14 September, 2001

Fifty years of bureaucracy blunted British farmers' marketing skills, says John Sheard. Now they must catch up - or else!

I AM the last person in the world to accuse our farmers of being lazy. I know a good few as close friends and there are amongst the most hard-working people I have ever met.

Nor do I think they have been featherbedded, in recent years at least, as many townies now claim. But, in one vital respect, they have been molly-coddled for the best part of half a century.

I shall explain: any businessman or woman knows that it is not enough just to produce quality products or services. You have to find customers for them: ie, you have to sell them. This - and I speak from harsh personal experience - is often the hardest part of the job.

With British farming undoubtedly facing the biggest shake-up for generations in the aftermath of FMD, BSE and other scares, I am quite sure that our farmers are quite capable of producing the sort of food that today's rapidly changing fashions demand.

The farmer was guaranteed a sale - providing his produce met certain standards - and just got on with producing it. It was a bit like a shopkeeper filling his shelves but having no-one behind the counter to sell it to the public.

Whether or not they can sell that food - actually get it onto people's plates - is a question I face with much less confidence. And there's the rub…

The much-respected Council for the Protection of Rural England launched Sustainable Local Foods, a campaign to persuade farmers and food retailers to get together to push local produce in local shops and supermarkets.

The CPRE wheeled out the TV chef Rick Stein and Rosalind Adams, who plays Carrie Grundy in The Archers, to back the campaign. Said Stein: "This is a landmark in the movement to restore the countryside to its rightful place in our culture."

In the same week, the Country Landowners' and Business Association asked the Government to launch a campaign to "restore confidence" in British farm produce and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust set up a registration scheme for butchers wanting to sell meat from certified stocks of rare cattle, sheep and pigs.

Trouble is, many older farmers are set in their ways. They look upon these schemes as mere gimmicks - although some of the younger generation are turning to new ways and new products, like venison, wild boar and even ostrich to win the custom of trendy "foodies."
B Whereas in France, country folk who could be described as "peasant farmers" with some accuracy have for decades been forming co-operatives so big and wealthy that they can deal with the supermarket chains as equals to win fair prices for their members.

In Britain, such organisations seem to be an anathema. Could this be because, in the past, our farmers never had to bother with the hard sell? Well those days are gone.

And the farmers must change unless they want to follow the shipyards, the coal mines, much of our steel industry and most of our car manufacturers, all of which went on producing goods they could not sell.