THE year 2004 will be remembered for a persistently wet summer weather, which disappointed holidaymakers and frustrated farmers. There were good crops following a favourable growing season, but stormy weather battered the ripening cereals. Many were laid flat. Harvest was seriously delayed.

Once the weather broke, all-out efforts went ahead to complete the harvest. Inevitably grain quality suffered. By contrast with last year when grain came in dry, the grain dryers have gone flat out, incurring heavy fuel costs. While cereal yields have been well up to average, prices are much lower than a year ago, some even below £60 per tonne. Many samples of bread making wheat varieties will now only be fit for animal feed.

Strenuous efforts have been made catching up with the arrears of cultivation and sowing of autumn crops. Already some good winter wheat plants are up.

Dairy farmers are ensiling good crops of forage maize to supplement grass silage in a season which produced abundant herbage.

This year, every farmer will have to ponder his responsibilities as custodian of the countryside and guardian of the environment under the reform of the CAP. There will no longer be production incentives. Indeed, whole fields, even a whole farm, may be set aside. Diversifying into other activities than farming is encouraged.

Not every farmer will be attracted to this "brave new world".

In his Harvest Sermon in Worcester Cathedral, Robert Barlow, the new diocesan Chaplain for Agriculture and Rural Life, delivered a telling message to supermarkets.

He reminded us how life on the farm has changed from the days when the harvest field saw many helpers at work. "Over the last century technological advances have saved work, or to put it another way, lost jobs. In recent years UK agriculture has been losing jobs at the rate of 20,000 per year - the equivalent of a Longbridge closure year after year after year.

"And this has had an effect on the social position of farmers. A tenant farmer spoke of his isolation at harvest time. His wife worked off the farm to bring in some income. His children had grown up and left home. During harvest he would be out on the combine as soon as the dew had lifted and be working until after dark.

He spoke of his isolation: 'No one comes to visit me any more. The only people to walk up the farm drive are the Jehovah's Witnesses.'

"All he had for company was the radio in his cab and a mobile phone. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast to the sociable family harvest I remember in the 60s.

"Technological changes have pushed farmers to the margins of society. And economic changes have pushed farmers to the margins financially. Over the last half century the ever-shrinking number of shops have increased the power of the supermarket over the farmer. In the UK some four supermarkets control around 80 per cent of the grocery trade.

The proportion of the shelf price that goes to the primary producer, the farmer, has fallen. Fifty years ago farmers go roughly half of what shoppers spent on food. Today the proportion has shrunk to about 8p in the £. The situation is the same for UK farmers as it is for farmers in the developing world. The proportion of the price they get is often similar.

"The world economic system results in UK farmers being paid below the cost of production for their produce. It also results in farmers in the developing world being paid below their cost of production. All this happens in a world that needs the food that farmers worldwide produce. There are hundreds of millions living with an inadequate diet. The economic system that produces this result is both crazy and an affront to God's justice.

"Pushed to the margins economically, farmers may be pushed to the limits of acceptable practice. While technology has reduced labour of input, there is still a need for people to pick and pack crops. Lower wages, and thus lower costs, can be achieved by using unscrupulous gangmasters or illegal workers. Migrant workers from overseas can be vulnerable.

"What has pushed farmers to this margin of acceptable practice has been the power of the Supermarkets. At least that is what the House of Commons select committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs concluded: 'We are convinced that the dominant position of the supermarkets in relation to their suppliers is a contributory factor in creating an environment where illegal activity by gangmasters can take root.'

"Pushed to the margins socially, economically and in working practices, too many farmers go over the edge. A newspaper in south India used to publish a running total of how many farmers had killed themselves so far that year. We need to make sure that we pull back those who are near the edge.

"We ought to be using our spending as consumers to try to ensure a fair proportion for the primary producer. Fair trade principles ought to apply whether we are buying coffee from the other side of the world or vegetables from the other side of the village. Worldwide or locally, we ought to be buying in accordance with God's principles of justice."