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.

It was a labour policy that set the wheels in motion for the mass building we are seeing today.

Just a message to say solidarity and I feel you!!
My husband works on the arable farm , we have 3 kids and I have a p/t professional role, my own business and another business that we share which is full on July-September. All of which I am juggling on my own through summer holidays with the children whilst he is doing backbreaking 24 hr shifts with a few hours sleep and back at it again. It’s such a slog and the weather just adds to the stress.

the phrase as bad as each other springs to mind.

and this is why we need a third party to step up

Ahhh yes it was truss. so it would have just got parked with the rest of her bat shittery

I whole heartedly agree

No - if it was really a Labour policy that caused the issue (it wasn't it was Tory changes in 2015), then the Tories have have 13 years to change it, but they didn't, in fact they made it even worse.

The idea that the election of a Labour government would lead to building all over productive farmland is ridiculous because you cannot lead to something that is already being done.

Then show us non partisan evidence that Labours housing policy will be green, sustainable and not bulldoze over countryside and farmland.

I have flagged this thread to the Farming Today editors, who were probably aware of it anyway, but it is an important discussion that should be heard more widely. What is a sensible balance between the cost of food and the price of the environment?

Just for balance then, that’s a bullshit standoff and not the issue at all as far as I’m concerned. We can have both. It’s the economy that’s the problem.

Ask a Welsh farmer what they think of Labour.

Framing this conversation as agriculture vs the environment is the worst possible approach to developing public support and understanding for uk farming. It’s a big reason there’s so much hostility to farming in the first place. Don’t fall for it.

The links I posted upthread to Friends of the Earth articles show that it's very much not the situation.

I did see somewhere a vertical line of solar panels used instead of stock fencing. That's more sensible than blanketing entire fields (often arable) in them, even if the power yielded will be reduced.

Sorry @ArabeIIaScott i don’t quite get what you mean…I’m saying it’s possible to farm in a way that is environmentally supportive or even regenerative, but that it would make produce more expensive, which we can’t tolerate for wider economic reasons. Also everyone needs to eat less meat, which they prob would if it was three times the price 🙂

Thank you for posting this OP. I am so, so sorry things are so hard for you and your DH, and for so many other UK farmers.

Our food has been cheap for the consumer for too long, at huge cost to you. I don’t know what the answer is, but I want you to know we’re grateful and do appreciate you.

Sorry, I am not going to apologise for sending a link to this thread to the BBC. It's one of the best and most interesting threads on MN, and their researchers will trawl through it. Seriously, this is a real issue that needs a much bigger profile. It is as simple as that.

yes, I'm agreeing with you! Sustainable farming should help UK farmers AND the environment.

I was resisting mentioning brexit. The farmers relied on the subsidies yet voted in the majority to supportvnrexit. Mind boggling

Thank you. I’m really glad I started this thread last night, even though I was in a black mood and it’s a bit sweary, I’ve really enjoyed reading through the responses.

I wasn’t posting as a woe is us, poor little farmers, I posted to raise awareness that our food security is compromised more than ever before. Food production in the uk affects every single one of us.

don’t know what the answer is, like everyone else on the thread it seems!

I was trying to avoid the discussion of leaving the EU. UK farmers have used the seasonal workers schemes for years. I did the grape harvesting in SW France in 1977 for about 10 francs an hour, and no, at 67, I am not up for lifting spuds by hand or picking daffs.

You know what i slightly misread your summary. And don’t object to it being flagged at all. As you were!

@eatsleepfarmrepeat , well you will almost certainly get the first private message, if this gets the traction it should have. I wish you well but I am certain that you will be fine without help.

It’s been a good thread op

Hopefully it’ll get picked up

@Arabels, don't sweat it. No offence taken.