The End of British Farming by Andrew O’Hagan, Profile Books, £5.99,
ISBN 1861973926
Andrew O’Hagan leaves us in no doubt that Britain’s farmers are stuck in a
crisis largely not of their making. Production costs soar, produce prices
plummet, supermarket oligarchs profiteer, livestock diseases run rampant. Too
many farmers kill themselves.
But surely this is cause for getting the economic balance right for
21st-century conditions, not for moaning that “things ain’t like what they used
to be” down on the farm. They ain’t, but nowadays there are more mouths to feed,
trade is global, and the British public have no…
