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.

Hear, hear @Anothenamechange .

Yep because it’s fucking great now isn’t it? 😳

Is that assertion true? Have you got proof? I want nothing but the best for my livestock and would consider myself psychopathic if I wanted to unfelt, kill and incinerate them 😮😮😮😮😮

Sorry - infect, not unfelt!

This will be the very same business model we had 50 years ago, it worked, our food was fresh and not wrapped in plastic. We had bread, milk, fish, eggs, meat etc delivered. Now we worship Tesco etc but maybe the tide is turning.

@cavemum We have a proposed solar farm near us too, suggested for prime agricultural land. Again they claim the land could be returned to agricultural use in the future. That's so much bullshit.

The company proposing it has only £100 share capital issued. Has never run a solar farm before. It is purely speculative, they take their cut and sell immediately to the highest bidder. No national plan for provision of energy needs. it's idiotic.

We also have an equivalent area (ex-industrial) being used to store cars for the wholesale leasing industry. Someone has suggested putting a 'solar-roof' over the car storage area but this has been rejected as too expensive.

They won't think that when they have nothing to eat. Morons.

That's mad. I think it comes from people seeing the countryside/fields as 'empty' space - need somewhere to dump stuff? Use the fields! They completely neglect to consider the functions of the land, which are often multiple and seasonally changing. It makes far more sense to use roofs for solar panels.

@ArabeIIaScott I'm not sure Labour is a dead cert.

They have a track record for throwing it away at the last moment, and I wouldn't put it past them again.

They should have won last time but insisted on putting up a devisive candidate that the electorate wouldn't accept, and who refused to state his views on Brexit. So they lost.

Now they have a candidate who refuses to say what a woman is. Their 'build everywhere' policy will alienate the shires, and they won't have business support.

I think they have a fight on their hands.

@MintJulia it is absolutely crazy isn’t it. As has been said elsewhere in the thread, why the government are not mandating that every new build must have solar panels installed by default (and for houses with private driveways electric car charging points too) I do not know. There are vast areas like Milton Keynes where there are acres of flat warehouse roofs that should be the first port of call for solar panels before they start tearing up agricultural land.

Some of the land they want to build the farm on around here is stud farming land. One stud discovered that Sunnica had claimed his land was “unused brownfield” despite the fact he had 20-odd mares and foals boarding at the property and grazing the land!

Matt Hancock is generally a useless streak of piss, but on this issue which includes part of his constituency, he has been very good at lobbying the government and turning up to consultation meetings as well as joining marches against the proposals.

@CallumDansTransitVan I find your assertion re: foot&mouth hard to believe. Sorry.

My neighbour is a farm manager. He has a prize winning herd of cattle he's spent 30 years building up.

Foot and mouth was found on the next farm to us, and we were included in the restricted area. I don't think the poor man got a night's sleep in months, checking the herd every few hours, Maintaining bio-security.

I don't know any farmer who would intentionally endanger their livestock.

We had a lot of foot and mouth where we were, there were farmers moving their sheep in night so that they would be included in the cull, it did happen and some farmers around us made a lot of money.

there’s no way any gvt will implement a tariff barrier at the moment, is there. It’d help farmers but hike costs for consumers.

and I don’t see any gvt doing much to subsidise decent farming either.

so it’s really hard to see a way out/on right now.

I want a (global!!) carbon tax, so so badly - that would sort so many things out, esp if coupled w rules that said you can’t import into the UK if your standards (esp for livestock) fall below a certain level.

Labour are incredibly anti-rural. Absolutely no sense of connection to the countryside (as opposed to the holiday playground of middle class imagination). And I’m saying that as a vegetarian, anti-hunting type. I also don’t think their success at the next election is guaranteed, and it bloody well should be the way the Cons have slammed this country in to the ground.

The fuel price shock last year was interesting for us as it brought the price of normal veg closer to that of organic. That was because the organic stuff has shorter supply lines/less haulage.

We absolutely should not be importing meat that doesn’t meet the welfare standards that UK farmers have to. It’s disgusting, there’s no need for it nutritionally and it’s unfair to homegrown competition. I’d love to see meat priced properly and consumed less often.

And you know that how? Were you one of the farmers? Did they come en masse to tell you what they’d done? Unless you have proof I don’t believe what you’re saying.

I don’t think they know what they want. The vulnerability of our food supply systems was made very clear in covid but everyone seems to have forgotten about it. We’ve put our food security in the hands of five retailers. Which is absolutely fucking nuts, if anyone needs that explaining!

There’s this real fear of labour getting in.
my dh says it often and I always ask him what was so wrong with the 90’s /00’s?
you could see a doctor, you could get seen reasonably quickly in a and E,
police attended stuff.
sure start centres

im not saying things were perfect and I don’t know what their farming policies were at the time.

but things are not peachy now either

just to reiterate before I get picked on for defending labour. I’m not a Tory, not a labour voter.

its how they do it in france. It makes sense to cover car parks in them. It’s useless sky, keeps and protects cars in shade.

I completely agree. This is Lib Dem’s time and where are they? they stand a good chance if they got talking

although there are fewer people rurally, people do care about this stuff even if they aren’t rural

a party that came up with a decent farming and agriculture policy as well as

decent green policy - solar panels on roofs for instance and all new builds & extensions having to meet tighter regulations
social housing policy - build that, get housing benefit out of landlords hands, will then ease the rental market and slow up price increases
better affordable public transport - why are companies making money whilst it’s unaffordable to use

sorting out fucking pot holes!! - how much do councils haemorrhage in compensation?

as well as the schools, hospitals and police.

what I will never understand is our austerity measures In 2009, as far as I can see, we never came out of them??? There was never the extra cash splashed, just more cuts.

which party said they were going to ban solar farms? There was a lot of uproar at the time.

In the 16 years I've lived here, hundreds of acres of formerly productive farmland has been replaced with mostly 4 bedroom houses. We have a Tory government, a Tory local authority, a Tory MP.
It's been happening for years so you can stick your scaremongering about Labour - it is ALREADY HAPPENING and has been for years - a Labour government couldn't make it any worse around here, because it's open season for house building.

And it's ALL been of what was productive farmland

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/10/ministers-hope-to-ban-solar-projects-from-most-english-farms

'The new environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, is understood to oppose solar panels being placed on agricultural land, arguing that it impedes his programme of growth and boosting food production'

'....Truss having vowed to block solar farms on agricultural land during her election campaign.'

https://www.farminguk.com/news/government-looks-to-ban-solar-panels-from-most-english-farmland_61303.html

'In recent years, farmers and landowners have used solar as a diversification project, but if the change should become law, this potential boost to income streams would be a huge challenge, according to law firm Lodders.
“Solar is a way of increasing income streams for farmers,” explained John Rouse, a partner in Lodders’ agriculture team.
“Most solar panel sites can also be grazed by sheep, so do not stop all agricultural activity as implied as one of the main reasons behind the government’s planned ban."

He added: “If the idea of extending BMV to grade 3b land does indeed become law – and this will be a pretty long road before reaching that point - then solar will effectively be banned from more than 40% of England’s land.'

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-is-solar-power-a-threat-to-uk-farmland/