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.

Weather is a hard one. You can lose so much and you are very dependent on what happens. That stress is not just farmers here, but wherever people are. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.

Food security in the UK is terrifying op. I don't understand why we would bake net zero into law and reduce our food security in this way.

I just wanted to send you solidarity. People in this country need to pull their heads out of their arses and wake up. We're sleep walking into a total nightmare.

I buy direct from my local farmer. Who's soon going to be evicted so the council can concrete over his land to build a rail freight terminal so we can import in even more shit food. I could weep.

"Cheap slave labour"?! Mr Farage haven't you got somewhere better to be?!!🤨

Unless you are behaving illegally (nail bars, car washes etc) then this is total BS! Everyone, no matter what their nationality get paid the same and are highly valued.

This is why farmers are so pleased with Jeremy Clarkson and ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ on Prime. He shows how difficult farming is and how hard it is to make a living. Should be essential watching for eveyone

We're Lincolnshire too. Not directly involved but DP is an ag sales dealer principle. It's insane this year, it's always bloody hard but this is just horrific. Machines breaking left right and centre due to conditions.

Most of the farmers I know are tenants.

About 30% of farmland is farmed by tenants. But it doesn't sound like OP is a tenant.

We are not long back from norfolk and it was soo nice to see the combines out meaning the farmers could actually get their crops in. We stayed on a farm that’s actually having one of its old barns converted to holiday lets as they are just trying to keep heads above water. Actually brought some of their eggs home with us. Farming is hard work and people just don’t care to see what goes into it.

Sorry to hear this, you need a farmer three times a day as the saying goes. It is a scandal that we have no strategic land use policy here, as you rightly say good food production land concreted over for estates. Same patchwork food policy. The trouble with net zero is that climate change exacerbates extreme weather, so all the better to tackle it, but best to do that in a strategic way.

I’m nearing 30 and it’s been shit I can remember. Milk prices are awful. Lamb prices are awful. Beef prices are awful.

Milk is something that seems to evaporate in this house and I have really noticed how much it has gone up in price, which is completely understandable considering how much feed and fuel and fertiliser have shot up. Is that increase in price not passed down to the Farmer @Ampharos ?

What would happen if all farmers who were asset rich but cash poor sold up, cashed it all in ?
Farms won’t be farmed anymore, food security in the uk will go from poor (as it is now) to non existent.
Is that the answer, the endgame that our government wants?
Whatever our opinions on the farming sector, we should all be questioning our government’s current farming policies because if we go much further down this path, there’s no return.

Can't speak for anyone else but we (and nearly all of our neighbours) are tenant farmers, at the end of our tenancy which is when we retire (and we are very lucky - most farm tenancies these days are for about 5 years) we will have to leave our house and the land and basically walk away from it, the same as the generation before us did when we took it on from them.

It's a lovely house in a lovely location but as tenant farmers we are responsible for replacing e.g the bathroom and kitchen, all cosmetic decoration etc. For a house we don't own.

For farmers who do own their own farms it's quite rare (although less than it used to be) for them to 'cash out' when they retire. Normally the farm is passed on to the next generation, so the wealth tied up in the property and land is very theoretical as for many farming families there is never an intention to ever sell up.

Our farm has to support two households (the generation above and us) so I also work part time off the farm. The only farms I know that don't have the (usually female) partner working elsewhere for at least part of the week are the really big dairy farms.

We certainly don't feel rich (I think I worked out one lambing time that we were working for about the equivalent of £1.50 an hour), but with the very small profit the farm makes and my secondary wage we can afford a week holiday in the UK and a few meals out during the year, reasonably decent cars 4x4 cars that can travel in snow in the winter months and tow a trailer (a 4 year old Suzuki Vitara and a 5 year old Hilux).

Our house might be massive and in an idyllic setting but it's not ours and we consider it as one of the few payoffs for a life of very very long hours, poor remuneration and high stress.

I agree we need to subsidise with tax payer funds to ensure we keep food production. There’s not much that can be done about very cheap or low standards in other countries so if we don’t want to just import I don’t think there’s another solution.

When you say government policy do you mean the green agenda and net zero? I agree with pp that putting this into law is going to cause problems for us

We used to have a farming industry that was efficient and the envy of the world until we allowed it to be ruined . We should be trying to be self sufficient for many foods . We should all support our farming industries. If you don’t like the sound of harvest go and live in town. But wait . At the rate farming land is being sold for housing you soon will be in town!

Are the NFU doing something about this?

Our food has been far too cheap for far too long. Fed up listening to people complaining about prices when they will pay £3 for a cup of coffee but moan about 80p for a whole pint of milk, or £4 for a sandwich and complain about £2 for a whole loaf. Work out the costs per 100ml or per gram compared to the little "treats" you buy.

How can it possibly be right for agricultural land to be used for conifer plantations, if food security is priority? Surely we should be making the most of what agricultural land we have? This really sounds very wrong.

Sounds really tough OP. I used to keep chickens and from then just couldn’t see work out why the eggs and chickens were so cheap, cost me way more. I understand better now

Yes, green agenda, net zero. It looks like the farmer is going to be the fall guy with the current policies. Defra are not fit for purpose, it’s just “jobs for the boys” as far as I can see. Pen pushers who know nothing about the land and farming making rules that make no sense to the average farmer.

It seems bonkers that 30% of our British lamb is exported to the EU (pp mentioned above) yet at the same time we import NZ lamb. And we live on an island and our fishing industry has also suffered over the years with most fish now being exported.

I'm in Lincolnshire and will do some more reading to educate myself and write to my local MP in support of farming and buying British.

Thank you OP for starting this thread. It's been a real eye opener

No is the simple answer here

This is really problematic imo. I can’t see any reverse on policy on the horizon, as far as I know

@cakehoover123 most farmers that ‘own’ their land have absolutely massive overdrafts, I managed an estate and their farm account overdraft was £1,000,000 secured against the property. Not really asset rich in reality either!

Asset rich but cash poor only gets you so far, eventually something has to give.

And then these farmers have the agonising decision to selling up everything that has likely been in their families for generations. And then what do they do? My brother is 50, farming is all he knows.

I can also point out what happens when all these farmers sell up but others have done that.

What's happening with subsidies is going to bankrupt so many farmers, its so so sad.

Lots of tenant farmers are finding that they're losing subsidy while landlords are still putting rents up

The yields this harvest are going to be very poor