LIFE IN the countryside is at its most peaceful at present, as long as you are no longer a farmer.
This will surely change when the Assembly elections begin to churn, as the existing members realise the club house is closed for the next month and to justify their continued membership they must encourage some innocents to vote for them.
Farming does not rate highly in British politics at present, so long as the abundant supplies of cheap imported food continue.
Neither do they or their financial masters in the Treasury concern themselves that this country has a record balance of payments deficit at present.
How much of this is made up of food imports should not concern us, they believe, particularly with elections in the offing.
I saw a clarion call by one of the farming unions the other day for a farming minister in Wales. What a good idea that would be.
Anybody would be preferable the present incumbent who prefers to champion environmental interests.
Such was the shambles of foot-and-mouth disease in Wales several years ago that it is difficult to believe the root cause of that shambles remains in office today.
Many of the farmer victims have never recovered.
A separate farming minister should be appointed in Wales to replace the
current multi-role incumbent, Carwyn Jones
I can now look back and honestly say my farming career entered a terminal phase after the foot-and-mouth shambles - but that I am now better off for the change in lifestyle which I now enjoy.
Never did I believe that I could take off to see my son in Thailand in the middle of the lambing season. But my trip there did reveal there are better things in life than struggling along in an unprofitable farming business.
On the grapevine I hear the many complaints of milk farmers these days.
I was talking to an ex-dairy farmer just yesterday and he can remember the good days of dairy farming when milk prices were considerably better than now, good prices of calves.
In those days there was no paperwork either.
However, the main complaint you get these days is about all the rules and regulations which have been introduced by politicians who have little interest in the production of food in this country and bureaucrats who just enjoy the power trip which it gives them.
In the next few months we face two important elections. Is too much to expect that we might have a farming minister in the new Welsh Assembly? Perhaps we might have to settle just to get rid of the present minister of environment.
We may also soon have a new Prime Minister, hopefully not someone who is opposed to 4x4s.
Whilst Chelsea tractors may be a luxury in London, they are often an essential requirement of many farms, so I don’t see why they should be taxed out of existence.
Perhaps somebody else as Prime Minister would be a good idea - anyone will do as long as their name is not Tony Blair.
