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'm sorry, OP. Farming life has always sounded unimaginably tough, sounds like this summer has been worse than most!

I'd be happy to write to MPs and so on to address some of the green-washing issues. Are there campaigns about the subsidies, etc?

*wet harvests

It really worries me about what we are going to do. The county I live in used to have so many farms but thanks to the labour government push for more housing it is now one big expensive housing estate. We need to stop building housing, plant trees and green spaces on brownfield sites, not be afraid of bulldozing dive areas to turn into usable land. We do not need more housing we need more farm land and green spaces!

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

It’s not simply about carbon offsetting but a deeper political hard right agenda. Consider Prof Minton’s influential Brexit vision (one of the few economists to support Brexit). His plan was super popular with hard right Tories (Truss and Kwarteng were fans). U.K. was to be a tax haven like Singapore - a low tax, free trade and deregulation economy - which he admitted would smash agriculture and manufacturing in this country to be replaced with a flood of cheap imports - but some kind of undefined “innovation” would save us from collapse.

CAP subsides are seen as the worst of the too-socialist-for-us EU policies by the Brexiters. They were the first on the fire.

Well, the UK government are committed to a UK climate pledge to reduce emissions.
I just find it fucking baffling they are gobbling the people who are producing food which people eat to survive and not airlines whose purpose it is to fly people around the globe.
The carbon effect of us flying to Aus return this summer equates to almost 30 harvests on our farm…

Thanks for this OP- I didn't know a lot of what you just explained in a no- nonsense way. I hope that you can find a new path or something changes quickly in farming. Importing eggs/ meat with no idea of any quality/ animal cruelty etc is an abismal state of affairs. How truly horrible!

There needs to be a national pull away from the convenience of the supermarket. If you have a market in your area USE IT. Make a pointed effort to avoid the supermarkets at all costs, there is no point griping on here and not changing your living and shopping habits.

So depressing to read this but an eye opener too. I had no idea farming was this hard at the moment. I hope things get better for you and will think of what you've written when I shop next.

We do not need more housing we need more farm land and green spaces!

@Changetheuser whilst i'm not advocating to build on ag land why do you think we don't need more housing?

Because there is so much empty housing stock that people won't release for rental or sale because who knows why. Despite huge amounts of flimsy Taylor Wimpey (other developers are available) dolls houses going up for £500k for a 2 bed with no garden or parking, there are lots and lots of places standing empty.

The government should have compulsory purchase powers over empty properties. Leave somewhere empty for X amount of time and it is handed over to the council for council stock.

I'm not a farmer, but have several friends who are and am horrified at what is happening. Our politicians have lost the fucking plot completely on this.

The government doesn't even have a food strategy! It's all energy, energy, energy because that's where big money is to be made (and nice lucrative directorships for politicians). We are covering farmland with solar panels, plus we are growing crops as feedstock for anerobic digesters, and for bio fuels, all attract far higher subsidies than food production.

Then there are the agroforestry schemes, the rewilding schemes and the biodiversity offsetting schemes - everything, in fact, except food. And there are definitely farmers who play the system, get subsidy for growing crops as animal feed but it all goes into ADs.

We have a great local food hub so I buy 90%+ of our food from local farms suppliers. Strangely the food is more expensive but I spend less weekly than when I go to the supermarket.

It's fucking terrifying, wasn't there a whole hooha in the Netherlands about farming. Bill Gates buying up arable land in the US is also a bit more than concerning. I salute you and your family, I couldn't do it.

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.

Totally agree. The “green” spin on current agenda is self-undermining.

You shouldn't have to be paid from the public purse at all. Grow your crops and sell them for what they are worth - if you're competitive. If your farm isn't and you need public money, then damn straight it should be paid for public goods. No farmer has to be part of the subsidiary system.

@Changetheuser I'm fully aware there is empty housing but as we don't have a compulsory purchase law (which would never be voted for) we need more housing.

We won't ever agree.

Someone needs to come into power and screw the popular politics and make unpopular decisions that are beneficial long term.

Doesn't sound very democratic.

Someone needs to come into power and screw the popular politics and make unpopular decisions that are beneficial long term.

A dictatorship? i'm not saying your principles are wrong but they need to be "sold" to the general public otherwise it's pointless.

Me too.

DH works in development. So many farmers are selling land for housing now as farming has become so difficult and costly for them.
The locals will all object to the housing, but they are the same locals who twelve months earlier would object to the farmer trying to diversify with a farm shop or a milk barn as a last gasp to save their farms.

The locals would like the fields to be full of pretty rape crop etc and look nice so they can sit in their homes and enjoy the view, with no thought to how that crop appears in the field and how the farmer can’t afford to maintain it.

I don’t know what the solution is OP, but you have my complete sympathy.

Sorry, are you aware of why CAP was introduced? It was literally for the government to subsidise food production so that the population could afford to fucking eat.
but if you reckon you can produce milling wheat at a decent profit please drop me a message, you can come guide us, oh wise one.

Oh believe me, locals (and I!) dislike rape crops hugely, the allergies 🤧
it’s fairly unviable to grow in large parts of the UK now the neonics ban, flea beetle are just huge so I predict next year there will be relatively less, which will again impact on commodities and also flood the legume market as people who don’t grow rape will be growing peas and beans.

@eatsleepfarmrepeat
I'm only guessing but considering the prices supermarkets sell at, I would presume cheaper imports, lower costs for supermarkets so they can sell cheaper or make bigger profit margins if they can charge as little as possible to their suppliers.

Well, yes. The point of the post is that this shouldn’t be what is happening.

I think it’s more a case of wanting the fields to look pretty rather than the crop itself, but yes, now you mention it I don’t see as much of it as I used to.

Farming is certainly a job you do for the love of it and not the profit.