Moo

I’d like to bring a new campaign to your attention http://www.fairtradeforbritishfarmers.co.uk/. Now I don’t come from farming stock although I grew up in a fishing village and felt very connected to the countryside and the sea, and I spent a lot of time on farms and smallholdings overseas when I was a kid but this is, I think, worthy of some attention.

Only 18% of us buy British-produced food despite some of the strictest food standards in the world, thousands of farms and livelihoods have been lost and our very landscape is endangered. Fifty years ago there were some 200,000 dairy farmers. Now there are around 12,000.

For us city folk this may all seem very far removed. My generation may even remember when we were a lot younger, hearing about butter, fruit and milk mountains - farmers were over producing food and it resulted in terrible waste. So you might say, well isn’t it a good idea that there are less farmers? Well, as society changes so must every industry associated with it, so yes, it was inevitable that as we moved away from an agrarian society, farming and farmers would diversify and people would move into other work. But we’re talking about people earning below the minimum wage, working long – often very physically demanding – hours, and families being in genuine crisis and often losing everything, because of the way we now shop and eat.

So if you’re interested in high food standards, supporting local producers / farmers / growers, if you aspire to travel more than your food (which will often have travelled thousands and thousands of miles), if you think our unique landscape is worth preserving then check out the website for useful and practical (and not inconvenient) things you can do to help.

There are also some nice pictures of cows and I really like cows…