Multi Millionaires Complaining Again

Which again shows the help that the public purse gives to farmers that isn't supplied to other businesses.

If as an example a car garage gets flooded out, loses all it's stock, all the equiptment needed to do repairs destroyed. Who pays for that?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/defra-to-meet-the-cost-of-removing-sheep-killed-in-snow

There ya go. At the time I'm thinking of, I think the payment was around £300 for a ewe and around £100 for each lamb. This was more than the bloody things were making at market. All because despite severe snow being forecast, some farmers didn't bother their arses to bring them in as that would cost too much in feed.

The basic payment scheme ended in 2023, so no one is getting £4k a month for doing nothing.

They might be eligible for delinked payments in 2025, but they are capped at a little under £8k a year for a farm. They may be participating in ELMS (Environmental Land Management Scheme) which offers payments per hectare for carrying out specific environmental actions, but the payment is broadly to cover the cost of the activity, it’s by no means profit. It also varies from a few pounds to £200 or so a hectare depending on the activity. At the highest rate you’d need about 250 hectares to get to £4k a month, and you’d be spending that and more to achieve the action. I’m not even sure you can claim that much, as it too is likely to be capped.

But, let’s not let facts muddy the thread. The OP certainly has little understanding of running a business, never mind a farm 🤣

@feelingalittlehorse Ive known several youngsters who would like to go into farming. As I said before, many farmers and farming families have no idea of the realities of working class life. I used to go out working for my parents to help keep a roof over their head at the age of 8 and look after their other kids - as many still do. Nowadays we then face years of thankless work for low wages which buy nothing and leaves us after 20 years of struggle in private rentals with nothing but the clothes we stand up in - assuming they’ve escaped the ravages of damp and mould. Do you honestly think farming is the only job at the mercy of government decisions? Every job and sector is dependent on political choices! Meanwhile I know of one farming family ‘getting out of farming because it’s so hard’ who are keeping enough land, to do nothing with, but in subsidies it still earns them £4k a month. Most people will never earn £4k a month. That family gazed in amazement when I suggested we couldn’t all just take in stray animals and had to consider time and space restrictions.

@feelingalittlehorse Ive known several youngsters who would like to go into farming. As I said before, many farmers and farming families have no idea of the realities of working class life. I used to go out working for my parents to help keep a roof over their head at the age of 8 and look after their other kids - as many still do. Nowadays we then face years of thankless work for low wages which buy nothing and leaves us after 20 years of struggle in private rentals with nothing but the clothes we stand up in - assuming they’ve escaped the ravages of damp and mould. Do you honestly think farming is the only job at the mercy of government decisions? Every job and sector is dependent on political choices! Meanwhile I know of one farming family ‘getting out of farming because it’s so hard’ who are keeping enough land, to do nothing with, but in subsidies it still earns them £4k a month. Most people will never earn £4k a month. That family gazed in amazement when I suggested we couldn’t all just take in stray animals and had to consider time and space restrictions.

You would REALLY struggle to farm successfully straight out of college without any significant experience working day in day out on a farm.

Day to day you might be ok. But when it's 3am, pissing rain and you have a backward calf stuck and you can't get through to the vet.
Or know how to work out what's wrong with an animal and successfully treat it without killing it. Or any of the thousands of problems that crop up all the bloody time.
There is a massive difference learning the theory in a classroom environment or even on work experience where you're not the decision maker. Experience is the best teacher. And it take years to gain that experience. There are no shortcuts, even kids from farming backgrounds still have to gain the experience- they are just fortunate enough to have a head start on those that don't.
I'm not saying it's impossible but it would be a hell of a difficult road to take straight from college

Of course you can run a farm after going to agricultural college and getting experience working on farms. The reason people do not tend to enter farming in this way is because you need a lot of money to buy stock and machinery. And nearly always land. Rented farms i.e. tenanted farms are normally sold as soon as the farmer gets too old to farm and there is no family member to pick it up. Landowners do not want to rent tenanted farms in this way as it is not the most profitable use of land.

My family had a tenanted farm, no longer exists though. But certain members of the family still farm as employees.

Not quite sure what this means when I’m pointing at people on allotments and trying to start up on market gardens who work the 38 hours and then go off to grow food. Many of us would love to keep chickens and then have the chance to go on from there maybe - but as pp’s have said, we don’t get that chance. Time was when working people in factories could keep pigs!!

Re the subject of food security. What is it like now, and how would we increase it?

Given everyone works 38 hour weeks, do you think ‘growing your own food’ in practical terms may be a bit different to ‘aww a simpler life would be nice’ type thoughts?

The popularity of smallholding da and allotments suggest that many would enjoy a chance to grow food. There’s a very popular horticulture training scheme near me that is not exactly short of applicants - most of whom complain they can’t buy land to start. That’s our issue, and it is strangling all of us whatever walk of life we’re in. We could do with a bit more co-operative action against a series of governments acting under an ideology that has allowed this to develop over decades.

Yeah agree OP. Let’s slam them with a massive tax, force them to sell the land, and we can watch it be bought by other multi millionaires for unethical property developing. We can then enjoy a heightened flood risk, food instability, and contribute to climate change as import chlorinated chicken from the States in a bid to plug the gap.

“Does a person need to be born into a certain family to have knowledge of farming? Could a person who had knowledge of agriculture not do it just as well if not better?
Current system is a closed shop that benefits only a few, hence why they are crapping themselves at having to part with a tax dime.”

It takes years to have the knowledge and expertise to run a farm. It’s like the longest, most underpaid apprenticeship there is.
There are those not born to farming who go to college and take on a council tenancy or a well priced tenancy, but sadly they tend to fail as they don’t have the decades of experience behind them like those born on farms and brought up with that amount of work being the norm.

Typically on a farm there are three generations - the older ones who are slowing down, playing an increasingly lesser role. The middle generation, increasing responsibility, taking the main role, the endless paperwork, the day to day decisions, and the younger, starting very young feeding lambs/calves, helping a parent with some tractor work, being immersed in farm life, and as they grow older learning the ropes, going to do some contracting as older teenagers, maybe working on other farms until they too start to take on more responsibility on their family farm. A farmer is learning right from being a baby.

For others wanting to farm, my son for example, the road is not as easy. He started working on a farm at 15, started driving tractors at 16, found some contracting work locally so gained some experience that way. He may one day become a farm manager, or a dairy manager.

Taking on the full responsibility of a farm is like having a few jobs in one. You’re the zoo keeper, the secretary, the manager, the night shift, the transport manager. In busy times (calving, lambing, silaging, harvest etc) you may work up to 20 hours a day without any extra pay or anyone to come and take over from you. If you want a holiday you need to coordinate it to a degree where you probably won’t relax (more when you’re a livestock farmer, where it literally never stops), in fact many farmers I know don’t have holidays beyond the odd weekend away. Very few people would take this on willingly, and if they did they’d want a better rate of pay than farmers generally get. It can come across as a closed shop because who in their right mind would want that lifestyle for such a low and unpredictable return?

They’re not crapping themselves because they might have to “part with a tax dime” (which is ridiculous as they already pay tax just like everyone else), they’re crapping themselves because their houses are tied up with the business in a way that no other business is. Because they can see how little they are valued, even at a precarious point in history where farming should be one of our top priorities. Because they’re sick and tired of people calling them multi millionaires and wilfully ignoring the hardships they go through. Because they’re sick of idiots begrudging them having anything nice, most of which is necessary farm equipment anyway and not bought for luxury lifestyle reasons.
Because a large portion of the population seemingly doesn’t understand what it takes to produce food, and how little farmers are paid in order to do that.
Because so many people are coming after them to try to control billionaires who find loopholes to avoid paying tax, but don’t care that they’re hurting people who provide our food in the meantime.

Go after the billionaires, stop millionaires from registering their businesses in low tax rate countries, close the loopholes, but leave farmers alone when it’s blatantly obvious that the loudest voices don’t have a clue what the potential consequences are of these actions.