WELSH farmers are ‘rubbish’ at selling their product, despite being among the best in the world. North Wales farmer and industry champion, Gareth Wyn Jones, speaking at the NSA Cymru Wales AGM urged farmers to compare their marketing with that of Coca Cola, a multi million pound company selling a ‘black drink full of sugar’.

He said: “For millennia we’ve been using milk, for thousands of years, and we can’t sell it. If there’s a problem with overproduction, why isn’t it in our schools?

“Why isn’t Government putting it back where it should be? And that’s just one little corner of what I believe in.

“We need to re-educate people about us as an industry. We need to bring them back in. Our problem is that we are stereotyped – as that person on top of the mountain, saying ‘Get off my land’.

“But that’s not us. We’re families trying to make a living and if we can re-introduce people back into our lives and get them to buy what we produce, we can make a future.”

Gareth Wyn Jones said today’s opportunities are massive. The 80 per cent of people who live in cities need to see that sometimes to produce the food for their plates it is a struggle, hard work.

He added that if the industry could reconnect with those people and bring them on board, then farmers could sell what they do. It was up to farmers to look within themselves and tell the story of what they do, without complaining.

Social media was an important tool. He made a point of sharing the ‘office view’ even if it was a dead lamb on the Carneddau.

He said farmers had to get the message out there. They had to get together, to share what was out there, to get more produce sold at home and social media was a good tool to bring farmers back into the living room.

Outgoing chairman, Paul Wozencraft, urged the Welsh Government to open up new markets, especially in the USA. He said that if just a couple of per cent of the US population ate Welsh meat it would make a significant difference to the value of the product.

The two NSA Young Ambassadors, George Gough and Georgie Radmore, reported on the confidence and personal development the programme had afforded them. George told the AGM that a highlight of the programme had been the visit to the British Wool Marketing Board headquarters at Bradford.

He urged farmers to better consider the quality of the wool they submitted. It was too often regarded as a waste product.

He said:”It’s still a product that’s going off the farm and we need to put as much passion into that as we do into anything else and do the job as well as we can to give them the product to be able to sell.

“I hadn’t realised the work that goes into making that fleece of that old ewe into a tweed jacket. It was a real eye opener to see that process.

“Maybe we don’t put enough effort and pride into the wool we produce.”

North Wales vet, Joseph Angell, explained that research he had undertaken at Liverpool University had shown that eradication of Contagious Ovine Digital Dermatitis, CODD, had a high failure rate so making it an expensive option. The best tools appeared to be good quarantine on farm, together with improved bio security.