To wonder why people care more about dairy farmers than ............

[ChocLover2015]

..coal miners when the pits closed because of cheap foreign coal?
Is it because farmers are more middle clarrsss. Have nice houses send their Dc to private schools and drive new land Rovers?

There are 2 dairy farms in our village, (Friesians and Holsteins) and anything further from 'middle class' you couldn't imagine! They're lovely men, and I'm very friendly with their wives. But they speak such broad Norfolk you probably wouldn't understand much unless you'd lived here for years as I have.
Each farm has been with the same family for hundreds of years. But 'private school'? Thass a lood of ol' squit mawther! Nice houses? No, they're very ancient dwellings, but just totally practical farmhouses, not 'naice' at all. The family I know very well have a scabby old sheepdog and piles of cowshitty blue overalls smelling the place out. It's lovely and relaxed and comfortable. But certainly not middle class or naice.

I feel sorry for the miners too, but I know nothing about those as Norfolk is an agricultural county, not a mining one.

Why is everyone so hung up on the name national herd?

It's really not that many years ago that animals and land were commandeered by the war office to increase supplies of home produced food as imports stopped. Surely everyone knows about rationing and how it affected your parents/grandparents? Tescos has so much stuff on the shelves, everyone forgets how precarious our food supplies are.

Farmers had to produce at a certain level, had to plough up grasses, had to push production and had their 'privately owned' assets taken away. They were paid to remove hedges and farm every scrap of land and every animal to the maximum as the country was going hungry.

Agriculture is not comparable to any other industries, as everyone has to eat everyday, and that has to come from somewhere. Subsidies are given to keep the price of food low, personally I would stop this and increase the price of food, but it's not a popular viewpoint.

We take so much for granted now, but for how long?

I'm a farmers daughter and I certainly never went to private school! Nor would I describe my self as Middle class.

My DP is a farmer and we don't drive around in Chelsea tractors, a Y reg nissan almera is all we can afford! Most of the money w make goes back into the business e.g animal feed, maintenance of buildings/machinery. And as for nice houses pfffffttt, we are in a ramshackle lean too which much to my discust backs onto MILs house.

I think you should do your research before posting things like that on here. I live in a very agricultural community and all of the farmers I know work VERY hard for what they have. A farm is a continuity of (in many cases) generations of hard labour. We are constantly trying to build upon it, better ourselves and if we thought more of driving around in cars and sending our children to schools that we COULDNT afford then there would be no farms.

There is a global backlog of milk, over production. This country has so many dairy products (cheese, yogurts, milk to name but a few) imported when we could be pretty much self sufficient

My grandfather said, you may need a doctor once a year and a lawyer once in your lifetime but EVERYONE needs a farmer everyday, 3 times a day.

Actually, although I'm too young to remember the closure of the mines we did study it at school in history lessons

That makes me feel so old

Its very tenuous but there can be the impression that Farmers are 'Tory' and miners were 'old labour'. though that is dispelled a bit by co-operatives. Though agriculture is a bayonetted corpse of the free maket.

Though I think this is detracting from the problem which is here and now, people are becoming more conscious of 'local produce' and where things come from, though I do find it bizarre how imports could be cheaper.How we got to the stage where people are selling under-cost is crazy.

Is it efficiency, farmers to little too late? Do we need to be putting carbon taxes on imports to make them less economic?

I think I like your grandfather, fleetfoxes

fleetfoxes .Yes but not a British one.
If you think milk from Britain is necessarily fresher you are wrong.There's a dairy by me that delivers from Sutherland to Cornwall every day.

I don't care personally about dairy farmers or miners.
I do care about this country maintaining it's agricultural and industrial capacity. I can't do much in a practical sense to support British coal production but I can do my bit over food.
To this end I buy British if I possibly can. This means going without certain foods when they are not in season. It means paying a bit more sometimes and asking the origin of meat when at the butcher.

I want to know that future generations will not have to import food that could be produced here.

Cheap imports always mystify me too - lower animal welfare, lower wages, production methods/pesticides/drugs that are illegal here, different subsidy systems, not sure which has the greater effect. My friend from New Zealand can't understand why the butter here is cheaper than at home.
I blame the supermarkets, sourcing food at the cheapest possible prices, with little UK loyalty, and not looking further forward than next years profits.

Well, I remember a lot of industry being privatised and mines closing. I remember the strikes, riots and the sheer desperation that many felt.
I remember the suicides of men who couldn't live anymore because they couldn't provide for their families anymore.
I remember moving away from my home town because there wasn't any work anymore.
I can remember the public outcry and support.

We moved to Norfolk, I met many farmers and surprisingly none of them fit your description, not one.
Their children went to the local village school with all the others and by definition not middle class.
They work hard for the little they receive.
Now DFOD

That's something that could be worked upon. At least it's still British! I really don't think you have a clue what you're talking about.

annadina my grandfather was a very wise man and I miss his nuggets of wisdom very much

So would you rather the supermarkets got our money Choc? Do you think the executive board of Tesco don't send their children to private schools and drive posh cars?

at your assumptions, ignorance and prejudice OP.

Supermarkets are selling fresh milk as a loss leader and to achieve this are squeezing farmers so hard that many will go out of business. Combine this with the drop in price from the big dairy firms and the future business is untenable for many farmers.

Presumably the OP wont care when you can only buy UHT milk as in most of Europe, because that is where we are headed. Eventually, when the majority of dairy farmers are squeezed out of business, fresh milk will become a specialist high priced product.

^^ well said

I don't particularly like farmers but I do care about animal welfare.

chockbic what is your reasoning behind 'not particularly liking farmers'?

We care about the animals welfare more than anybody. If the animals aren't fit and well then neither is the farm business as a whole.

We look after our girls, they help to pay the bills and put food on the table, they are comfortable and everything is as clean as it can possibly be. We work very long hours, outside in ALL weathers, fencing, digging our way up to the moor in deep snow to feed sheep. Yes it's a tough life but we love it. It's a way of life too. So to me, when you say that you don't particularly like farmers, it does upset me. There are of course bad examples out there but you get that in every walk of life. There are bad doctors, bad surgeons, bad toilet cleaners!! I'm not condoning these people by any means but unfortunately they are out there.

It's ok OP not all dairy farmers like us expect you to give a flying fuck. You just keep going to the local supermarket and buying the 4 pints for £1 that nearly destroyed my fathers farm! But that's fine, we'll keep getting up at 3am and work our arses off to ensure you can buy milk so cheap!

As for the miners, well, a lot of them wouldn't have managed to feed their families if it was not for my dad. He contributed meat, veg and potatoes as well as milk to those miners in our local village on a daily basis. In fact OP he had shit load of his sheep slaughtered to feed the miners! My mother made massive pots of soup to take to them on the picket lines. He and my mother weft into poverty themselves to help the miners.

Our children went to private school, we drive Mitsubishi (so sorry to burst your bubble) and have a beautiful house thank you. If you, some randomer on the internet wish to make sweeping generalisations go ahead.

Here OP . Engage your brain next time before letting your fingers loose on a keyboard on a subject you clearly know fuck all about!

Maybe the OP would empathise more if the sacked ex miners had then become dairy farmers...

There was huge sympathy for the mining communities from across the spectrum. There was also fear of the miners' leadership. Scargill terrified whole swathes of British society and played into Thatcher's hands. He was completely intransigent. A self-promoting "working class hero" who fucked over his membership with his economically illiterate arguments. There were deals to be done. He spurned them. Eventually the NUM had to sue him to get back his flat in the Barbican. The Barbican FFS!

The farmers are doing a bloody sight better at PR.

Well said fabulous

There was massive support across the country for the miners. I was living in London working in the public services during the miners strike and coach loads of people would travel to the picket lines (when the police hadn't thrown cordons round the areas to stop them). We fund raised and had miners and their families travelling to London to speak to Union meetings. It was massive on the left.
I have always tried to 'buy British'. Obviously don't always manage it but where I can manage to support our own industries (Farming, manufacturing, small local businesses) then I will. Really don't understand your point .

I come from a very rural, farming area and my DHs family are a farming family.

None of them are rich and most of them are not able to employ their sons on the farms in the way previous generations did.

And some of them are tenant farmers whose landlords have sold land out from under them making it hard for them to produce enough on what they have left.

As a nation we are reaching the point where our population is going to outstrip our farmers ability to feed us so we will importing from abroad. As will other countries with increasing populations.

Globally, I think we will be i deep trouble eventually with regard to food production.