Andrew Brown has a mixed 250Ha farm in the south of Rutland with 60% arable and 40% permanent pasture, 200 breeding sheep and 100 beef cattle.
A few of us here in the NFU and other notable organisations have come up with the idea of holding a big farming event in central London, not only to somehow mitigate the loss of the Royal Show but also to educate the populous of the metropolis in the ways of modern farming.
The idea is to take over one of the London parks or a major road, get each county in England to have a pitch championing the way they produce high quality food whilst also looking after the great British countryside. The question arises - when should this event be held?
Should it be in the Olympic year or should we wait until after when the hype has died down and people are looking for something to do? The French achieved great success with their Nature Capitale, which took over the Champs Elysee in May this year. There, thousands of farmers brought there produce to town to show off all that is best about French agriculture.
We all know that getting something like this off the ground will be a big ask and it will take a hard core of dedicated enthusiasts, but it will also take the support of English farmers collectively and if we can pull it off it will be a wonderful event. I bet not many Londoners know that the food and farming sector contributes £90 billion to the economy and supplies 5 million jobs, or that farmers do £400 million of unpaid conservation work every year.
Our self-sufficiency has gone from 87% in 1997 to 70% in 2007, 76% of apples here are imported. These figures are obviously both infuriating and frustrating. Why can we not supply 100% of the food that can be grown here? London is where all the movers and shakers and policy makers hang out so it has to be the location for this event.
Let’s all pull together and get this thing off the ground and show the world what a great industry we are and the fantastic produce we have to show.
Kingsley Amis said once that he couldn’t understand why anyone agreed to carry on being rustic after about 1400. It is this sort of attitude we desperately need to change. This show could start the process.
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