I suppose the first reaction at hearing of the impending sale of the Co-op Farms is one of disappointment.
It could even be classed as sadness of the sort that always greets the loss of an institution.
The Co-operative Group’s farming business has long been hailed as the largest of its type in the UK. At its peak the Farmcare division managed around 70,000, acres with one-third of them owned.
Now it is a little less at 49,000 acres, but still a mighty presence.
Locally its flagship has been the 850-acre Rosemount Estate at Blairgowrie, bought in the early 1950s.
It has also owned farms in Aberdeenshire, Berwickshire and Ayrshire as well as across England.
The farming headquarters has, for many years, been on its large unit at Stoughton in Leicestershire.
There might be sadness and disappointment about the sale of the farms, but for me there is also anger.
The Co-op farms division has had its ups-and-downs over a long history but is generally highly regarded for its standard of husbandry and its business integrity. By its very nature it has had to dance to a slightly different tune, but a highly ethical one.
The Co-operative Group’s origins go back to industrial Lancashire in the 1840s. The idea was to stop exploitation of the working classes and to give them a share in their own wholesale and retail suppliers. Thus was born the principle of the ‘divi’ and of mass membership.
Over the decades the Co-operative Wholesale Society absorbed most of the local retail societies, but the principles held true and even now there are almost eight million members.
The slogan of ‘Here For Your Life’ was backed up by food stores, clothes stores, pharmacies and even funeral care.
Unfortunately for the farms and pharmacy divisions there is also a banking division.
It was a successful one for long enough, and even managed to enter the 2007 banking crisis with the minimum of toxic assets.
It lost the advantage quickly, though, by taking over the debt-laden Britannia Building Society and making other acquisitions.
The result is a £2 billion ‘black hole’ which is now, it seems, to be partially filled by sacrificing the 16,700 acres of its own land, the packhouses including the ones at Carnoustie and Longforgan and the 370 retail pharmacies.
It is a classic case of selling businesses that they are good at running to prop up one that they are clearly not very good at running. That is why I am angry.
The farms and packhouses alone have 250 employees, all of whom will now understandably be worried about the future.
The whole debacle raises questions of governance and the degree of control the eight million members are able to exert over their banking division.
The fall from grace of its chairman, the Rev Paul Flowers, back in the autumn did little to inspire confidence and adds to the sense that the farms have been sacrificed.
Of course nothing can take away the proud history of the farms division. It was set up to provide the Co-op’s dividend holders with unadulterated, tuberculosis-free milk, and before long there was a flow of other produce heading for the industrial cities of the north and Midlands.
At its peak in the late 1990s the Co-op milked 4,500 cows across its various sites, including a herd at Rosemount.
When Christine Tacon, now the Groceries Code Adjudicator, took over as manager of the farms division one of her most controversial decisions was to stop milk production across the business. The cows all went 12 years ago or so, and since then the farms have been all arable.
Later Mrs Tacon was to spearhead the drive to place more own-grown produce on the Co-operative Food Group’s shelves. The range grew to include items such as potatoes, soft fruit, flour and cider.
She was always rather touchy when asked why she had not kept the cows so that dairy products could not have been part of the in-house offering, defending the move by saying that the Co-op, relying on employed labour as it did, could not compete with family dairy farms where labour could go unremunerated in times of low milk prices.
Nonetheless her decision to supply fruit and vegetables was good for Tayside, with new employment created on the farms and in the Carnoustie and Longforgan packhouses.
The Co-op’s ethical and community based projects will be missed, too. In recent years projects such as Farm to Fork, Habitat Heroes and Careers in Farming have all helped to inform and educate people of all ages, but particularly the young.
No doubt the land all 16,700 acres of it around the UK will sell well enough and will continue to be farmed.
The sale might bring in £150 million, which will fill in all of 7.5% of the £2bn banking black hole.
Pathetic, isn’t it?