A WELL-KNOWN South Lakeland farmer has spoken out about the Government's treatment of the agriculture industry during the fuel crisis.

Gordon Capstick, who farms at Park Farm near Milnthorpe, is NFU deputy county chairman, Cumbria spokesman on livestock and North West PR spokesman, was one of a group of South Lakeland farmers who travelled to Manchester at the peak of last week's fuel crisis to protest at a storage depot.

Mr Capstick and colleagues joined hauliers for several hours in a fuel price protest at a Texaco distribution terminal in Trafford.

"Several of us were in contact and with fellow farmers and decided to go to Manchester to make our point.

When we got there, there were already a group of hauliers at the depot so we just enjoyed chatting with them for a few hours and left at around midnight."

Mr Capstick said the Government had been "caught on the hop" by the protests and said they had shown their true colours by failing to include day-to-day farming needs on the fuel priority list of essential services which included doctors, nurses and even members of the Press.

"I find it very hard to understand - food for the supermarkets was classed as essential, but not from farms to supermarket distribution points.

When it comes down to basics, 99 per cent of every shopping basket which leaves the supermarket has come form a farmer in one form or another.

"People have come to believe that the food will always arrive on their tables without any problems - the food and the farmers who produce it are taken for granted," he said.

He said that the protests had been an eye-opener for the Government and the supermarkets, who, for the most part control the prices farmers are paid for their produce.

"I don't suppose they will learn any real lessons from this, but they will certainly have to look at their contingency plans to see that it does not happen again - but we have all learned that the supermarkets operate with only 72 hours worth of food behind them.

"If the protests had gone on for another 72 hours, the shelves would have been as bare as they are in Poland or Russia - then we would have seen what people really think is an essential service," he said.