Dairy Industry Threatened – What’s New?

There is an article in today’s Times resulting from a letter to the paper from the celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver concerning the effect that price manipulation by supermarkets is having upon the dairy industry. The chefs make the point that: “If the dairy industry expires, or becomes super-industrialised, it’s not just thousands of family businesses that will go to the wall. Our whole landscape is threatened. All over Britain the patchwork of hedgerows and grass fields owes its existence to the traditional production of milk.”

Admirable stuff, and well done to Hugh and Jamie, but ultimately futile, I think. I mean, can you imagine that with, effectively, a Tory government in power that anything will be done that conflicts with the so-called ‘free market’? Not a chance.

If this were France, the dairy farmers would be out in militant force doing the utmost (usually successfully) to get their government to do something to protect them. It is fair to say that the streets of Paris would be running with—milk, as the farmers pressed home their point in the most effective and newsworthy way. What will happen here? Nothing.

Remember, we, as a nation participated (by the ballot-box) in the wholesale dismantling of our steel, mining, and fishing industries during the disastrous Thatcher and Major years. We also participated willingly (by buying the shares) in the selling off, ultimately to foreign ‘investors’, of our oil, water, gas, and power generation utility industries. What are we left with? The financial services industry is shortly to be decimated. And the farming industry? Well, I’m afraid it doesn’t bode well, does it?

Hugh and Jamie’s letter emphasises the potential threat to our idyllic rural landscape. All I can say in response is that they should take a look at how a rural landscape is returning to large areas of Wales, the Midlands, and the north of England now that the various industries are gone. Who cares about our Arcadian landscape of ‘hedgerows and grass fields’? Certainly not Cameron and rest of the Tories. They have previous ‘form’, remember.