Great Yorkshire Show should be reminder to all to support our farmers - Andrew Vine

But instead of vast crowds enjoying Britain’s greatest agricultural showcase beneath a – hopefully – blazing sun, and the air being filled with the sounds of prize-winning livestock or applause from the main ring, there will be a strange quiet at the Harrogate showground.

Sadly, the pandemic has put paid to this year’s event, though it will have an online presence on the Great Yorkshire Show website over the next three days.

That will whet the appetite for the show’s return in all its glory next summer, but its absence in this most difficult of years ought to concentrate the minds of all of us in Yorkshire on what it stands for – excellence in producing food.

Crucially, the show’s absence should be a call to arms for us to support our county’s farmers, food producers and shops, which they need more than ever.

This year’s show would have had many unanswered questions hovering over its meetings and conversations in any case.

Uncertainties over what Brexit will mean in practice guaranteed that. How are our farmers to be supported once we leave the EU? Will their livelihoods be undercut by a flood of cheap imported food produced to questionable welfare standards?

Too many questions around what the future holds for agriculture remain unanswered. The suspicion lingers that the Government gives far too little thought to agriculture compared to other industries. In all its scale and scope, the Great Yorkshire Show is an annual reminder to Ministers that farming should be at the forefront of their minds and policy decisions.

Even though the Government has bowed to pressure to set up a trade and agriculture commission to tackle what could be make-or-break issues for many farmers, it has yet to begin work, even with Britain hurtling towards an exit from the EU at the end of the year, with or without a deal. That would have been worrying enough. For coronavirus to have kicked the legs out from under our economy in the same year adds a whole new level of anxiety over what lies ahead.

Jobs are falling like ninepins across the economy, and it is inevitable that those who put food on our tables will suffer too. Painful though the thought is, heartbreak awaits at least some whose hard work will be dashed by a crisis like no other.

Which makes it essential for Yorkshire consumers to do their bit to keep those producers in business, both by making choices as shoppers and by keeping the closest of eyes on what the Government is doing to support high-quality, home-grown food production and letting their MPs know if they don’t like what they see.

Consumer pressure matters. It’s no coincidence that a group of supermarkets – among them Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Aldi – have already said they will not sell those repellent horrors of the American factory-farm system, chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef.

They know stocking this vile stuff – which may yet be foisted on Britain by the US flexing its economic muscle in a post-Brexit trade deal – would alienate customers.

Buying British – and going further, to buy regional wherever possible – makes sense for both retailers and customers, and resolving to do just that could prove a lifeline for our farmers and producers.

Over decades, the Great Yorkshire Show has done a massive service in getting that message of how important it is to support agriculture across to the crowds flocking to Harrogate every July.

The journey between the hard work involved in producing food and what appears neatly-packaged on the supermarket shelf or in the freezer is often overlooked, especially by urban consumers with few, if any, links to the countryside.

The show takes everybody who visits on that journey, and fosters an appreciation of how food gets from farm to plate. And not just any food, but that of the highest quality, produced to impeccable welfare standards, not shipped in from goodness knows what unhygienic hellhole, but fully traceable to its origins.

This is food to put our trust in, knowing that it is the best of British. By helping the public understand how agriculture impacts everybody’s daily lives, the show has done an immense amount to raise awareness of how hard farmers work and the trust we rightly invest in them.

It’s now time for us to invest our money as consumers in them too, buying their produce to help keep businesses afloat, and rejecting anything that undermines their chances of survival.

Enjoy the virtual Great Yorkshire Show. But it isn’t too soon to start looking forward to this day in 2021, and the return of the real thing, especially if by our support we have helped the farmers and food producers who will be there to weather these difficult times.

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