PRIME MINISTER Boris Johnson's crass remarks regarding the unfolding disaster that is facing the pig industry because of a labour and transport shortage backing up prime animals ready for slaughter at home, has been widely reported and condemned by the farming industry.

However, it is perhaps symptomatic of a wider problem for the industry that is that there are few politicians who really do understand the difference between a pig fit to make a tasty bacon butty and one that's fit only for sausages. Using the words 'gimmer', 'hogg' and 'stot' will equally mystify 99% of those politicos charged with engineering a new policy for agriculture once the CAP is finally doffed.

Sadly, it's also a deficiency of the people who advise them and keep them on track. The fact is, agriculture is a complicated business which delivers the simplest of end results: food for the table and it is just too complex to comprehend, so it gets ignored. Just like the broad brush approach to facts that gave us Brexit and the whitewash that will surely follow on money ill-spent during the Covid-19 crisis, the Westminster Government has shown a distinct lack of nous at what produces the end result that fills supermarket shelves.

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The 'let's get it done' argument is all well and good, but at what cost? Just as our manufacturing has largely been exported abroad, and computer chips remains the currency of choice in world trade, then exporting our right to produce food is as big a handover of this country's sovereignty than being part of the EU ever was.

Luckily for farming, consumerism is king and thus far the GBP (Great British Public) have pinned their faith on the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) that this country's farming industry provides. In this, they have flown in the face of massive pressure from indifferent politics, from rampant minority bias and downright blatant anti-farming propaganda from those who think that animals are killing the planet. It's gratifying that most of them – the silent majority – can see that it is people that are killing the planet, not a few hapless bovines and ovines.

Fact is, the human population is rising at an alarming rate, while the livestock that feeds them is reducing in real terms. Which all points to the folly of maintaining a policy of slashing food production here in favour of imported product.

As current developments have shown, with China holding us to ransom over computer chips; Russia strangling Western Europe with reduced gas supplies and the Arab oil producers squeezing us dry at the pumps, why would we want to export that most fundamental of human needs ... food production, to those who would use it as a cosh at some time in the future? It beggar's belief.

Read more: What's your plan for British farming, Boris?

We must feel for our agricultural lobbyists who are knocking against the proverbial brick wall on trying to get this across in the corridors of power. Sometimes, there are none so blind as those who will not see!