Here in Gloucestershire, many farmers are really on the brink after the wettest year for 150 years which has devastated their business.
It is timely, therefore, that the Prime Minister鈥檚 second Farm to Food summit is being held at Downing Street this week. The food and farming problem really is serious and I don鈥檛 think we realise just how serious.
Fields in our county have been totally waterlogged to the point where you can't get a tractor on the land - it would just sink in.
As a result, winter wheat has not been planted and an enormous amount of straw, which provides the feed for dairy farmers鈥 cattle during the winter, has not been produced.
The overriding problem is farmers have now got to take about 20% of their land out of production to meet all the government鈥檚 green economies.
Sir Henry Elwes, our former Lord Lieutenant, who farms 1,500 acres on his Colesbourne estate near Cirencester, said: 鈥淭his means if you have a 200-acre family farm, you are going to lose a quarter of your production. Your tractor still costs 拢300 000, and your combine harvester still costs half a million.
鈥淎gricultural policy seems to be on the move all the time and it is very difficult for farmers to guage what they can do. I don鈥檛 think the farmers are going to get money from the government but they need some sort of supervision on the costs of products like fertiliser which has gone through the roof.鈥
Gloucestershire is primarily a rural county with a high proportion of our land devoted to agriculture in its various forms - not just traditional farms.
Something like 9,000 people are employed in Gloucestershire in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors. That鈥檚 equal to 2.9% of the total employment in the county, which is higher than England and Wales at 1.4%.
That鈥檚 why the investment in and the development of agritech is such an important element of Gloucestershire鈥檚 new Economic Strategy being published this week. We must not underestimate the value of our farmers.
