Tesco's cutesy fake farm names are an insult to the British countryside

Supermarkets are selling you a fantasy of rural idyll while they drive our dairy farmers to despair with a cut-rate price for milk.
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Dairy farmers are used to fantasy contrasting with reality. Even as the price of milk drives us to depression or worse, you can’t turn on your television without being confronted by someone bedding down some super-cute baby animals with straw so lovely you could sleep in it yourself. The viewer goes to bed with a warm glow knowing that Farmer Jack is toiling away just up the lane to provide great food. Goodness, the food might even have a picture of a clean, photogenic farmer on its packaging. How much better does it get?
So it actually isn’t so shocking to us that Tesco has been accused of using fictional, British-sounding farm names to burnish its brand. It’s one of those odd pieces of news where, you know, you’re outraged, but in a funny way, and really not all that surprised. It is part and parcel of what we allowing to happen in this country.
Tesco is using fictional British-sounding farm names on seven new brands Tesco is using fictional British-sounding farm names on seven new brands
Sure, the majority of us – the 88 per cent not in lucrative «aligned contracts» with supermarkets – are floundering around like punch-drunk sailors. But apparently all is fine and dandy out there in fantasy farmland. You could nearly hear the teeth clenching and visualise the blood pressure rising all over the countryside as we read about Rosedene farms, Willow farms and Boswell farms,(how coolly English does that one sound!) and the rest. This must be where the reliable sons and daughters of the soil tend to the lush grass, where Daisy and Clover happily graze.
From our position, here in a real dairy farm in Staffordshire, Tesco’s apparent marketing ploy is as painful as a kick from a cow. Talk about adding insult to injury. As we cling to the cliff edge while letter after letter arrives, telling of another milk price drop, it’s good to know that someone looks at their food packaging, in a supermarket, and goes “aw.”
You might have heard or read that dairy farmers are only keeping going by dint of borrowing money, and at a heavy cost too – to relationships, health and mental well-being. This issue is wider than the actions of any one supermarket; milk has become an almost valueless commodity, despite the proliferation of coffee shops and the price of cheese. We’ve had to switch rapidly from being told to produce as much milk as possible to «look, we don’t really want your milk at all, but we will continue to take it for an eye-wateringly low price. For now.»
The barely-acknowledged assumption is that, as the rest of us fall by the wayside, the 12 per cent of dairy farmers on aligned contracts will expand their output and cow numbers. Who know? In time, the middleman might go altogether and the supermarkets will take on the whole food production thing.
This is the grim truth for most of us. We are hanging on by our fingernails while mass food production beds itself deeper into our national life and huge retail outlets wrest more and more control. I even heard today that corn suppliers are losing business as the supermarkets are now becoming involved in that part of farming. Traditional, sustainable farming is anathema to what British food production has become – a model predicated on consistency and control.
Soon the only place you will find a farm with a sweet name will be on a supermarket wrapping. Remember that when you’re browsing your Willows and Boswells.

 
Source: Telegraph
 

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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