First it was eggs, now it is apples. The owners of UK orchards are digging up acres of their trees simply because they are not being paid enough for their produce to make it economically viable for them to continue in the light of ever increasing costs. This comes at a time when weather conditions in Spain and North Africa have led to medium term shortages of certain fruit and veg like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers - a situation not helped by Brexit as many of these crops we used to source from other EU countries like Holland as well.

Why can't we support UK farmers more and expect to pay a fair price for own grown produce, eggs or dairy? Of course, given the current cost of living crisis, it is only right that efforts are made to keep the costs of basic food stuffs down but Coffey and the government are far from helping British farmers.

Whilst the size of the standard chocolate bar has gone down, the price on promoted lines has moved from £1 to £1.25 to £1.35. A 35% increase -and this is just on the best selling lines, others have gone up in price far more. But has it stopped people buying them? No, not really. People need to get their priorities straight. Don't moan about an increase in milk, eggs or apples when you are prepared to pay a greater percentage more for chocolate!

There has been increasing talk about being a more self-sufficient country in terms of food production. Logically, given our population size, this is never going to happen and also everyone is so used to being able to buy goods that are either out of season here or not grown here whenever they like from a supermarket, that I cannot see that demand changing. But surely the government -and supermarkets-need to do more to support British farmers?