I FOR one will not shed any tears about the news that the Royal Show site is to be offered for sale.
I always felt that when I left that sodden show field last week, it would be my final visit.
I have enjoyed many happy times at that Show over a period of many years and most years there was fine and warm summer sunshine.
It has reflected the good and now the bad times of British agriculture. In the early days this country was a major manufacturer of farm tractors, such as the Massey Ferguson 135 and the Ford 5000, and had many famous farm machinery manufacturers.
There was a time about 20 years ago when British farming was the envy of the world and there were many foreign visitors who came to learn how we did things.
It was probably true that for every person working on a farm they supported the jobs of about five people in associated businesses.
But in those days we had hardly heard of supermarkets and that was before all those government-inspired food scares.
How different things are today when virtually all farm tractors and machinery are imported from abroad.
In those days hardly anybody had heard of those green machines which are now so common in our countryside and originated in America and go by the name of John Deere.
But it is probably the emergence of those mighty supermarkets which has done so much damage to the prestige of the British farming industry.
They do not seem to have any national pride about the purchase of their produce. Instead they are driven by corporate objectives that demand maximum market penetration together with maximum profits.
Whilst most major supermarkets were represented at this month’s Royal Show, it was the demise of most other agricultural stands which was most notable.
For this reason as much as anything else, the event appears to dying a slow death, demonstrating just how much less important farming and agriculture are in this country today.
I wonder what will happen on the day when the supermarkets are no longer able to import all their produce from the four quarters of the Earth?
Perhaps my final memory of the Royal Show was that magnificent Claas Lexion combine harvester which was just able to manoeuvre itself into the main ring: it was particularly appropriate in this year of the rain that it was fitted with tracks in place of its main driving wheels.
Of course, when I visited the Claas factory in Germany last month, I commented that it was unlikely that a single part of their combine harvesters was manufactured in the United Kingdom.
