Over one hundred people attending this conference including farmers, members of the public and NCW members, heard an excellent panel of speakers.   This included Carmen Suarez, chief economist of the NFU, who gave a well illustrated talk on the present economics of livestock farming.   Malcolm Corbett, a hill farmer in Northumberland National Park, gave a practical account of the financial difficulties of running a family farm.   Another practising farmer, Richard Betton, spoke of his concern for food security in the UK and expressed his concerns about the problems of form filling.   A broadcaster from Radio 4, Mark Holdstock, spoke on the role of the media in informing the general public.   A  butcher, Paul Taylor-Garthwaite, described the difficulties of an independent butcher coping with the power wielded by the big four supermarkets.  Ian Woodhurst, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, discussed the importance of a farmed landscape.  The President of NCW Affiliate, the Women’s Food and Farming Union, Ionwen Lewis, spoke of the crisis in world food production and the need to support British farming.    She stressed that consumers are the most important link in the food chain.

Food security is a concern and our self-sufficiency is about 60 per cent.   Will the UK always be rich enough to buy enough food to feed a growing population?   Will these overseas producers have enough surplus food for us to buy with an increasing demand on their own supplies?   Are we in the UK using land in an inappropriate way?   So farming does matter to us now and as far into the future as we can see.   We must support our own producers and use our power at the till.   We must use our consumer power wisely and effectively.