READERS who have been paying attention will not have been surprised by many of the much- trumpeted conclusions of the report into the future of the Food and Farming industry. They could have thought up a lot of the recommendations themselves.

British farming's recent problems did not begin with the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in February 2001. For some time there have been serious structural problems in agriculture.

Units are too small to effectively compete in the world market. That smallness has meant, however, that the look of the countryside has mostly been preserved.

The small fields we see around us, which tourists come to look at, are not helpful when it comes to modern equipment and cultivation techniques.

Large amounts of money have been paid by taxpayers into the European Union coffers, only for some of it to be redistributed to some farmers. Only some of it because of the enormous cost of running the bureaucracies in charge of looking after our money for us. Only some farmers because crops such as potatoes, sugar beet and horticultural crops receive no support. Similarly pigs and poultry are unsupported.

Those who produce these latter two, have been able to argue that they pay more for their animal feed than they would have done had they been able to buy the grain for the feed on the world market. That market, however, has been so distorted by national government support worldwide that it is nearly impossible to decide what is the world price.

Last week's commission report talks about shortening supply chains and local produce.

It also proposes measures which will add to the costs of those actually doing the production.

The UK is already a high cost producer. Most of the food produced here is assured.

This means that it is grown in a particular way, which is generally accepted as being at the top end of the systems of international food production. Some buyers insist on that standard, which makes it particularly galling when they import - normally for reasons of price - goods not produced to our standards.

In any event we produce with the burden of a wage structure and a minimum wage which is not faced by our non-European competitors.

The evidence of compliance with these assurance schemes, the Little Red Tractor, appears on an increasing number of packs in our supermarkets. The commission wants this to be the basis for future production.

The glaring omission from the commission's report is the lack of an indication about how these goods, more expensively produced are to be sold into a UK food market, which, in large part, values price above almost anything else.

If price is not at the top of the consumer's list of priorities then the advertising campaign ASDA has been running for some years is completely misdirected.

They think that low prices matter, after minimum standards have been reached. There is no reason to doubt that for much of the market, they are right.

Not everyone can have a farm shop. If you grow cereals and sugar beet on the arable land of the East Riding you are not going to be able to directly market your production. Many farmers do not want to, in any case.

They want a properly-constructed supply chain.

They want it to have as few links as possible and for it to deliver a wholesome and reasonably-priced product to the plates of the consumer and a reasonable living to everyone involved in the chain.

You wouldn't think this unattainable, would you?

Updated: 10:29 Tuesday, February 05, 2002