Government wish list for farmers - how dare they?

[DillieTantie]

After many years of trying to eradicate our farming sector - DEFRA, F&M culling scandal, failing to support our farmers in the EU, inter alia, this Government had the nerve to put the global warming onus onto farmers today.
Farmers must produce more food to meet the needs of the planet, but in a "sustainable" way.
What? Now they want a demoralised, unsupported industry to drag itself up from the depths and deliver the goods, just like that?
Where were the Government when farmers were committing suicide because their farms were going under due to the, er, Government and its policies which failed our farmers?
I am not a farmer, nor am I related to farmers. I just think that this attempt to shift blame is awful.
OK, rant over, but there is a PS - the Gov't say that if small farmers get bullied by supermarkets about pricing, the farmers must tell them. After decades of the Gov't supporting the likes of Tesco, I am not sure that farmers are reassured by this.

I know. My dad and brother are dairy farmers, and all this in the news today has made me go "HA" at the hypocrisy and total lack of support. Basically all the parties just want to jump on the local produce thing which has been just quietly getting on with it for the last few years. Bloke on the radio was basically saying that consumers have benefitted from low food prices for years, but didn't say that all this had done was put farmers out of business. It's consumers (like me, i'm not exempt) who need reeducating, not the farmers.

Woowa, I agree with what you say, and trust that your dad and brother are doing OK as dairy farmers.
The low prices that consumers have enjoyed for so long are artificial and not sustainable. The low prices have been generated by large supermarkets bullying farmers into agreeing to their pricing, or else.
The result has been too many farmers going under.
It's not just the power of the supermarkets, however; it started with Blair and his contempt for farmers, together with his support of the supermarkets.
Now we should all shop local and use Farmers' Markets (if there were any left) and Farm Shops.
I agree with buying local produce and we grow some stuff ourselves, but this cannot suddenly happen countrywide just because the Gov't says so.

The premise of "the population is going to increase BY 50% so we have to feed them all is wrong, anyway.

Stop the population increase would be more sensible, surely? Why isn't much more time, effort, education and money put into reducing family size in the developing world so that the parents can adequately care for 2 or 3 children who survive, rather than 10 or 12, half of which will die of disease or starvation?

The behaviour of the Government towards farmers has been disgusting. I remember Blair going on after the Foot and Mouth crisis that farmers must become guardians of the countryside rather than producers of food.

As a country we need to become more self reliant in food production and start recognising the importance of farming. Lots of people have realised this and it is appalling that the Government have not been leading opinion on this, but lagging behing instead.

Dont. Get. Me. Bloody. Started.

We are backed into a corner and doing the best we can but are prevented from doing our work due to unworkable rules and paperwork.

I don't think many farmers are doing particularly well just now (or in the past couple of decades) and this government is doing a hatchet job on agriculture akin to Thatcher and the miners.

GentleOtter, if you are a farmer, you shouldn't just get bloody started, you should jump up and down and hope the this Government actually starts to support farmers, starting with throwing DEFRA (Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Affairs?) into a volcano and starting a new body actually staffed with, er, maybe, farmers. Maybe the uncivil servants are doing a better job, but I suspect not?

We are Tenant farmers, DillieTantie, in a less favoured area ie hill farmers who have a mixed arable farm.

There is huge upset in the farming community and many are taking an early retirement and leaving - they have no energy left to fight some faceless penpusher who would not know one end of the cow from the other.

The latest nonsense is the EU directive that all sheep have to be electronically tagged - to go with the million other tags that are now mandatory.

We are very vocal and active in petitioning against crazy rules and downright violation of Human Rights but have discovered it is either futile as those in charge are not interested or expensive as you put your case to the Land Court.

I feel that the bulk of the populace are behind us yet we are prevented from powering on all four cylinders. Fuel and fertilizer costs have rocketed, compound that with the rejection of two harvests (not just us but thousands of British farmers).....Hillary Benn is terribly out of touch on a grass roots level and we would be happy to see the back of him.

Current DEFRA advice to consumers is to buy produce from other countries because it's cheaper. Not sure how the f*wits in the Labour govt quite square this advice with the blether I heard from Hillary Benn on R4 this morning.

The thing that sums up Labours attitude to the countryside was when they banned hunting: 700 hours of parlimentary time to get one over on the hoorays. It was nothing to do with animal welfare. Of course, Gordon Brown is going back to his roots with all of his class warfare shite atm.

Labour hate the countryside and country dwellers and always have. This is just electioneering bullshit. Say what you will about the Tories but at least they will leave the countryside alone and may even help a bit.

I really hate the DEFRA rubbish, and Hillary Benn is a total muppet.
GentleOtter, thank you for telling it like it is.
How on earth can we allow farmers to continue to be treated in this really crappy way?
Farmers - what can we, as consumers, really do to make a difference?

Our land is seen as valuable for building houses. We are sitting on millions of pounds worth of building potential and are merely loss making nuisances who have to be paid lip service now and again so as we do not strike or hold the country to ransom.
There seems to be a blinkered governmental view that you can do this then import all you want. To hell with carbon footprints of the mango in December or Egyptian potatoes...

Thank goodness they will be out in six months but heaven help us after that.
It should not be like this.

Dillie - try not to buy imported food.
If people stuck to a seasonal and local diet then the local producers would benefit and expensive imports supermarkets would lose out.
Perhaps if that happened on a National scale, the government would be forced to listen.
We produce more than enough for this country (plus ample for export).
The price would come down as demand rose.

Rather depressingly, the wife of a farmer I know thinks nothing of buying cheap imported meat (they have mixed beef and arable farm) and fruit and veg out of season. It astonishes me that she cares so little about supporting her fellow farmers (not to mention animal welfare issues around buying chicken from Asia) and does the vast majority of her shopping at Tesco.

I agree that we all need to eat seasonally and locally, but unfortunately most people want to eat strawberries in December (even though they taste of cardboard).

Well you might be interested inthis story from Australia. Farmer is several weeks into a hunger strike due to Aus government and "sustainability" issues.

I think veggie Hilary must have been reading the colonial papers over Christmas and got himself a few little ideas.

People are used to the December strawberries, Callisto and probably give no thought about where they came from. It is part of the society we have created in fairly recent times.

To add insult to injury, we are being encouraged to 'diversify' in non agricultural ways (through the most complex grant scheme you ever saw - online only so a bummer for the 1/3rd of farmers who do not have the internet).

It has let off warning bells. It is ok to create a theme park/ camping site etc but no encouragement on improving stock/ soil etc.

Oh that poor man, that he has to risk his life in order to illustrate to people what is going on.

Many other countries do not have the rigorous standards that we do and it worries me that people here are ingesting goodness knows what on imported foodstuffs. What long term damage is being done to health?

was v shocked to learn that supermarkets can back out of orders for certain crops if there is a bumper harvest elsewhere in the world that they can import more cheaply

assumed it would be a proper contractual agreement, it's just not right to let our farmers grow all that produce then leave them with it because a better offer has come along

or has someone put a stop to this yet?

There is no stop on this practice and a real sore point being the Scottish barley growers got royally stung again this year when a large whisky distilling company bought 'cheaper' barley from Scandinavia and millions of tons of home grown barley was left to rot.

It is my belief that some producers have to pay the supermarkets to take their produce - only to face ruin if the order is cancelled.

we should be more like the French and drive tractors into the houses of parliament

I'm not so sure people are thoughtless GentleOtter. Call me a cynic (and I am one) but I think that people just don't care. They don't care about child labour when buying cheap clothes so why would they care about air miles, carbon footprint or British farmers when they buy their shite-tasting out of season food from goodness knows where? It all comes down to money and convenience for the vast majority of people which is why supermarkets are so dominant know. Arg. I've depressed myself again.

don't think supermarkets are very convenient at all (apart from my beloved Waitrose but have been too frugal to shop there for ages)

they are busy and noisy and overwhelmingly stuffed with things you don't really want or need and all too often the service is POOR

is actually much more convenient to go to farm shop where a nice man will give you free firewood and treats for the dog, get seasonal local fruit/veg box and dairy stuff from the milkman

They are the ones more likely to go to an early grave, Callisto - not thinking about the damage crap food does to the system or the creeping obesity levels in young children and the subsequent problems that occur.

It is depressing but you have to try and remain optimistic and hope for a radical change soon.

Have consumers had low priced milk for ages or have supermarkets been making massive profits on British farmed produce for ages?

We should be more like the French, or Danes, who are brilliant to their farmers and their welfare. Their systems work well and we have been collectively begging asking for a system like theirs.

There is a lot of vapid guff being spouted about the New Entrants to Farming but the land owners will not let the land for decent prices plus the contracts are only for 5 years. Then you can be thrown out.
The land is then sold for property development and the farmland is gone forever.

Supermarkets have been making huge profits. It costs the dairy farmer to produce and many have folded as a result.

This is the government who a year or so ago,said that food security wasn't a priority because we can always get food from abroad.God,I though Beckett was bad,but Benn is far far worse.

Callisto is right,Labour hate and fear the countryside and aren't ashamed to show it.

My had to attend a seminar recently,so he could calcuate how much crap his sheep will deposit per hectare.I can't imagine any other industry standing for such red tape and interference.