HIGHPROFILEFORYFCs AT ROYALWELSH
HIGHPROFILEFORYFCs AT ROYALWELSH
Once again the Royal Welsh
Show attracted huge crowds
to its picturesque Wye Valley
site. Robert Davies elbowed
his way through the throng
W hile some of the biggest crushes were around the main ring for the Welsh cob championships and Household Cavalry Musical Ride, other stands were also inundated with people.
At times it was almost impossible to move past the Wales Federation of Young Farmers Clubs open air theatre. With every seat taken, the road provided standing room only for the partisan and vocal audience.
The cheering was music to the ears of Lowri Jones, the federations new chief executive. The slightly-built Bangor University graduate, who makes an 86-mile daily round-trip from the beef and sheep farm where she lives with husband Iwan to the Federations headquarters, firmly believes that YFC activities must be fun.
But fun is only part of it and Lowri is convinced that the 6000 members of Welsh clubs have a role, if not a duty, to be political lobbyists on behalf of all young people in rural areas.
"We have very enthusiastic members who the movement helps to develop into responsible citizens. Young people represent the future of our rural areas and their voices need to be heard," she says.
* Hard grilling
That certainly happened on the first day of the show when they grilled four National Assembly members so ferociously about their attitudes to new entrants and the plight of rural communities that one completely lost his cool.
Lowri hopes the spat will soon be forgotten because she is determined to press the case for getting assembly funding for the federation. "The social side of club activities must continue to be very important, but we have to act on a broader front if we want to keep young people in the countryside."
Another theatre was operating on Avenue D, part of a project funded by the National Assemblys Health Promotion Division and Food Standards Agency Wales. The many young children in the audience loved this mini-panto featuring Bacs the Bug and a food hygiene-conscious fairy godmother.
Getting kids to shout about bugs was a first educational step on a lifetime road towards good food safety. For their parents, it was a reminder that the way food is handled in the home is just as important as what happens on farms.
And there was a message for farming families trying to add value by supplying consumers directly or diversifying into tourism: careless hygiene loses customers, the reputation of British food, and perhaps even lives.
A power failure rather than hygiene was the problem when the first Welsh sausage was launched in the Meat and Livestock Commissions impeccably-clean mobile kitchen by MLC chairman Don Curry. Selsig Cymreig was created by the Welsh Development Agencys Horeb Food Centre and five retail butchers to use under- utilised forequarter Welsh lamb.
The UK sausage trade is worth £600m a year and there are an estimated 400 types on the market, of which few are made of lamb. For the shows duration, the public had a chance to taste and comment on the product.
Jane James, the farmers wife who manages Horeb, says taste-panel work indicates it would be popular with all age groups including young people who were often reluctant to eat lamb.
* Crowded food hall
The food hall was as crowded as a Toyko railway station and visitors found that the gardens on the approach to it had been sacrificed to provide yet more urgently needed stand space.
Sadly the HSE stand was far less busy than it should have been. Children were the main target but HSE chief agricultural inspector David Mattey also warned about protecting granddad from himself.
People who have passed normal retirement age, he said, are often involved in accidents resulting from failing eyesight and hearing or slower reaction times when using sophisticated farm kit.
What Mr Mattey could not suggest was a foolproof way of gently telling granddad that it would be better for him to forget helping with the haymaking, and instead spend four days at the Royal Welsh watching pretty young ladies on the YFC stage, taking the grandchildren to Cinderella, and sampling Welsh sausages and other novel foods.
Right: Anyone for lunch…
the Food Hall.
Below: New Young Farmers leader Lowri Jones.
Left: Hygiene high jinks… actors convey the food safety message.
Below: A meaty issue… Jane James with the new Welsh sausage.