To think Britain should start growing it’s own food again?

[Vocaladvocaat]

The situation in the Ukraine clearly isn’t going to resolve any time soon. The lack of grain from Ukraine is pushing prices higher. Add in further political instability in other parts of the world to the mix. We are always told that IK farming isn’t competitive but with the rising prices, it can be and furthermore; having home grown produce is seeming like it will be more necessary in the future. AIBU?

Because a lot of the fish and seafood we do have is not eaten by the population, and they get better prices from Spain and France.

This is what totally baffles me. We have loads of fish but it’s crazy expensive.

Maybe because we put all our fishermen out of business decades ago?

I understood that most Beef and Lamb in the UK is grass fed. Obviously in the depths of Winter they need supplemental grain but generally grains grown here are for human consumption unless low grade?

Builders want to build on farmland. They donate their money to the Tory party.

@DonnaHadDee I’m from a farming background. You are 100% right it has to begin with better support for farmers.

Also people really are quoting nonsense here, especially about organic farming, which does not have to be a certain distance from non-organic, and 100% does not use “worse chemicals”. Organic farming is harder, but about the only way for most farmers to earn a fair wage.

I’m not sure the first bit is true

I’ve just had a very quick read of the rules for the UK, and they say you can’t ‘mosaic’ organic and non-organic fields within the same farm, but if you have organic and non-organic production on the same farm, they must be separated by a solid barrier such as a hedge or fence.

And for farms run as separate businesses, the rules don’t apply

I will read that book though, it sounds interesting

I’m still really interested to know how organic farming ‘wastes land’ though

I wish every park was surrounded by a perimeter of fruit trees of all sorts + hazlenuts, walnuts, blackberries/currants etc etc. The same with all hedgerows up and down the land, school playing fields etc.

If you are aware of what can be foraged, then there is a huge amount of free food along virtually every footpath if you know what to look for and how to cook it.

Years ago as kids after school we had to collect a basket full each but these skills are long forgotten and if you suggest foraging on the "save money" threads you're told you're some kind of Nazi as people have a right to supermarket provessed stuff.

This wouldn't feed 50% of the country but would help suplement what we already grow here and will help when the inevitable world wide famine hits one day.

Sheep generally graze grass out on fields all year round. Many dairy farms rent fields to sheep farmers through the winter. Cattle are fed cake (mostly soy/linseed) and silage through the winter. Cattle farmers will have fields they use to make silage.

Chickens eat mostly grain from what I understand.

Presumably the the Netherlands will have the same issues with electricity/water etc.

I often see Thanet Earth produce and will always buy it (or other U.K. produce) rather than anything imported - if I have that choice.

Suring colder months I do try to rely largely on home grown veg - cabbage, sprouts, carrots, swede, etc., and white cabbage keeps so much better than lettuce and is great in salads, not just in coleslaw.

Why anyone buys those tasteless little baby sweetcorns flown in from e.g. Thailand,I have no idea - even if some daft stir fry recipe includes them. Masses of much more readily available veg - including all sorts of cabbage - is great in a stir fry.

knittedcardi nearly all beef cattle are fed some kind of supplementary feed- 100% grass fed cows are extremely rare. The issue is also that the fields used to graze cattle could often be used to grow something else- cows are a very land hungry way to produce food!

There is such a thing as 100% regenerative beef. Friends of mine have a hardy, native breed herd that they graze on a national nature reserve all year round, helping to preserve the open heathland habitat. This is not how 99% of the UK's beef is produced!

Because we live in a low wage economy, having cheap food for many years has meant that it hasn't been hugely problematic until now. Fish is still cheaper here than in many countries, but it's a fairer price for those in the supply chain than stuff like veg/eggs/milk in which this country happily fucks farmers over for.

Also, our seas are massively overfished so there are a lot of catch quotas. Our fishing fleets are dominated by several large companies with massive boats that exploit loopholes in the law to fish in unsustainable ways, and small boats who usually fish in a more sustainable way don't get a look in.

We do produce our own food. As we speak I am surrounded by pasture where sheep an cows are grazing.

Not as much land is under the plough though for the production grain and vegetables and you can feed more people pe acre of land from arable crops

In Ireland back in the day a family of six could feed themselves for a year with potatoes grown on an acre of land. As a previous poster has said we would all have to go back to a humbe unvaried diet for this to work.

The "Dig for Victory" effort during WW2 might be something we could do again i.e. digging up our gardens and parks to plant veg? There's a lot of interest in allomenting at the moment.

We'd starve to death if we had to rely on my allotment to keep us fed 😆

(Although with a few tweaks we could probably be self sufficient in broad beans. Eat more broad beans, people! Highly nutritious, easy to grow in the UK (even by me) and actually really delicious if you turn them into falafel and burgers. This infomercial was brought to you by the British Broad Bean Marketing Bureau 😆)

It’s 100% fake. I know certified organic farms that have fields next to them that are not organic.

The issue is lowland clay soil is impossible to grow crops on, but perfect for growing grass and raising cattle. Highlands (sun h as the vast majority of Wales) is impossible to grow crops on but perfect for sheep.

It’s quite eye opening that there are these sorts of rumours about organic farming

It seems like a very strange industry/movement to be taking shots at but several posters on here are talking very negatively about it, to the extent of confidentiality posting fake statements about it to back up the claim that it’s a cause of land wastage and therefore food insecurity

Until consumers are prepared to pay the proper cost of production (including wages for farmer / farm staff), we will be stuck with cheap imports, and a domestic industry on its knees.

I am pointing at the Supermarkets, who seem to be in a race to the bottom.

How does organic farming waste land?

I buy organic and get all sorts of random shaped and sized fruit and veg. I thought this was less wasteful than supermarkets demanding uniform sized produce and discarding the rest. If you buy a supermarket punnet of cherry tomatoes, they're all perfectly round and the same size. The punnet I got last week had a mixture of big ones, little ones and a deformed one that looked like a boobie!

It's not just the land availability, it's the labour, the processing and the distribution systems.
Much of the wheat we grow is low grade, because of our weather, we can't get decent yield from the high quality varieties which need more sun. So wheat for bread and pasta generally isn't UK grown.
Goodbye to rice too. And a lot of fruit. And veg, apart from roots, in the winter.
A lot of the land we grow grass on isn't much good for growing anything else - too cold, too wet, too steep. But we're very good at growing grass which is why we are good at meat and dairy.
I think our first step needs to be cutting food waste at all points along the chain from farm to fork.

Nobody likes a smart ass and there is no need to state the obvious. I does supplement the food supply in a small way. I produce 10% of my own food so that means 10% more for someone else.

Then we try to stop growing crops on the ungrowable and allow nature to return to these areas instead. Sheep are devastating for upland biodiversity, and produce very very little food per acre.

You've heard of Knepp? Even with a lot of capital, they could not make arable farming on their lowland clay estate work, financially speaking. So they chucked in the towel and rewilded, producing a small amount of very high quality beef and pork and creating an ecological success story.

Pasta is made from durum wheat which is difficult to grow in this country