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'The Farm' - Book Review
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by Richard Benson. Published by Penguin Books, £8.99 This highly readable personal account of one Yorkshire family’s losing battle against big business in agriculture is both moving and informative. It combines a very emotional narrative of the human consequences of the demise of the small farm with the icy cold statistics. This moved from the sad to the humorous and back again but, in the end, the family members make a new life outside of farming. Intertwined are historical facts that explain how so many have been driven from the land. |
It concludes with a summary of facts that tell a sad tale. Before the war there were 500,000 farms in Britain and now there are 191,000 – of which just 19,000 account for more than 50 per cent of national output. In the process three out of four jobs in British agriculture have been lost since 1945.
Squeezed between near monopolistic grain traders, pesticide suppliers, and supermarkets British farmers now get just 7.5p out of every £1 spent on food in Britain – compared with 50p in the 1950s.
The EU has a scheme to assist people entering farming. France takes 40 percent of it and the UK none of it.
This review first appeared in The Landworker June/July 07
