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'll probably get a pile on for this but that's the uk over the back, we never support or champion our own people or industry. This green agenda is causing more damage than good, ends up costing all us minions while the powers that be continue to fly all over the world, drive the big cars, eat food from wherever the hell they like, I mean it might be cheaper to import but think of the footprint that leaves in itself so by driving out local farmers with green tax they push supermarkets to ship eggs from god knows where via planes trains and automobiles. It's a false economy.

The BBC talking to MN would be a massively powerful alliance. And one, that I personally think, would represent the general population of the UK, across the board: educated/not; prosperous/not, rather better than the situation we have now. Just my opinion.

@eatsleepfarmrepeat This is a genuine question - what can I do, as just one consumer, to help? I do try to buy good quality, local produce. I don't eat meat but do eat dairy. I buy from markets & a local country store here in the Yorkshire dales but is that enough? I would never ever buy the cheapest eggs and try to get them from honesty boxes outside farms

Whilst people are talking about this and this thread is busy, I thought it would also be useful to put this fact in here because it’s surprisingly not well known.

We grow sugar in Britain, in the form of sugar beet. Every year around 8million tonnes of beet is grown and harvested in the UK to be processed in British Sugar’s factories and sold exclusively by Silver Spoon. It is almost always more expensive to buy than Tate and Lyle which is imported cane sugar, but is infinitely more sustainable, being on average 20miles from field to factory.

This year should be a good harvest for beet as it likes the warm wet conditions our other crops struggle with. We grow as a break crop after cereal for many benefits including improved soil health and disease control.

Last year’s harvest was very poor due to the dry summer weather followed by frosts which prevented our winter beet lifting campaign. Here is a photo of how the plants look just now, the sugar is held in the root and will increase in level up until harvest which is typically late October through to Jan.

I live in the last social housing built in my village 30 years ago. Following these houses being built there was no other new house building until the Conservatives came to Government, since then we have had 8 new developments of 500k plus houses and not a sniff of a solar panel or recharge point for electric cars amongst them. There has also been an application for a huge solar panel farm on good productive farmland surrounding the village. All the people in the 500k houses are of course against it.
I am more pragmatic, you could still graze sheep/rear chickens on the land and it would increase the amount of green energy produced. Would I prefer it from an aesthetic point of view if those solar panels were on some of the offices and warehouses in nearby towns ? Yes of course.

@eatsleepfarmrepeat thank you for that info re sugar.

@eatsleepfarmrepeat. I'm surrounded by acres of the stuff here as I'm not a million miles away from the site that also grows cannabis ! Which is why I always try to buy silver spoon if possible . Our region depends on it , and tide marks of mud on my car from October through to February are a small price to pay .

I liked what Starmer said at the NFU about sustainable food production being a national security issue.

And the thing about committing prisons and schools and government buildings etc to sourcing at least 50% of their food from the U.K.

OP, you might want to ask MN if they'd do a webchat, maybe with someone from DEFRA? Therese Coffey?

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs

Glad Starmer managed to say something positive about the production of food in the UK. But I remain to be convinced that he has anything useful to say about supporting the production of food in the UK. Subtle but important distinctions.

I agree

Don't ask for Therese Coffrey to reply. She's not even interested in her brief. Ask for George Eustice, who is out of office, and able to respond much more freely. And who knows about food and farming, well, more than the average Tory MP.

Thanks, that's useful!

It is entirely true. The farmer in question didn't cover his tracks well enough and was caught out when he claimed for the destroyed animals. Their eartags and papers showed them as should of been at his other farm.

Funnily enough, like a lot of his peers he went from skint to very wealthy post F&M.

He was hated by the majority of other local farmers who like you, cared deeply for herds they had produced through generations, and eventually left the area.

I was hoping it wasn’t true but if it is, what a vile man 😢

Any horse owner knows about sugar beet. Love the stuff and always buy Silver Spoon!

Eh? Current Policy is not green, sustainable and is bulldozing hundreds of acres of productive farmland each year - my point was Labour CANNOT make it any worse, because 13 Tory years have trashed it already. Our farmland and countryside is disappearing very quickly here - no Labour policy, however "evil' could make it worse.

That may be the experience in your area but it's not the case where I live. Starmer's plans to make it much easier to build on greenbelt land have the potential to do extensive damage here. Restrictions on greenbelt development are still applied rigorously by our local planning authority.

Labour’s policy is to build on green belt more than it currently is. So yes it will get worse.

But this is no different from what’s happening now, the Tories have been doing this for years quietly and extensively. I really don’t understand why people don’t realise this. My local town was surrounded by green belt but totally ignored and now is three times the size. All the arable land around has been built upon.

I've explained the reason in my earlier post - this isn't the case in all areas. You're speaking about your experience locally. This is completely different to where I live, where greenbelt land is fiercely protected. Our LDP (approved in early 2023) actually increased the size of the greenbelt in one location. Labour's commitment to making greenbelt development easier can only make things worse regardless of what is happening currently or has happened in the past.

There is no green belt here.
Only around 50% of designated green belt is actually farmland, it can include, for example, scrap yards.

Around here, all new construction is on green fields previously used for agriculture. And it is a lot.

I have recently moved to a rural/farming area and am also in awe of how hard farmers work and the challenges they face.

This may seem a bit ‘out there’ but are there any farming volunteer networks?? If there was a way to register as a volunteer with a couple of my local farms then if/when there was a ‘call to arms’ from them needing help to meet urgent deadlines/weather limitations, I would happily donate some of my time to help out.. i’m sure others would feel the same? Appreciate much of it is very skilled but surely there is always basic donkey work that also needs doing that volunteers could support? Over time they would also become more skilled/useful.

But you are only speaking about your experience locally too. It is happening all over as other posters have said and has been for years.