The Great Yorkshire Show is a great celebration of rural life but a lot of us are glum - Sarah Todd

It has never been a chore but, dear reader, it has been hard to get excited about next week’s 166th Great Yorkshire Show, taking place on the Harrogate showground for four days between July 8 and 11.

Now first things first, that is no slight to the hard-working Yorkshire Agricultural Society staff and organising committee. Their efforts are beyond reproach. It is a fatigue, a feeling of swimming against the tide in the fight for farming’s future.

A future being sacrificed on an altar of bonkers net zero targets (covering productive farmland in solar panels when they can’t even get them stuck on the obvious like car park roofs) and an ill-thought-out inheritance tax that will likely be the end of the furrow for many family farms.

There have always been obstacles in agriculture’s way to moan about. Some cheeky question to ask a visiting Government minister. But never anything casting such a cloud over walking onto the hallowed turf of the showground. Will life itself still be halted for a cat’s whisker of a moment upon hearing the first clip-clop of horses’ hooves or from catching an early-morning waft of freshly shampooed cattle?

Sat here, writing at our farmhouse kitchen table, it feels like the last year of Labour’s tenure (yes, while it feels like ten years it’s only been 13 months) has knocked the stuffing out of our industry.

Cheery souls will say pull yourself together, there is so much going on during the show. Breakfast meetings, debates… Sorry, it feels like the same speakers saying the same things to the same people. Namely an audience that doesn’t need telling; that is already living and breathing the issues being revisited ad infinitum.

At the time of going to press it was unclear whether Defra Secretary of State Steve Reed, dubbed “City Steve” by the Conservatives due to his background in urban politics, will be braving the show. Back in March the Farmers Weekly revealed he had visited just four farms since his appointment to the role. No show rosette for such a poor effort.

Talking of the Tories, Robbie Moore, Shadow Farming and Rural Affairs Minister, will be glad-handing at the show. A very affable chap, popping up here, there and everywhere in publicity photographs. But how he dares criticise when it was his party taking the rural and wider vote for granted that left the doors to the corridors of power open for Sir Keir Starmer to walk, sorry smirk, through.

Never mind preaching to the converted. It’s those with a massive chip - or should that be crispy vegan-friendly chickpea? - on their shoulders, who need farming’s message spelling out.

What can be done? Suggesting demonstrations, a rural revolt, is probably enough to be put behind bars these days. Throw in some rotten eggs and it could be a one-way ticket to Rwanda.

So best shake off this malaise and jolly the job up a bit. What about raising a smile with a fantasy Great Yorkshire Show lineup?

As regular readers would expect, nobody from Countryfile would make the grade. Let’s start as we mean to go on with Yorkshire showjumping legend Harvey Smith; perhaps he could be persuaded to take to the main ring and recreate the gesture he became famous for over half a century ago.

Then, of course, his fellow Olympic showjumper John Whitaker. An amazing horseman, but equally happy talking cattle down at Holmfirth Market.

Legendary racehorse trainer Mick Easterby, still every inch a farmer despite his success on the turf, would be a canny addition. The lad who went from a wet-behind-the-ears reporter on the Rotheram Advertiser to one of the nation’s favourite television presenters and latter-day farming champion Jeremy Clarkson would fit in well. He could cast his recently gained pub landlord’s eye over the show’s food and drink offerings while he was on.

King Charles and his sister, the former Olympic equestrian Princess Royal, are shoo-ins. The Princess’s Otley-born son-in-law, former England rugby player Mike Tindall, went down in this curmudgeonly correspondent’s opinion when he appeared on the I’m a Celebrity television show, but can be forgiven if he brings his wife, event rider Zara.

Mentioning the theme to our 21 year-old-son, he suggests a beefcake-looking butcher from York called Luke Swales who is doing a great job on social media promoting farming and eating meat to a younger audience.

Thinking about this next generation, room could be made for Thirsk’s award-winning teenage livestock auctioneer Ben Wilson. While leaning on the rostrum, what about putting the Matthewson family from Thornton Dale, of Bangers and Cash fame, in charge of parking?

Things really aren’t so bad. Horse trainer and performer Ben Atkinson will be back where he belongs, in front of the grandstand where he proposed to his now wife and mother of their new baby boy.

As many an old farmer has said, it’s the squeaky gate that gets the oil and where better to open it than next week’s show.

Sarah Todd is a writer specialising in farming and country life. Read her column every week in Wednesday’s Yorkshire Post