To tell you how fucked UK agriculture is?

[eatsleepfarmrepeat]

God I just feel beaten this evening, I’m a farmers wife, I work in a professional role which pays well (thank god) we have two young children and I’m just DONE.

My husband is on his arse. This years harvest is so relentless, wet weather means it’s a real smash and grab operation, the heavy machines are running on wet ground and we’re just burning diesel trying to dry wet crops.

I’ve just escorted the combine from the field up to the yard (because it’s raining, again) and for about the fifth time this harvest I’ve been flashed at and given the wanker sign. I mean, I get it, it’s a big bit of kit, it takes up the whole road but honestly escorting is the only way to get them home safely and how the fuck do you get it from A to B without it going on the road? We’re not waggoning class As or having some recreational rave, we’re just making food.

We grow cereals which are either milling wheat for bread (which will be problematic this year due to the drop in proteins and the unfavourable harvest because of the weather) feed wheat for animal feed, oil seed rape for biodiesel and barley, for beer. The new green agenda means our subsidies are being replaced by taking good arable land (which makes up 24% of the country) out of production. This is why there is a shortage of eggs, the commodity price is being pushed and egg producers are not being paid the cost of production by supermarkets so they are importing, from countries which are not held to the same (necessary) animal welfare standards which the UK industry operate under.
we produce high welfare free range chickens. They retail for £10+ but our contract with supermarkets has them in at £3.24 per bird - imagine trying to operate on those margins with food and energy bills being what they are. In addition the UK market is absolutely flooded with Thai imports of cheap shit mean which again falls far below our own mandatory animal welfare standards - we just cannot compete.

ironically a lot of our feed wheat will probs go to vivirgo/e sos for energy crops. Literally thousands of litres of diesel burned producing something to go into a power plant and be sold as green energy for the lithium heavy teslas of Britain.

in the last decade we have planted 100acres of woodland, created four new wildlife ponds on the farm and drilled artichoke and wildflower shelter belts to enhance wildlife and pollinators on the farm.

I keep thinking we would be a million times happier (and better off) if we just sold out of the partnership and started again, get out of this shit, spiralling industry where the general public seem to think we’re trying to kill them and simultaneously fuck the countryside at the same time, go have a nice life where my husband isn’t hampered by stress and the never ending pressure of his arsehole father who got fat in the 70s where they used shit hot chemicals and decimated any balance of wildlife. This year is hard but with the commodity prices falling again against an increasing fuel and labour and fertiliser bill I just wonder what the fuck we are doing it for. Any trade off with the lovely holistic life the kids have is countered by stressed out parents.

we’re an island. We need food security, and we’re being paid to fallow productive acres which is already having a knock on effect to other food markets. Why are we so short sighted? We can afford to be virtuous with our farmland as a nation by offsetting but the outcome is that we’re outsourcing our footprint to these poorer nations like Thailand who are picking up our production slack and selling their chicken into our country at a criminally low value. It’s batshit.

I feel for you.

I try to buy meat like yours, directly from farms.

In the medieval era, a summer like this would've lead to famine as the crops rotted in the fields.

It's thanks to families like yours that, that isn't the case today.

It’s crazy, and frightening, and people just do not realise what’s going on.

I have no answer but I am terrified of how badly we are neglecting our farming industry. It terrifies me how dismissive and short sighted politicians are about building on good quality farmland instead of brown sites.

I guess what I'm saying is that I hear you.

Governments (whether Westminster/Cardiff and probably Holyrood too) are paying for good, productive farmland to be turned into conifer plantations. Meanwhile the world faces a grain and fertiliser shortage caused by Russia invading Ukraine. It's crazy.

I'm really sad to read this. Has Brexit made things better, worse or no change?

Totally agree with everything you said and despair at how shit our successive governments are, and how ignorant and passive the general population is.
Thanks to you and your husband for everything that you do and have done.
If you do decide to start afresh with something else, then thank you again for the amount that you did.

I live in rural Lincolnshire so I'm surrounded by arable farming. I hear you and I wish the average Brit felt more strongly about how and where their food came from.
I do my very best to never buy imported foods that can be produced in the UK.
People remember the 70s subsidies and think farming is still like that. It isn't.

The world is in a precarious position food wise. Thank you for all the work farmers do.

I live in a village and the past 2 weeks the farmers have been working around the clock. We were just talking about how tough it must be for all of you.

The government has no real strategy for food security and Defra are pretty rubbish.

Hop over to the boat migrant threads where they’re insisting the government build millions of new houses because ‘we have LOADS of available land to build on, we just need the will to do it’. Fantasists, the lot of them.

I was just saying to someone the other day how farmers are not valued enough. I think people are so far removed from the food they eat - it’s easy to forget where it comes from and the work it takes. Thank you.

I really feel for you. The thing about eggs is nearly all eggs these days taste of nothing. I used to have a milkman and he sold brilliant eggs but he retired earlier in the year. Now I have to go to a greengrocer a drive away to get nice eggs.

I don't think I quite understood the issue with chicken but thanks for explaining.

I'm getting so fed up with feeding my dc rubbish looking cheap supermarket meat. I'll look more carefully when I shop.

I drive past a big field of wet hay bales today. Some had been wrapped & stacked but obviously the farmer hadn't got them all in before the rain it made me feel really sad.

So sorry op x

It's bloody awful. I'm so sorry. If I could pay direct, and higher, I would. It is a travesty.

I fully agree with everything you've said. My partner and I have a beef farm and its soul destroying that the government is placing all these rules on us, making us pay to be part of QMS or similar and then allowing shit quality, no welfare standard, CHEAP meat to come in through Irelands back door...we simply can't compete. Especially when so many need to save every penny. They have cut grants, in favour of grants which put such restrictions on what you can actually use your land for..aka, not farming..
We will keep continuing regardless, like you say, making food and providing the ingredients for beer, whilst being abused and accused of killing the planet, by those who jet off on holiday every year.. holiday? What's that?!
Ahhh the joys of being a British farmer.

I see what is happening in the fields, it is dreadful and I feel for you immensely.

I had no idea people thought badly of farmers though. It's never come up in conversation but I don't see a lack of respect by drivers when I'm out and about.

In general I blame the government (because ultimately its all their fault), then the supermarkets with their huge profit margins and unreasonable expectations.

I live in the working agricultural part of Norfolk , and all around us at this time of year , is 24/7 farming activity . We had tractors and combines charging past our house at 2.30 this morning , and the same lot were out and about again by 6am once the rain had cried off for a bit . Every direction you look is a cloud of straw dust , and every road is a procession of tractors , combines , more tractors with trailers , or a baler or two . They are literally working their nuts off and I don’t begrudge them being out and about one tiny bit. People complain about them but they still want 30p loaves of bread and Weetabix that isn’t £4 a packet . We’ve had really cheap food for too long , and it’s cost more than people realise .

Every year , my neighbour raises a few pigs and some lambs , and we have one of each for the freezer . This year , it cost nearly twice the year before , but he showed us his spreadsheets of what he spent on feed , and medicines , and hay and other costs , and the price of feed had gone up by over 60 per cent. Yet most who produce for supermarkets don’t get paid anything like 60 percent more to do so. It must be thankless and exhausting , and yet you’ll still get people saying “Ooh I’ve never seen a poor farmer in their 4x4 “

I live surrounded by farms. And endless planning applications. We were watching the guys at the back of my house combining til well after midnight last night. The rain came at 2, and I feel for them today not having made all the fields.

It’s awesome to watch, it rattles our house, we stay up and gawp at the sheer industry of it. No wanker signs for farmers in Yorks OP (I hope) though moaners have a go on village Facebook about lack of hedge cutting (in August!).

I feel for you - thankless work - but some of us appreciate you.

I hear you, I work closely with the Ag industry and have a small sense of what you have to deal with.

There are so many issues and the government will always be playing catch up with their policies and only really concerned with getting votes.

Farming is completely different to other businesses, historically subsidised to an extent, which I believe is why supermarkets don't feel they have to pay a fair price. Paying below what it costs a farmer to produce milk and meat is disgusting and it wouldn't happen in other industries, but farmers are over a barrel.

I don't know what the answer is. Farm's need to produce food at a fair price for the consumer and the farm, but also look after the land and environment.

Growing crops, with all the costs and energy that that entails, to harvest it and then feed an AD plant to create energy is just batshit crazy.

We are primarily sheep farmers and the sheep price has been reasonably good post Brexit, it's difficult to know if its related or just part of the rhythm of price fluctuations of farming generally.

we have really felt the substantial subsidy cuts that have occurred this year though, this is going to be the year that farming becomes unsustainable for many farming families that have previously been just about getting by.

People forget that the subsidies were to keep the price of food artificially low for the end consumer, farmers like us on upland hill farms basically made very little profit even with subsidies.

The only solution now for British meat to remain affordable is for the supermarkets to pay a fair price/reduce their profit margins. They won't though, they will just import from Brazil or via Ireland instead.

and before anyone starts on the old 'farmers voted for brexit' trope, they didn't. The farming vote is estimated to have been split in much the same way as the rest of the country, and the farming press and most farming spokespeople were mostly pro remain.

Not unreasonable at all. It’s a nightmare. People just don’t get it, even in semi rural locations. Four times this week I’ve been woken by harvesting in the farmland next to our house. Facebook bloody keyboard warriors have been whinging all over the local group about their precious disturbed sleep, and why can’t it be done at more sociable hours? It absolutely baffles me that these neighbours don’t understand the relationship between the weather and harvest, when they wouldn’t dream of mowing their lawns in the pissing rain. I suspect they’re the sort who’d call you a wanker for moving farm vehicles during the day on the roads.

YANBU.

Absolute sympathies OP - farming family, my parents retired and my brother has taken over. Very similar experiences to yourself.

One of the issues affecting farming is there are so many of the general population, even some posting on MN, which will be fully on board with the net zero crap but not see what this means for the farming industry. People need to stop and think what this actually means for people's lives and work.

Too many people in the UK either do not know rural UK exists or they think they can inflict ludicrous rules and regulations on the rural economy which to them may seem perfectly acceptable when in fact they will cause ruin. I cannot decide if the rulemakers are either stupid or very clever.

Our family farm is a hill farm, yet people think we should stop producing lamb and beef because of "climate change" (our cattle produce less methane than the hotair and bullshit which comes out of many of those twittering on about how we are all going to die) and change to arable farming. Has anyone tried to arable farm on a hill farm? They simply have no idea.

it's a mess, we are very used to cheap food & should be paying more. Unfortunately salaries are crap & too much gets used on housing.

You are entirely correct that the subsidy system is so wasteful with regard to paying for land to be become non profitable. Of course though, the landowner presumably can not accept the subsidy and use it for agriculural use.

I have worked and lived in rural places for most of my life, Along with working for a business supplying machinery into local farms. The reality is that the poor farmer claim has always been made, when in reality only a small proportion are actually poor.

Using your combine example, I have watched countless Farmers buy machinery far in excess of size and power than they actually need. Just so they can keep up with the 'Giles's' next door.

A few years ago some local Farmers daughters paraded around the local supermarket with a cow to complain about the price of milk. Rocking up in their one year old Range Rovers & X5's didn't do their cause much good. Especially when between the four of them their families were in receipt of well over £1million in subsidy payments.

My DF is a retired farmer (except they never really retire). He always says ‘Don’t criticise the farmers with your mouth full’.