You may have noticed that this website doesn’t have a slogan, or a catchy tagline. Surely, every site has a slogan, something to give people a good feeling about the site and capture the essence of what it’s all about. So why doesn’t this one?

To be honest, I did think about what I might use for a tagline. I even researched some of the most successful slogans from history, particularly those related to food. And there have been some crackers (pun intended!) over the years. Who can forget:

• “Bet you can’t eat just one” – Crawford’s Cheddars
• “It’s the real thing” – Coca-Cola
• “P-p-p-pick up a Penguin” – Penguin bars
• “Have a break, have a Kit Kat” – Kit Kat

But here’s the thing: all these slogans promote particular brands of food — not food itself. I was searching for a slogan for food as a whole. Something that, just like the ones above, captures something of the essence of what it means to people. The best I could come up with was:

“Food — what would you do without it?”

And that’s the point. Food is right up there with air and water. We simply can’t do without it at all. Every slogan under the sun is for something we don’t need (I’m told it’s technically possible to survive without chocolate biscuits, though I’ve no intention of putting that to the test!), and they do say that if you really need something, they wouldn’t have to advertise it.

Which brings us back to farms. Farmers are the people who produce the things we need most. If we lose our farms, we are losing the ability to produce wholesome, healthy food for ourselves. We will become dependent upon food produced overseas, which may not meet the regulatory standards we have come to expect. Our regulations are already slackening in that respect – we don’t currently allow genetically modified foods in the UK, for example, but they can be genetically-tweaked-a-bit (“gene edited”). And perhaps it’s only a matter of time before we are invaded by chlorinated chickens, hormone-filled cows and 3d-printed, lab-grown foodlike substances whose effects on our bodies we can hardly dare to speculate about.

Yes, I’m painting an intentionally nightmareish picture here, but can we afford to take the risk that this could be the future that awaits if we don’t take steps right now to protect our ability to produce food that promotes health and enhances our lives?