The Source

We are all in it together 

We are living in the middle of a modern epidemic of mass misinformation where an awful lot of people are making an awful lot of noise to the detriment of our food producers, especially our farmers. The challenges currently facing farmers both here in the UK and around the world are not exclusive to just paying ‘a bit more tax’; but also climate change, conflict, delicate local, national, and international economies, politics and policies, rise in cost of living, rise in cost of fuel and fertiliser, shortage of labour, post Brexit, post pandemic… we are all in it together. 

Farmers in the UK are under so much pressure. 

Farmers in the UK are under so much pressure to not only produce highly nutritious food for us all to eat, but also to look after our immediate environments, to educate the public, to inform consumers, to ‘tell their story’, to inspire the next generation, whilst at the same time making the farming business viable, profitable and sustainable. 

There’s absolute no sufficient financial support from the ever changing government administrations; initiating the now infamous and devastating inheritance tax, and withdrawing the BPS (Basic Payment System), to mention but a few, and in parallel getting increasingly taken advantage of by large corporations and supermarkets, by not giving farmers a fair price for their produce, and along with depleting agricultural resources and a consistent lack of support for the mitigating risks of TB and bird flu. 

The average age of a farmer here in the uk is 58 (Farming UK). Three people in the UK farming and agricultural industry die by suicide every week, according to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). And the tragedy that dare not speak its name; people who trespass on land that doesn’t belong to them, and in the middle of dark night to hare course and breed dogs purely for their speed and aggression to the detriment of crops and livestock, and of course, the hares themselves. 

This increasingly heavy load upon the shoulders of our food producers is actually unfathomable, outrageous and very dangerous. 

Are we not asking too much from our farmers? 

Is this not seriously time to take a step back and consider the detrimental effect that is happening to people who are simply growing our food? There is, however, nothing simple about it. Food is far from simple. Food is complicated. Power, influence, money, people; they all play a significant part. But it is the people that really matter; perhaps especially those whom are on the front line in this war against corporate greed, conscious selfishness and political ignorance. 

Farmers are a very rare breed. But that doesn’t justify the colossal burden of simply expecting farmers to have all the answers. But they so often do. 

The future is in our hands 

There is a profound and powerful movement from the ground up where British farmers are now making positive and powerful decisions to farm regeneratively, in amongst other farming initiatives such as agroecology, permaculture, urban, organic and vertical farming. 

When other people have persistently let our food producers down; farmers are beginning to fight back. This, perhaps, is just the beginning. 

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