Why beef and sheep farming matters takes to the streets
People power is being harnessed in an NFU campaign aimed at highlighting the importance of beef and sheep farming to the countryside, the economy and the environment. Launched in November, the NFU's Why Beef and Sheep Farming Matters campaign is now being taken to a new level with a regional cooking roadshow visiting three East Midlands' town and city centre venues, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday next week*.
As part of a national tour, NFU is taking its traveling kitchen to Loughborough, Derby and Lincoln where wonderful dishes using locally produced beef and lamb will be cooked for passers by. Local farmers will be on hand to talk about the campaign so that everyone can find out more about why beef and sheep farming are so important, as well as tasting just how good British beef and lamb are.
"We know from our research** that British shoppers want to buy British beef and lamb," says Alison Pratt, NFU's regional PR officer. "But the plain fact is that unless farmers' prices start to rise, to fill the yawning gap between what it costs to produce beef cattle and sheep and what farmers are paid for them, British beef and lamb will become niche products.
"With current prices well below production costs, farmers are working at a loss and unless the situation changes with an improved farmgate price, the future sustainability of the British livestock sector remains at risk.
"That will be bad for consumers, bad for farming, bad for employment in the meat industry and bad for the countryside. That is why we are calling on people who care about where their beef and lamb comes from, and who care about the countryside where it is produced, to put pressure on the supermarkets to start the process of lifting farmers' prices to a sustainable level."
A partnership of organisations is backing the campaign, reflecting the importance of beef and sheep farming to a range of different interests. Alongside farming organisations like the NFU, the English Beef and Lamb Executive and Farmers' Guardian newspaper, are ranged the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Townswomen's Guild, The National Council of Women and the Women's Farming Union.
The NFU's campaign, launched last year, comes on the back of an increasingly difficult economic climate for livestock farmers. Since 2004, the beef herd in England has fallen by 11 per cent and the sheep breeding flock by over 10 per cent. Even more worrying for the future is the decline in the number of younger beef cattle in the pipeline – down by 15 per cent in just four years. These figures are taken from the June 2007 agricultural census – before the devastating outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and bluetongue, and the impact which they are bound to have had, on sheep numbers especially.
