I think we were as dried up as anywhere in the UK.
Now it’s raining, I expect we’ll get more rain than anywhere else, but the sound of the noisy and consistent downpour is still very exciting.
Our local show last Saturday, was very well attended and the car park which is half of a large field was completely full. It can be alarming to see how people have grown older in the two years since Covid struck. Even the younger ones are looking older, and as for my age group...
It also strikes me I must look older too.
The main attractions were Punch and Judy, Morris Men, hawking and a dog show where the judge had the anguishing job of choosing the scruffiest dog, the smallest dog, the friendliest dog and the dog the judge would most like to take home. As the small dogs were very small and the friendly dogs so friendly, they leapt onto the judge nearly knocking her over, this wasn’t an easy task, and thank goodness there were lots of rosettes to hand out.
An enterprising lady called Chloe was there with her “mobile” farm, consisting of various rescue cases, chickens, a premature angus calf, a goat, a pony and a donkey. She often takes her animals into schools to help explain farming to children who may never have seen a farm animal in situ. She tells me: “Nowadays we are so far detached from where our food comes actually comes from and it is a huge passion of mine to educate. I don’t care if people still then choose to eat meat, or consume dairy, or if they decide not to. It isn’t my intention to change that but I think people would have a lot more respect for the food that is put in front of them if they knew more about the process. We can then make educational and informed decisions about what we consume and where from.”
It’s all about education and it couldn’t be more needed than at the present time, when so much misinformation is published on the web. A
It’s hard when we are tarred by the malpractices of distant countries which farm in a completely different way
gentleman watching the animals Chloe had brought along remarked about how cruel he thought farmers were. This was a red rag to a bull as far as I was concerned, and I was straight into the fray. “Why is that then?”
“They make their cows have a calf every year and inject them to make them keep on milking”
I was able to point out that cows in the wild have a calf every year, and the drug BST is illegal here, though it’s still used in the States. His other complaint about herds of 1,000 cows kept inside all year, I was also able to counter, saying that sort of thing is far more prevalent in the States, which was obviously where his preconceptions were coming from. Fortunately, he still loved milk, and drunk lots of it!
This very nice gentleman made me think about how we do take ourselves for granted, and we do need to get out there and explain how we care for our animals, and look after our farms and environment.
We’re not greedy farmers. If we were greedy, we wouldn’t stay farming, as there are many easier ways of earning a living! Most farmers have such a strong link with the land and their traditional way of life; farming know-how can take a lifetime to acquire, so we can’t expect the general public to know everything about us. It’s hard when we are tarred by the malpractices of distant countries which farm in a completely different way, and one that we don’t approve of either. It’s another reason why farmers are so opposed to the trade deals with the southern hemisphere that have been rushed through by our politicians. Parliament is now going to be allowed to debate the trade deal with Australia, somewhat late after it’s being signed, but at least it is some kind of sop.
Ro Collingborn has been dairy chairman of the Women’s Food and Farming Union, on the Milk Development Council, the Veterinary Products Committee, the RSPCA Council and was a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust director.