Many years ago the grocer, Mr Sainsbury, decided he would need to expand his business to provide a shop for each of his sons.

He did not realise that before he died he would have more than 100 shops. That number substantially outnumbered his sons.

He also did not realise that, many years later, just one of the family's shops, on the Finchley Road in North London, would take more than £1 million pounds a week.

I was one of a few farmers who were shown round that store, or rather superstore, on Friday. It is built next to an underground station and is huge.

There are 36 checkouts. It was a day of surprises. We were shown round after lunch, when the first of two daily deliveries of fresh produce was still awaited.

It should have been there at 10am. Some shelves were empty, to the annoyance of shoppers.

The England football team had been beaten by Brazil in Japan earlier in the day, and this seemed to be an excuse for schedules to collapse all over the country.

I was there as part of a day's training run to try to point out to those actually involved in the food chain what the retailer at the end of the chain needs to sell to the public.

As a producer of basic components for meals of one sort and another, I found it fascinating.

One often suspects that the food world has changed. From time to time there is clear evidence of it.

For example, 2001 was the first year when more processed than fresh potatoes were sold.

We were told that between 1990 and 2000, the consumption of fruit had gone up by 25 per cent. Mostly that is represented by bananas, just about the most convenient of all fruits to eat. Not much help as a guide to what to grow in the Vale of York, though.

Poultry meat consumption has risen, but red meat sales are down, which is not really a surprise either.

The question is what to do about these changing consumption patterns. Well, the first thing is to recognise them.

There is no point in trying, Canute- like, to stop the tide coming in. It will come and we cannot stop it.

People do not want to buy large joints any more. They do not want bags of potatoes to last for a couple of months. They want to have quick, convenient food that does not need much, if any, preparation.

Look at the growth of the ready-meal market. Mostly, consumers have the money and are prepared to pay for someone else to do the work.

There will always be exceptions. There is a market for people who like cooking. They especially like cooking at the weekends, when they have the time.

A generation is growing up, however, which has not been taught to cook by its mothers. The reason is that those mothers cannot cook either.

This is a serious problem, not just for farmers and growers who want to supply markets, but for those who comprise those markets.

It is true that most people are prepared to pay more for prepared food, and that they can afford to do so.

Some people are not so fortunate. They would benefit from buying larger quantities of raw materials to cook for themselves. It would work out cheaper.

However, in many cases they lack the skills to actually do the cooking.

It is a disaster for them.

Remind me, who said "Education, education, education?"

Updated: 10:59 Tuesday, June 25, 2002