Living with farm illusions

Press, 1 March 1984, Page 18

Living with farm illusions

Sir, — The concluding paragraph of your editorial of February 28 summed up our own current agricultural dilemma. We must cease deluding ourselves that Britain can continue to take our sheepmeat and dairy produce, regardless of her commitments to the E.E.C. and its Common Agricultural Policy. This raises the obvious question: why are our farmers still being urged to produce more? What countries can and will increase their purchases of our agricultural products? The starving Third World countries are already sorely beset with enormous financial deficits. The Middle East nations are tearing themselves apart and wasting their people and financial resources in trying to destroy each other. Do we need all these proposed costly irrigation projects? unless we are prepared practically to give away our agricultural surpluses to the indigent nations, continued increases in production of sheepmeat and dairy produce are pointless, quite apart from being costly to the taxpayer. — Yours, etc., LES BOGREN. February 28, 1984.