Part of the agricultural community always looks forward to the major regional and national agricultural shows. In the past attendance was automatic. You just went. Some people went for several days.
Times have changed and so have behaviour patterns. The plentiful, competent staff who could step into breeches are not as common. The Royal Show, held in the Midlands, near Coventry, was the show where any question could be answered. You would find not only policy makers, but technical people who could sort out any problem on the farm.
There are now other shows designed specifically for some crops, such as the cereals event. The technical content of the big shows has, therefore, been watered down to some extent. Farmers complain that all the agricultural content has been diluted. I am just grateful that the public, our customers, are still sufficiently interested in the industry and the countryside, to turn up at all. The Great Yorkshire Show, at Harrogate, was immensely popular, and still is.
The Yorkshire Agricultural Society was given a huge financial boost when part of the showground was sold for a supermarket development. It has, for some years, spent time and money showing schoolchildren what happens in the countryside surrounding the towns in which most of them live.
We are all aware of the lack of knowledge of what food comes from the UK. Many children think, for example, that rice is grown here. Last week a large number of schoolchildren, the plan was for between three and four thousand, from nearby schools were invited to the Harrogate showground for various demonstrations. More than 50 countryside organisations attended to try to interest the children, aged between seven and 11, in what goes on in the country.
Generally, the response was tremendous. The children asked lots of questions. My brother and I were there, demonstrating the linking of sausages. We were not surprised that the children seemed more interested when the sausage samples were distributed after the demonstration than before.
Ladies In Pigs, who attend all the shows and numerous other events, and do much valuable work promoting products form British porkers, received a lot of attention because of the excellent samples they offered.
They organised a quiz, one of whose questions involved the five ingredients of a sausage. I am sorry to report that one of the children answered, among other things, gristle. I should like to believe that is less true than it was.
British agriculture has let itself down during the last 50 or 60 years in that it has not thought about the market.
Because of the systems of support in place, the penalties for supplying goods the market did not really want have been lessened. This has meant that the actual consumer has been the last thing on farmers' minds when taking decisions on what to produce.
Farmers should not be surprised that most of the consumers in whom we have shown so little interest are not much interested in us. When most of them do think about us at all it is with, at best indifference and at worst hostility.
Building bridges to schoolchildren is a step in the right direction. It should be the ambition of the industry to get every child under 11 on to a farm once a year. It would be a great effort. It would be worthwhile. They are our future customers.
It is never too early to show them that food really comes from farms and not just from supermarkets.
Updated: 10:26 Tuesday, June 24, 2003
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