From Alistair Livingston

Dear Sir, with all due respect to Sir Terry Leahy, his belief (quoted in Herald Editorial Februay 2) that the rise of Tesco is a ‘win, win, win situation’ for shareholders, customers and suppliers has a rather hollow ring here in Galloway.

Leahy claims that Tesco help suppliers expand their businesses. Not here they don’t. The Milklink Creamery in Kirkcudbright has just announced 34 job losses. Why have these jobs been lost? Because Tesco have decided to restucture their supply chain. Somewhat ironically, Tesco are also about to open a supermarket in Castle Douglas on the site of the town’s old railway station. It was the arrival of the railway in 1860 which triggered the growth of a local dairy farming industry.

Although the railway is long gone, Castle Douglas is still surrounded by dairy farms which remain the mainstay of the regional economy, with 40% of the Scottish dairy industry based in the south-west. Tourism is our other key industry. What attracts vistors to Dumfries and Galloway is our countryside and the wildlife it supports. Any intensification of farming to meet the ‘economies of scale required to turn a profit’, as advocated by Kevin Hawkins of the British Retail Consortium to the Holyrood inquiry, will have the effect of turning the south-west into a green desert, bereft of wildlife.

Sadly, local responses to Tesco’s market dominance are those of impotent despair. Our dairy farmers pour their milk away in a ‘farmers strike’. Our Council rails in futility against Tesco for ignoring planning conditions imposed on their Castle Douglas store. Castle Douglas promotes itself as a “Food Town”, as a ‘unique shopping experience’, but the the Food Town Committe refuse even to discuss the threat posed by Tesco. The time may be coming for a ‘fair trade movement for British food producers’, but here in Galloway, it may already be too late.