Young Farmers have been coordinating an aid effort for their counterparts in flood-hit Somerset.

Saffron Walden Reporter: Essex Young Farmers Club sending hay and straw to farners in Somerset.Essex Young Farmers Club sending hay and straw to farners in Somerset. (Image: Archant)

More than £25,000 worth of hey, straw, haylage and silage have now been shipped from Essex to the west country.

Ed Ford, vice county chairman of the Essex Young Farmers Club, said: “I was up in Coventry at the national young farmers conference and the county chairman for Somerset got up and said three words then burst into tears.

“At that point I knew we had to do something to help.”

Mr Ford agreed with his fellow club members that they would use the profit from their New Year’s eve party to buy three loads of hay to send.

But the mission grew and they have now sent 90 tonnes of animal feed and bedding, with the help of Tesco lorries.

“I am suprised at the scale of this, but not by the generosity. There is no other industry that rallies around like the farming industry,” said 23-year-old Mr Ford.

“At the weekend farmers in Colchester arrived at my farm with 10 tractor-loads of straw.”