FARMER FEARS FOR FUTURE IF CATTLE MARKET GOES

A spokesman for Aldi said the company had been working for more than three years with an action committee and fully understood its obligation to provide substantial funds towards relocation of the market.

" A site has been found on farmland and we have our substantial sum of money available but now we need the farmers and government bodies who have promised some funding to come up with their money. Until they do we cannot get on with the legal contract. Meanwhile the planning application has to be dealt with separately," he explained.

Farmer John Wey of Nuthurst Farm, near Horsham, says he will have to sell his 72-strong beef suckler herd if the market closes, leaving farmers in three counties with alternative options of travelling to livestock markets at Ashord in Kent, Salisbury in Wiltshire or Thame in Oxfordshire.

"Farming and the countryside in this area is now under a terrible threat. The prospect of travelling livestock such vast distances and paying radically increased transport costs is inconceivable.," said Mr Wey.

He added: " We have lost all subsidies, which were extremely valuable to suckler herds. We used to have 130 a head for each cow, which at least paid for its keep. That has now gone and we have so many rules and regulations it is making life very difficult.

"This news is the last straw, with transport costs going up and up. Once we had five people working on this farm, and now there is just myself, an old age pensioner."

For full story see West Sussex Gazette June 27