'Save them from ruin'

The Right Reverend David Smith has instructed clergy throughout the diocese to preach the benefits of buying home-produced meat and dairy foods.

And all churchgoers are being asked to write to their MPs to back the Bradford Diocesan Synod's call to the Government to develop strategic policies to support the crisis-hit farming industry. The campaign has been started by the synod, the Church of England's local government, as a direct response to "moving accounts of the distress" being suffered by many of the district's 100-plus farmers.

And it calls for supporters to go out of their way to choose British farm products - even when they are more expensive or not as easily available.

"If everyone was to eat one rasher of British bacon - not just British-packed bacon - every week, the pig industry would be revolutionised," said a diocesan spokesman.

The Rev David Creaser, of Weston with Denton parish, a country clergyman of 25 years, said: "This view that farmers are always crying poverty but living off the fat of the land might once have been a joke, but is no longer funny. Some small farmers I know are working literally for nothing. The church in the past has not been particularly good on this issue and I'm glad the Diocesan Synod has woken up and recognised the problems there are. I certainly buy British farm products - they are better, in any case."

The campaign was immediately praised by members of the district's farming and meat industries.

Alvin Clay, 65, a Denholme beef and sheep farmer all his life, said: "I find I'm struggling every year because my income's dropped off so much. There's no expansion, the business is always contracting because of falling revenues. I welcome anything that gives a bit of support for our industry. Foreign governments support their farmers but we get nothing from ours.

"They've even put diesel up by 50p a gallon in the last six months which has hit us hard again."

Stephen Dew, group secretary of the National Farmers' Union, said: "It's good to see the Church taking such an interest in rural affairs.

"We see farmers in desperate straits - both in business terms and emotionally. They find it difficult to see a future. The banks are hounding them and they feel helpless."

John Gullett, the NFU's council delegate for the West Riding, said there were more than 100 farms or smallholdings within the Bradford and Bingley area.

He said: "The situation really is quite serious at the moment. It's unusual that whatever farmers you speak to - big or small, arable or livestock - they all say they've never known a time when all the sales are down."

Farm incomes have been devastated and lambs worth £40 are now only fetching £10.

The Rev Les Foster, rural affairs officer for the Bradford diocese, which also covers the Yorkshire Dales, said: "A lot of farmers are just hanging on.

"Some people will always want the cheapest in supermarkets, but a lot of people are discriminating in what they buy and it's these people we are encouraging with this campaign."

Stephen Barnes, of Bingley butchers Darren Todd, said: "This is a very positive move by the Church of England. We sell all British meat and it isn't always the cheapest, but the quality outweighs it."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.