OPINION: Guy Smith’s ‘cunning’ plan to relaunch the Royal

Let’s start with some expurgated bluntness. When I started out on my farming career, English farmers had a national show called the Royal Show.

Don’t be fooled by the poor portrait that Farmers Weekly cruelly insists on putting at the top of this page; I’m not that ancient. The Royal Show was in good fettle throughout the 20th century, right up to 10 years ago. But today, like stuffed Norwegian parrots, it’s dead, it’s deceased, it is no more. My generation of farmers was given a perfectly healthy national showcase and piddled it up against the wall. We should all hang our heads in sorry shame.

Let’s be clear, I don’t want to rake over old coals about the demise of the Royal Show. But please, don’t give me a bunch of lame excuses for that demise along the lines of bad weather or because it was superseded by technical events or because bowler hats went out of fashion. I’ve got a one-word reply to that sort of balderdash. Understandably, Farmers Weekly would rather not print it.

Every other nation on earth has a national agricultural show. The French have Sima and therein lies another disgrace – English farmers go to Sima in their droves because they’ve got nothing like it at home. Remember the old joke about there’s two things you can’t get at home – lobster thermidor being one of them? Well now add a third – your own national agricultural show. Even the Danes have their own national show. With the greatest respect to our south Scandinavian cousins, if a nation of six million, whose most famous invention is Lego, can manage a national show, then so can we. We invented the seed drill, for goodness sake.

So here’s the Smith plan to restore a bit of pride and respect into our industry by giving it the national showcase it deserves. Until the 1960s, the Royal Show was peripatetic. For those of you who think that “peripatetic” means that it gave people stomach ulcers, it actually means it moved around. One year it would descend on Norfolk and the next it might be in Devon and so on. It was an arrangement that worked perfectly well for more than a hundred years until some bright spark decided to stick their heels in the West Midlands. There are 10 large county showgrounds that I can think of that have capacity to host a national show and they are nicely spread across the country. Give them the honour once a decade and the job’s done. What’s not to like?

Then there is a second string to the Smith plan. Alongside this, we hold a consumer-facing festival of food and farming in one of our cities, starting with London. As an industry we have done much to smarten up our act when it comes to presenting ourselves to the non-farming public, but if I had a criticism of this laudable activity it is that it has been too close to our rural doorsteps. We need to get our messages into those places where most people live – the urban areas.

Now I have laid out my cunning plan, I can feel the great and the good starting to corral around me, wagging their superior fingers. I’m sure they can think of hundreds of reasons why it can’t be done. They are probably similar to the lame reasons that are trotted out to explain the demise of the Royal Show.

I’ve got just one thing to say to them. In life there are “can do” people and “can’t do” people. Which camp are you in?

Guy Smith comes from a mixed family farm on the north-east Essex coast. The farm is officially recognised as the driest spot in the British Isles. Situated on the coast close to Clacton-on-Sea, the business is well diversified with a golf course, shop, fishing lakes and airstrip.

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