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 genuinely think housing is the golden thread that runs through everything in this country. Most people have squeezed incomes because too much of their income goes on rent or mortgage payments. This means they rely on cheap food - those of us who can afford to can buy direct or as otherwise suggested above, but I worry that is going to represent an increasingly small proportion of the population as fixed rates come to an end and interest rates remain higher.

Food is also one necessity that people have some control over in terms of the cost - you can shop around for deals in shops or the supermarkets, but your mortgage payment or rent are what they are (unless you negotiate but that’s a tough ask).

As a city dweller with limited understanding of farming, this has been a really informative post. I have such concern about these one size fits all green policies. On the other side of the coin, We have had low traffic neighbourhoods imposed on us in our part of London and they have had catastrophic impacts on those who live on boundary roads, businesses, bus journey times, and more. It sounds like the madness extends to the countryside too.

Perhaps when we’re all starving and stuck in artificially created congestion, someone might listen (!)

in all seriousness, I wish you and your DH the best of luck OP. Thank you for what you are doing to feed us.

I work on a small estate that's surrounded by farms. It's awful driving to work and seeing the state of the crops - there's wheat rotting in the fields because you can't even walk on the land, let alone get a combine on it.

I bloody feel for farmers - it's a relentless, joyless job a lot of the time.

Just hang on to the thought that you are valued and appreciated.

Do you sell anything direct? I'm desperate for a source of good high welfare eggs and the odd chicken!

@lovewoola no, absolutely not. I do not blame the end consumer at all, I’ve already said I appreciate there is a COL crisis and people can’t afford to choose.
My gripe is instead of packaging “green agenda” of this tiny island (of which only 24% is arable) we need to fuck off cheap imports and focus on the supermarkets not profiteering on British agriculture. Subsidies existed to make British produce affordable to the consumer and now we have subsidies to take land out of production and allowing shit cheap imports of substandard foods into our market - we can’t compete with Thai chickens and if you Google their lifecycle, you will hopefully be glad we don’t try to.

If you can't afford to buy the good stuff then you have two options: buy less but buy better, or keep buying the cheap stuff every day.

People choose option 2 most of the time. And that's one of the reasons why farmers are being driven to the wall and undercut by cheap imports from fucking Thailand (there is ZERO sense in flying chickens halfway around the damn planet when we have perfectly good chicken here), because people want meat more often than is perhaps realistic. It's grotesque that we import meat with atrocious welfare standards from half a world away just so people can have chicken as often as they want. This is why farming (and the planet) is fucked.

I was listening to you until you suggested the response to Covid was wrong. I don’t have expertise on farming, only snippets learnt from going to a ‘forces & farmers’ school.
Are you an expert on pandemic response or even work within the NHS? I was merely a person on the front line and can assure you if we’d gone with Johnson’s herd immunity there’d be many more dead and the NHS would be gone.
Let’s not derail this tread with conspiracy theories but wait for the Covid enquiry (despite ‘lost’ evidence) as experts’ opinions are valuable.

I genuinely think housing is the golden thread that runs through everything in this country. Most people have squeezed incomes because too much of their income goes on rent or mortgage payments. This means they rely on cheap food - those of us who can afford to can buy direct or as otherwise suggested above, but I worry that is going to represent an increasingly small proportion of the population as fixed rates come to an end and interest rates remain higher.

This, and it goes back to Thatcher's government selling off council houses followed by other governments allowing cheap buy to let mortgages and removing so many of tenants' protections and security.

My gripe is instead of packaging “green agenda” of this tiny island (of which only 24% is arable) we need to fuck off cheap imports and focus on the supermarkets not profiteering on British agriculture. Subsidies existed to make British produce affordable to the consumer and now we have subsidies to take land out of production and allowing shit cheap imports of substandard foods into our market - we can’t compete with Thai chickens and if you Google their lifecycle, you will hopefully be glad we don’t try to.

why do you think the gov are going this @eatsleepfarmrepeat

I'm shocked at the way farmers are viewed. I live in a very rural area and go out of my way to move for the machinery and total don't mind getting stuck behind a tractor. You're producing our food! It almost doesn't get more important than that in terms of livelihoods and occupations. People are so disconnected from nature and farming, so sad. To think 150 years ago pretty much everyone had connections with the countryside, now it's just treated as an amusement or day out.

This can’t be a serious question. Brexit ended EU CAP subsidies, which is the difference between profit and loss for 42% of UK farms. They’ve been replaced by a environmental subsidies (ELMs) which effectively means taking good farming land out of use. Meanwhile the cost of selling to to the EU (who buy for example 30% of our lamb exports) has rocketed. Farming was basically thrown under the bus by Brexit. The shit will hit the fan over the next 5 years.

I genuinely think housing is the golden thread that runs through everything in this country. Most people have squeezed incomes because too much of their income goes on rent or mortgage payments.

yes, it's ridiculous & there will be huge numbers of people retiring who are still renting so it's going to get worse. No social housing. But many celebrate their house going up in value 🤷🏻‍♀️

The root of it is lack of a long term vision for a sustainable resilient food policy by any government, of any colour.
They know you don't get the fair price for food production but they also know that cheap food wins votes.
If we combined our food and farming policies then the environmental crises (not just nature, it's air quality, soil health, disease, water availability and quality) could be addressed in a combined manner.
Brexit in theory was an opportunity to address this but it was as clear as day we would fuck it up.
I've been a conservation farm adviser for 15 years and now I work for a defra arms length body, I'm trying my best to make a difference.

We are in dire need of a sustainable land use policy that has serious cross party commitment.

People choose option 2 most of the time. And that's one of the reasons why farmers are being driven to the wall and undercut by cheap imports from fucking Thailand (there is ZERO sense in flying chickens halfway around the damn planet when we have perfectly good chicken here), because people want meat more often than is perhaps realistic. It's grotesque that we import meat with atrocious welfare standards from half a world away just so people can have chicken as often as they want. This is why farming (and the planet) is fucked.

It's absurd but there's nuance. Should only rich people be able to eat chicken as often as they want? My neighbour loves eggs & baking, should she have to stop/reduce because her pension is crap?

I know a lot of people dislike Jeremy Clarkson, but his farm show was really eye opening for city dwellers like me, who had never thought too much about this issue, and i'm glad that he did help raise awareness. I hope you're all ok, the profitability is so shocking considering the work level going in.

British farmers do a brilliant job. Definitely undervalued by society. I always try to buy from local farm shops, or if I'm in the supermarket British meat, rapeseed oil, dairy products, eggs etc. It matters where our food comes from.

Unfortunately yes. Animal welfare, the strength of our agricultural industry and food security for our country ranks rather higher in the chain of importance than someone's love of baking or others desire to eat chicken as much as they want.

Being rich has always given people more options. Always has, always will. If you're rich, lucky you. But poorer people having less choice than rich people isn't a good enough reason to screw over our farmers.

@lovewoola
because the government need to be seen to be moving to a net zero and agriculture is an easy target. The stats on CO from ag are global, they benchmark our free range farm against huge cattle ranches which have been built on reclaimed rainforest land - in a nutshell it’s bullshit.

making 250 acres of our (productive, grade2 arable land) into set aside or AB14 is short sighted when there is a lot more marginal upland land not capable of cropping cereals available.
It’s a one size fits all approach when (as this thread has demonstrated) there are lots of upland grass based farms who are much better situated to host these schemes. Cropping peat land with clover when it’s capable of double crop veg in an average year is frankly stupid.

The CAP introduced subsidies to make food affordable to the general public. The current governments policy reads as though they’d like us to take everything out of production to make some glorious utopia and then we can just outsource all of our food to the developing countries who have neither the money to be virtuous nor the regulation to produce livestock ethically. It’s a lose lose for humanity but a box ticked for the carbon offset in the UK.

And I agree about Jeremy Clarksons show (wether or not you like him and his business is another matter) but it really showed me the impact of regulations, the weather, timings, machinery, costs etc. It gave me such a great appreciation for farmers.

I feel for you OP. I have a lot of farming friends and the harvesters are really working overtime up here in Northumberland. It hasn't been helped by torrential rain today.

Most of the farmers I know are tenant farmers and their land is owned by a few large landowners such as the Duke of Northumberland. The farmers have farm tenancies but ultimately do not own their land or the properties they live in. We used to rent a farm cottage and our former landlords will have to find somewhere else to live when they retire so are working well beyond retirement age. None of their children are interested in taking over the tenancy.

They are sheep and cattle farmers and work long hard hours. During lambing they were working round the clock.

Every Christmas we used to get a leg of lamb from them and I have never tasted such delicious lamb in all my life. There is no comparison with supermarket meat. I do try to buy from the local farm shop as much as I can.

I really don't think people understand the realities of farming and I think food security should be a much more important priority than it appears to be. I

OP a cruel summer for farmers, when The Farmer is the man who feeds us all
as Pete Seeger sang to us.

Your initial post and the whole thread is interesting disheartening, bit frightening
really.
I have been attempting to shop online, irritated that supermarkets do not and apparently not required to show country of origin, be that for chickens, lentils,
veg, salad, even (tinned pears in Morrisons, Produce of South Africa) or flour,
grains, are we deliberately being mushroomed.
We buy chicken from the butchers, only one in the town now since the larger one closed shop earlier this year. Eggs we will buy from the Egg Lady on the weekly market tomorrow, local, free range, organic.
There is an organic farm shop nearby which is expensive, but we get what we
paid for and happy to do so.

We also have a real bakers. I expect the cost of bread will soar after a soggy
harvest
Living in provincial/rural, red label France for a long time taught us the value of good quality fresh local meat, readily available, completely different attitude to food and the eating of. Also, even on a small plot or garden, growing veg and salad is the norm, why cant we?

I am sorry OP, hope you bolstered by excellent replies and the sunshines tomorrow
for you

I feel your ire towards the "green agenda" is somewhat misplaced given that you're also moaning about the impact unpredictable and unseasonable weather is having on your ability to harvest.

It's 100% vital that "green" initiatives are developed and implemented, not just to mitigate climate change but to ensure all sectors, including agriculture, are able to adapt to what's coming down the road.

With regards to the subsidies weren't the EU also transitioning to a more sustainability focused model with their Green Deal for Europe? I thought the SFI, CS and LR payments from the UK government were just keeping us in-line with what's going on elsewhere.

The allowing if shit imports is a different matter entirely and is symptomatic of the tory government who have absolutely no idea what they're doing and seem go out their way to launch policies that contradict each other on an almost daily basis.

I am not sure how you think I am derailing a thread about agriculture by getting into covid conspiracy threads. Neil Ferguson used his modelling about F&M and subsequently was proven to be very wrong. I then stated he was the same person using his modelling about covid. Both of those statements are true.

The analogy I was making was he was sitting in ICL using a computer model, to inform Tony Blair who believed a computer modeller in London to make decisions which nearly destroyed the northern livestock farmers. The same is happening now, "experts" are advising land should not used, or livestock farming should be stopped, all in the name of climate change, yet the same experts are happy for grain or meat to be flown half way around the world.

Unfortunately yes. Animal welfare, the strength of our agricultural industry and food security for our country ranks rather higher in the chain of importance than someone's love of baking or others desire to eat chicken as much as they want.

Being rich has always given people more options. Always has, always will. If you're rich, lucky you. But poorer people having less choice than rich people isn't a good enough reason to screw over our farmers.

I'm not sure I agree with that. It's not exactly a level playing field when the rich have got richer, wages have stagnated & so many people have been priced out of home ownership, particularly young people. I also think it's a hard sell to the public; yep we know you are poorer but you are going to have to accept you can't afford as much meat/dairy etc. It would make society even more divisive.

@eatsleepfarmrepeat so it's for votes?

You missed the point of the post. By implementing the green agenda of non productive land here in England (one of the most sustainable farming countries on the globe) we are outsourcing our food needs to developing countries who can’t afford to be virtuous and produce food in a way that is neither ethical nor conducive to climate change goals. As climate change is global, changing our own policies and buying shit from elsewhere is, at best, counterproductive.
Wer harvests have existed in this country for centuries. As someone said upthread, the weather we had last year which suited us was detrimental to the livestock industry - you have dry years and wet years and each present their own problems. It isn’t a new concept but this evening, sodden wet, sworn at, late to get the kids into bed, I was tired and fed up. Last year we were spending literally hours blowing machines down so they didn’t set on fire, every year is a different set of issues.