Many people think that arable farmers are doing extremely well at the moment due to various media coverage making bold statements about the prices of our crops. I have read many things such as the price of beer has shot up because the price of barley has. The same for chips because potatoes have shot up in price. What the media fails to tell you though is that the farmers are not in control of the market prices. We are 'price takers' not 'price makers'.

Times are really tough at the moment and going to get worse.  At this moment in time the price of a tonne of feed wheat is £130. Its costing us about £120/tonne to produce it leaving a very small profit margin of only 0.07%. You need to grow a lot of tonnes to make it worthwhile but in this countries climate we are restricted to producing about 3t/acre as an average, so £30/acre profit is not very exciting.

Fertiliser, chemical and fuel prices have escalated so much that many farmers are thinking about producing other crops and moving away from wheat, barley and oilseed rape. If this happens then less will be produced and the prices will rise further meaning things like bread, biscuits, beer and oils will cost far more money than they do today.

We believe the goverment needs to step in and take control otherwise things could get far worse. They will probably say that they could import anything that is in short supply which is correct. But what happens when the countries it comes from puts their prices up and we are no longer producing it in this country? I for one think our government is so short sighted they have not even thought of this scenario which will happen if something is not done.

The UK needs to be as self sufficient as possible in all things but especially food - without it we are in a mess.

Lee Sutton