I spent Monday morning down at Rugby market with a visitor to Rugby who knows all to well about the problems facing British agriculture. Baroness Byford is the Conservative Shadow Minister for Food and Rural Affairs in the House of Lords, is from a farming background and spent time chatting with local farmers. We watched the sale of stock in the auction ring and were briefed about the move of the market from its long established site by the station to a proposed new site at the Royal Showground at Stoneleigh, which has come about solely as a result of farmers being prepared to support their own industry. We later met Ian Allen who has just ceased milking on his farm in Clifton because he is receiving 5p less for every litre of milk he produces than it costs to produce. With 31% of farmers are living below the low income threshold and incomes half of what they were in 1997, most people have very little idea of the pressures of being in farming today.
