A dairy farmer from Darwen has stated the importance of knowing where your food comes from as mounting pressures threaten the farming industry.
A dairy farmer has spoken out about the reduction in farms and highlights the importance of thinking about where food comes from.
Becki Fielding is a farmer at Pulford Farm Dairies in Darwen, which has offered fresh dairy deliveries to doorsteps, shops and organisations for more than 50 years. Regardless of the weather, workers are out in the farm to provide reliable delivery services and are generally dedicated to the food and dairy they produce.
Taking to social media, Becki reflected on farming in recent times and her experience as a member of the community, operating in Darwen. She says that small farms have been dwindling over the years, as generations of farmers disappear.
The discussion centering around food security in the UK is particularly important, as farmers across the country are grappling with rising costs. According to Farmers Weekly, farm leaders have said that food security must become a priority, as costs rise and global pressures undermine the reliability of imports.
Becki says people have become “far removed” from what they eat, where it comes from and how it’s produced in the last 60-70 years. The farmer says one of the biggest issues was when the UK left the European Union in 2020.
“The European Union was set up after the Second World War and because there was so much famine and food shortages during the war, the EU paid subsidies to farmers from that time,” Becki explains. “This was to make sure that small farms could carry on farming and that they could provide food.
“Since we’ve left the EU, our government now have decided to get rid of the subsidies that came from the EU. They sort of wound them down over a five year period and basically gave quite a few farmers, especially smaller farmers, a pay off to get out of the industry.
“This is causing a sort of exodus. Big farmers are getting bigger and the smaller farmers are disappearing. Depending on where they’re located and this is happening a lot around Darwen, a lot of the land is being used for building – just because it’s no longer viable to farm, food is very cheap in this country, but people don’t think it is.
“People can manage without electricity, they can manage without a car, they can manage without a computer – they cannot manage without food. Yet, it’s so far down on people’s priority list it’s quite painful.”
Becki says that the country is lacking the infrastructure and focus on farming, as more focus is on the environmental aspects of the industry, which doesn’t help with food security in the UK. She says in Blackburn with Darwen, her farm is one of the only ones that produce processors.
She added: “We produce our own milk and we process it and we sell it on. It very much depends on your location, we’re ideally located because we’re right next to a town – if you’re in the middle of nowhere then you haven’t got a milk round, as you have nobody to sell it to.
“But people will look at the price of milk and they’ll say it’s expensive, but you think, it’s cheaper than water! How cheap do you want it to be?
“It’s incredibly expensive to produce and it’s sold very cheaply. The profit margins are practically non-existent and I think it’s very difficult to get younger generations of farmers coming in, especially on the smaller farms, because there’s much better paid jobs out there.”
When asked about the financial differences between shopping in farm shops and in supermarkets, Becki says the difference is minute, but by helping out farmers, it’s providing a much-needed leg-up for the community as a whole.
