They won't miss you till you're gone!

摘要

At a time of increasing alarm about climate change, there seems an unbelievable shortsightedness in allowing the farming industry to wither and die. Fifty years or so hence, when energy has become a precious commodity and we recall with horror how strawberries once came so decadently from New Zealand to fill our supermarkets, or prawns were shipped to Thailand for peeling, we will turn to the countryside that surrounds us and ask - urgently - where is the food we need? Where are the producers? Whereindeed? The final diaspora will have taken place. Today's farmers - forgotten, maligned, misunderstood and alienated - will have long ago given up in the face of hostile economic circumstances. They will have sold their land for housing, or to the monied classes to use as a playground, and moved on to jobs which at least pay the minimum wage.