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.

Completely agree. I didn't know about the solar panels, that seems really badly thought out.

My grandparents (on both sides) were farmers. My parents withdrew from farming (but still work in agriculture ) because they could see how shot it was…. We have a smallholding and raise poultry but it’s just for us and close family because people won’t pay what it costs to raise proper free range birds. They want a cheap £3 chicken and most people don’t care where it is from or how it was raised…

fertiliser is super expensive- eye watering this last 12 months too!

I've just gone and had a look, and Labour's website shows no press releases related to farming since 2021.

Not much interest before 2021 either;

Feb 2021
Keir Starmer claims 'farming matters to Labour' in party leader's first NFU conference speech since 2008.

you are massively generalising here though - my farm is absolutely riddled with insects and wildlife.

The only pesticides we use are for animal welfare reasons - to stop cows and sheep being eaten alive by fly strike or infested with ticks.

We use a very small amount of artificial fertiliser to boost our silage fields, but most of the fertilising otherwise is done by cows and sheep pooing and weeing on it throughout the summer months (and winter for the sheep). We also spread rough muck and slurry from when the cows are inside over winter.

Animal excrement means flies. Lots and lots of flies.

A mixture of silage fields, hay meadows, permanent pasture, woodland pasture, wetland areas and the moorland that makes up our farm land between them boast a rich and diverse wildlife habitat despite being relatively (for an upland hill farm) intensely farmed.

On warm days the air hums with the sound of insects like a distant motorway.

I only have to walk for less than 10 minutes out of the farmhouse through summer to be able to see/hear curlews, lapwings, skylarks, grouse, golden plover and meadow pipits.

We have a huge amount of hares, rabbits , shrews, voles, field mice, stoats and weasels - the ground this summer has practically pulsed with movement from small rodents, frogs and toads.

There are obviously also all the other animals that we are less keen on due to their numbers being unsustainably high as predators - badgers, foxes, crows, gulls, buzzards (so so many buzzards).

so we find it very difficult to live amongst all that wildlife and simultaneously be told beef and sheep farmers are responsible for destroying the environment.

Especially when told that by people who have gone vegetarian/vegan for environmental reasons with no apparent idea that plant based farming is significantly more responsible for issues around pesticide use, chemical fertilisers, air miles, and loss of habitat.

I hear you. Another farmers wife here, who had to get a job off farm to make ends meet. We're sheep and cattle (having left dairy in 2010) with 300 acres of grassland. DH is up at 5am, works stupid hours, falls asleep on the sofa about 8.30pm, if he's lucky enough to be finished for the day. Costs are spiralling, profits are gone, because it costs more to produce the food than we get paid for it.

DH's mental health is shot, because he no longer knows how we're going to make it all work and the government is on an anti-farming agenda. And don't get me started on the militant vegans who have started sending death threats to the dairy farmer next door because she's high profile with the NFU.

The general public really have no clue how hard it is.

@VegetablesFightingToReclaimTheAubergieneEmoji

*the crux of it is we’ve allowed house prices to run away eating up all our earnings which meant food has had to remain cheap."

Seen from outside the UK it looks that way and is something that has been mentioned in some other threads, mainly in response to holidaymaker generated comments along the lines of "aren't French supermarkets expensive" or "How the heck do people afford to shop in the EU"..

The answer is different budget priorities, both at a national and a household level.

I live in a rural county. In the run-up to the referendum, there were pro-Brexit signs in most of the fields round here, except for those on a nearby farm where the farmer always has Lib Dem signs up at election times (it's a Con/Lib Dem marginal constituency).

I remember wondering why they were all so pro-Brexit, given the benefits of the Common Agricultural Policy, and I wonder even more now what the fuck they were thinking of.

It's madness to fly food halfway round the world, and for people not to be able to afford to buy locally produced stuff.

I feel for you, OP, it sounds hellish, but I'm buggered if I know what the answer is. I blame the people who voted for this shit show.

We always have had to and always will need to import some of our food - we can't be self sufficient in the UK. So issues of food security aren't straightforward. But wheat we should not be doing is importing food that can be grown/ raised to high quality and welfare standards in this country.
Farming is a nightmare because it's been run loosely on the same policy as GPs in the NHS - mainly private small businesses who are paid subsidies as well as market rate. Now that all going pear shaped as it doesn't generate income for shareholders and businesses who pay huge bungs to the tories.
Ideally I'm sure what the current tories want to see is massive Agribusiness farms run by conglomerates for global export and the rest of the countryside as a theme park. It's horrendous for the people who's family have farmed for centuries but that's the ultimate aim of Brexit. Profit for shareholders.

People dont realise just how complicit in this supermarkets are, they just want the cheapest food and complain when it rises at all.

Bump - more people that read this can initiate change?

What do customers do though if one rises prices?

They go to the cheaper one, well enough do hence the success of competitive and cheaper supermarkets

If we don’t want that then we have to choose to pay more. The option is there, some eggs are £5.60 others are much less

Ditto chicken and across items

Brilliant thread @eatsleepfarmrepeat. You have put farming and food security issues front and centre of Mumsnet, and I applaud your patient defence of agriculture and goodnatured responses to the urban ignoramuses who probably struggle to distinguish sheep from cows.

Living in the rural southwest, surrounded by mostly small scale livestock farms, (with fishing another vocal group) we have the choice of family butchers who buy beasts, fowl and game (in season) locally, and farm shops. I prefer to shop with them, and get eggs direct from the farm, and bread, fruit and veg from the local food hub which coordinates sales for numerous market gardeners and smallholders. I know it costs, and that we are fortunate to be able to afford it. Anything that I can buy locally without hitting the supermarket!

You should’ve.

The problem is that everything we do, every approach we take, has drawbacks. There is no way of implementing the socialist net zero utopia posters on here want, not while keeping personal freedoms and being a wealthy enough nation to maintain a high standard of living.

Sure, we can offer a million people asylum as wanted by posters on another thread. But that’s hundreds of thousands of new houses to built over probable greenfield land, destroying yet more ecosystems and farming land, causing flooding and further food insecurity. To solve the food insecurity we will then import even more, which deprives the countries of origin their own local produce, and means whether we eat is yet more dependent on world events not breaking the supply chain. So we’ll end up compounding our current problems, and it’ll all be blamed on the Tories/Brexit/Russia/climate change, because people aren’t bright enough to see the consequences of their own demands and realise it’s because we demanded 500,000 more houses to be built.

There is no perfect state of affairs, there’s a cost for everything, and saying ‘oh but if there was the political will we could have what we want’ is about as meaningful as ‘Brexit means Brexit’.

We need to decide on our priorities and acknowledge we can’t have it all.

We were hill farmers with sheep, we sold all out stock and me and my husband are now both working out. We rent out all our ground instead. One day I would love to get back into farming.

This doesn't bode well. Labour are pretty much a dead cert to be in power at the next election.

So we need to start planning for that now.

And again,while I really sympathise farmers, this isn't just about them, but also food security, self preservation, and what kind of a country we all want to live in. And green issues - but it needs to be done properly, as a PP said upthread, not introcucing pointless box ticking exercises and LISTENING to those who live and work rurally.

Idk I don’t think anything’s certain.

And I doubt Labour will change.

I don’t think it’s certain at all.
they’ll struggle in outer london with Sadie kahn. They’ll struggle with the women voters as well.

which brings me back to something I always say on these threads. Where the fuck are Lib Dem’s and greens?

Where the fuck are Lib Dem’s and greens?

They are all busy glueing themselves to roads and draping banners!

We just don’t have a decent option
im not a Tory voter I’m not a labour voter

i think there’s a lot like me. Who could be persuaded by a party who seem honest, not self serving and have common sense.

A point that has come up several times is how property costs take up such a large proportion of the general publics wages. To work out the Farmers real take home wage, you have to factor in that the farm business pays for the Farmhouse or tied house.

Once a person takes rent/mortgage payments, utility bills etc out their wages, they don't have much left either.

I see several people commented on Foot & Mouth. I was in one of the worst affected areas in the Country. The then Scottish NFU Jim Walker president railroaded the government into mass culling. Then pulled figures out his bum far increasing the true value of the destroyed animals. Making him & a number of his friends, incredibly rich along the way. There were farmers so keen to jump on that gravy train they were sneaking infected animals onto their farms to infect their own herd.

You've just written what I was trying to write.

Not my constituency but one not a million miles away was flipped from Tory to Lib Dem by sheer determination and effort by the Lib Dem candidate. They went to a lot of effort to woo the farming community despite not being from a farming background themselves.

their recent Tory opponent was actually a member of the local farming community and the Lib Dem candidate still won.

Just like the Tories set out to break the Labour red wall, if the Lib Dem's got over themselves and got out there knocking on farm doors, talking to rural communities about a sensible food and agriculture policy and not just green bollocks and gender identity then they would have a pretty good chance of taking some Tory scalps.

Labour would struggle though as I'm not sure they know one end of a sheep from another.

The trouble is that the rural population is so much lower than the urban. So urban issues are going to be focussed on, just by numbers of voters involved.

It should be very clear that this isn't just an issue that affects rural people - we all have to eat.

Obviously YANBU OP.

Farming here too. The very real fear of Labour getting in and completely finishing rural Britain off is terrifying.

If ever there were a thread for some lurking journalists to pick up, it should be this one.

I agree with you completely! I breed a few sheep, keep chickens and cross graze my horses’ field with cows and we have an abundance of wildlife here. Not noticed most of the species in towns and cities though, apart from foxes and rats of course. There’s an astonishing amount of ignorance these days when most of the population is divorced from the reality of agriculture. It’s sad really because they’ll miss the countryside as it currently exists when it’s gone.