The badger cull - are we to blame?

There has been much activity in the twittersphere regarding the ongoing battle between government and conservationists on the subject of the badger cull.

My own view is that the science doesn't really stack up in favour of a cull and it seems ironic that it is scientific advice that is 'very finely balanced' that has persuaded the government not to ban neonicotinoids.

This all suggests to me that the government wants to be seen to be helping out the farming community. If the science that suggests a cull won't make a difference is right, then the government isn't going to save itself any money in the long-term, so it does seem like a gesture, which makes me wonder what the root cause is and it may be hard to admit but I think we are all partly to blame.

The trouble is we have been conditioned to think food should be cheap. Of course, food should be affordable but should it be cheap?

The World Food Index of prices shows that the average food price is now lower than it was two years ago, although it is higher than it was in 2009.

We have all heard the rhetoric from supermarket bosses about how the consumer demands cheaper food. Sir Terry Leahy, former Tesco boss, spoke recently and hailed as a triumph the fact that the household food bill was now only 10% of income rather than the 50% it was in the past. Certainly sounds like progress but is it?

According to Government statistics over 60% of adults and 30% of children are overweight or obese. I might be wrong here but I'm sure that being overweight is achieved by eating more than you actually need. Could it possibly be that cheap food available from supermarkets and restaurants are contributing to our national weight problem?

I think we have all started to see what cheap food means. Horse meat for one. In a supply chain that is being squeezed and squeezed it is unfortunately the people at the very bottom that gets squeezed the hardest and that is often the farmer.

I welcome the news that there is going to be a Groceries Code Adjudicator but I do wonder whether they will end up being the supermarket equivalent of the Leveson Report. She has already heard rumours of supermarkets demanding million pound payments from brands if they want to keep their products on the shelves. It is unlikely that the brands in question are going to take the full burden of these payment demands so everyone in the supply chain will end up contributing, perhaps even being threatened in the same fashion.

Last year it was reported that over 20,000 dairy farms has closed since 1996, a report suggested that farmers were three times more likely to take their own life and many farmers said that 2012 was the worst harvest they had experienced. Is it any wonder they get a bit tetchy?

We, the consumers, apparently demand cheap food (that what's the supermarkets tell us anyway) and yet we throw away 50% of everything we buy in fact I've seen figures that suggest throughout the supply over 75% of food is wasted. And yet 6 out of 10 adults in the UK is overweight.

So here's what I think. Maybe if we weren't squeezing the average farmer quite so hard, they would be inclined to farm in more wildlife friendly way, they might even be prepared to look at longer term solutions to bovine tb, such as vaccinations, rather than the seemingly instantly gratifying results of culling. Of course this would either mean that food prices go up, or others in the supply chain forgo some profit, but would it be a bad thing if a price hike meant people ate a little less, and weighed a little less as a result?