BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴
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It's good that he's clearly moved on.0
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Terminology notedStevo_666 said:
"Britain shook itself free of the European Union and became a full democracy once again, an outcome which had seemed impossible almost until the moment it happened."
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
rick_chasey said:
Isn't the argument they've got inefficient off the back of heavy subsidies?briantrumpet said:surrey_commuter said:
Imho hand in hand with the farming lobby, if they gave a censored about food poverty they would redirect the £4bn pa farm subsidy to needy consumers of food.briantrumpet said:surrey_commuter said:
all vested interests, I remain entirely relaxed about food securitybriantrumpet said:I don't think that this writer or the committee is too keen on @surrey_commuter 's laissez faire attitude to letting food production being left to the 'free market', in the current circumstances.
Are government committees vested interests?
Actually seems like a small price to pay for a thriving food production system that can be nudged towards more sustainable farming practices, instead of relying on foreign imports whose cheapness is largely reliant on trashing the environment.
In short, no. A lot of the subsidies, post WW2 were all about improving efficiency so that the nation could produce more food for a growing population: draining marginal land, making fields bigger, etc. Granted, once the farmers had largely achieved that, CAP hasn't promoted efficiency per se (especially after the butter mountains and wine lakes), but exposure to intra-market competition does that anyway, as farmers try to maximise profits.
Of course, if 'efficiency' means cutting all corners (animal welfare, protection of the environment, and worker welfare, etc) to compete with countries where these standards are much lower than in the UK (the existence of those lower standards are not, as far as I'm aware, in dispute), then, sure, we're putting a limit on how 'efficient' UK farming can be. But I've not seen it argued that subsidies in themselves have put a brake on efficiencies within UK welfare and environmental standards.0 -
If that's the case, why is the UK so inefficient compared to say, Netherlands?
I don't mean just in terms of investment but also actual agricultural yield.0 -
rick_chasey said:
If that's the case, why is the UK so inefficient compared to say, Netherlands?
I don't mean just in terms of investment but also actual agricultural yield.
I suspect that's an extremely complicated question (not least tied up with centuries of history), and I'm not going to come up with a simplistic answer. For instance, I've no idea how reliant Dutch agriculture is on fertiliser and energy use: if the latter is high (for instance, heating greenhouses using gas), a less intensive system might be more sustainable. You've also got the basic difference that Holland is essentially like Norfolk, perfect farming land created for farming, on a national scale, while the UK is a bewildering mix of mostly not-man-made terrains.
'Efficiency' in farming very often comes at a price, be that human (working conditions), environment (degradation), or animal welfare. If economic/output efficiency is your only measure of 'successful' farming, you completely ignore the effect that farming has on the environment and other factors.0 -
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Stevo_666 said:
An interesting article from a old Cake Stop favourite, Lord Frost:
https://telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/04/06/ultra-remainers-mobilising-prepare-ground-rejoining-eu/
A few choice quotes which are pretty accurate to the extent you wonder if he reads Cake Stop
"The Brexit battle seems long over. The titanic debates after the referendum, in which both Remainers and Brexiteers played to sweep the board, seemingly ended with near-total victory for the advocates of a real Brexit. With a supreme effort, Britain shook itself free of the European Union and became a full democracy once again, an outcome which had seemed impossible almost until the moment it happened.
The grand new free trade agreement we had been told would take 10 years to agree was put in place in 10 months. And the behaviour of the EU in 2021, from subverting the Northern Ireland Protocol to rubbishing the Astrazeneca vaccine, left few people interested in refighting old battles.
And yet. On the fringes of politics the unreconciled Remainers are regrouping."
And:
"Of course there is little chance of a serious “rejoin” campaign developing in the short term. Remainer Jacobitism in support of Ursula von der Leyen as the queen over the water is just too unpopular.
The leaders of the pro-EU cause recognise that themselves. Instead, their aim is to keep us aligned with the EU, often using the Northern Ireland Protocol as a weapon. They know that if the UK doesn’t diverge much from EU law, it will be much easier to take us back in later if events work in their favour.
To do this they have to get it established in the public mind that somehow Brexit is “already failing”, and thus destroy our nerve to do things our own way. Their picture of Britain is not the one the rest of us see: living with Covid successfully, leading on Ukraine, coming out of the economic downturn faster than Germany, and with PMI business confidence levels higher than the eurozone or the US. Instead, they try to suggest that, whatever problems the world has, we in Britain have them worse.
They use any argument that comes to hand. Last autumn it was HGV drivers and the threat to the Christmas turkey supply chain. This month the story is the latest trade figures and delays at Dover (the latter caused, in fact, by the withdrawal of P&O ships)."
And finally
"The economist Tim Worstall noted this week that “the EU had 1973 to 2020 to show that UK membership was a good idea. 47 years. Let’s measure Brexit by that same standard.”
See y'all in 2069...
Do you really find that interesting?Stevo_666 said:An interesting article from a old Cake Stop favourite, Lord Frost:
https://telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/04/06/ultra-remainers-mobilising-prepare-ground-rejoining-eu/
A few choice quotes which are pretty accurate to the extent you wonder if he reads Cake Stop
"The Brexit battle seems long over. The titanic debates after the referendum, in which both Remainers and Brexiteers played to sweep the board, seemingly ended with near-total victory for the advocates of a real Brexit. With a supreme effort, Britain shook itself free of the European Union and became a full democracy once again, an outcome which had seemed impossible almost until the moment it happened.
The grand new free trade agreement we had been told would take 10 years to agree was put in place in 10 months. And the behaviour of the EU in 2021, from subverting the Northern Ireland Protocol to rubbishing the Astrazeneca vaccine, left few people interested in refighting old battles.
And yet. On the fringes of politics the unreconciled Remainers are regrouping."
And:
"Of course there is little chance of a serious “rejoin” campaign developing in the short term. Remainer Jacobitism in support of Ursula von der Leyen as the queen over the water is just too unpopular.
The leaders of the pro-EU cause recognise that themselves. Instead, their aim is to keep us aligned with the EU, often using the Northern Ireland Protocol as a weapon. They know that if the UK doesn’t diverge much from EU law, it will be much easier to take us back in later if events work in their favour.
To do this they have to get it established in the public mind that somehow Brexit is “already failing”, and thus destroy our nerve to do things our own way. Their picture of Britain is not the one the rest of us see: living with Covid successfully, leading on Ukraine, coming out of the economic downturn faster than Germany, and with PMI business confidence levels higher than the eurozone or the US. Instead, they try to suggest that, whatever problems the world has, we in Britain have them worse.
They use any argument that comes to hand. Last autumn it was HGV drivers and the threat to the Christmas turkey supply chain. This month the story is the latest trade figures and delays at Dover (the latter caused, in fact, by the withdrawal of P&O ships)."
And finally
"The economist Tim Worstall noted this week that “the EU had 1973 to 2020 to show that UK membership was a good idea. 47 years. Let’s measure Brexit by that same standard.”
See y'all in 2069...
Genuine question.0 -
To be honest, I’d have thought he’d need some evidence for his claims 😜0
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rick_chasey said:
I would challenge the assumption that the limitations on the UK are largely regulatory.
But that's not what I've just said (though several of the limitations are: for instance the UK banning veal crates, sow stalls and battery chickens when they were still legal under EU regs). The basic question is whether, because on world terms, great chunks of the UK are harder (and more expensive) to farm (not least as there's rightly no appetite to turn 'pretty' UK places over to more intensive farming), we should just forget farming anywhere other than the few bits which are easily farmed, and rely on truly intensive farming elsewhere, no matter what the cost to the environment, to meet our food needs. If you compared Holland with Norfolk and Lincolnshire, the difference in 'efficiency' would be a lot smaller than comparing with the UK as a whole.
I see the inverse of that 'export food production to wherever it's cheapest' where I am in France. They are starting with sustainable local agriculture as a prerequisite. https://www.valleedeladrome.co.uk/our-valley/our-pearls/onwards-to-the-biovallee®/0 -
Just a guess but I would think farming large, flat fields of fertile soil is more efficient than smaller, hillier farms with poor soil. I suspect the large farms in East Anglia, which are the closest we would have to the Netherlands, are far more efficient than, for example, Devon or Herefordshire when it comes to arable.rick_chasey said:If that's the case, why is the UK so inefficient compared to say, Netherlands?
I don't mean just in terms of investment but also actual agricultural yield.0 -
If you look into it, it's much less about the soil and the environment, as huge chunks of Dutch agricultural exports are done in highly controlled environments.
Bluntly, the Dutch don't have the land available to do farming like the UK does, yet they are the second biggest agricultural exporter behind the US.
It's not really about the environment or soil at all; the Dutch exported half a billion euros worth of bananas last year.
It's about technology and sustainable efficiency; its farming uses fewer nutrients, produces less co2, then pretty much any other nation.
The modern way is not really about the soil.0 -
Do they really grow bananas in the Netherlands?
Or is that bananas entering Rotterdam and then being moved on from there?
Presumably the tulip harvest comes under their agricultural exports too.
Oh, and if you actually got over your 'agriphobia', you might just understand that it is absolutely about soil. You can't grow wheat on a Welsh mountainside.0 -
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/bananas/reporter/nld#:~:text=In 2019, Netherlands exported $502M in Bananas.,and France ($20.7M).Dorset_Boy said:Do they really grow bananas in the Netherlands?
In 2020, Netherlands exported $584M in Bananas, making it the 6th largest exporter of Bananas in the world. At the same year, Bananas was the 192nd most exported product in Netherlands. The main destination of Bananas exports from Netherlands are: Germany ($254M), Belgium ($69.7M), Poland ($55.3M), France ($47.1M), and Austria ($28.7M).
The fastest growing export markets for Bananas of Netherlands between 2019 and 2020 were Germany ($32.4M), France ($27.4M), and Italy ($13.7M).
If you've ever driven through the centre of Holland or flown over it you'll see rows of greenhouses the size of small towns.
Rows and rows and rows of them. If something can be grown hydroponically, it will be grown that way.
There's been a whole raft of innovation and technological progress in the area. It's more than just "flatlands are fertile".0 -
Only straight EU compatible onesDorset_Boy said:Do they really grow bananas in the Netherlands?
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Anyway, point scoring about Nethlerands aside, my point is, there is a country very close to the UK with a very smilar regulatory environment (for now), which is vastly superior in terms of efficiency and productivity, and it is as much to do with investment, technology and innovation.
So there is something for the UK to aim for rather than trying to constantly maintain a status quo while the rest of the world streaks ahead.
I'm not trying to have a go at the UK here - it's more, I think there is a lot of opportunity and headroom to really make something out of the current situation in the UK.
But that would not involve just copying the CAP or duplicating it. The solutions you see in places like Ned are also efficent on labour - a lot of things are picked by machine. That type of development clearly makes sense in a post-Brexit environment0 -
No mention of actually growing bananas in the Netherlands, and this article from November 2021 would suggest they don't grow them on the scale you indicate:rick_chasey said:
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/bananas/reporter/nld#:~:text=In 2019, Netherlands exported $502M in Bananas.,and France ($20.7M).Dorset_Boy said:Do they really grow bananas in the Netherlands?
In 2020, Netherlands exported $584M in Bananas, making it the 6th largest exporter of Bananas in the world. At the same year, Bananas was the 192nd most exported product in Netherlands. The main destination of Bananas exports from Netherlands are: Germany ($254M), Belgium ($69.7M), Poland ($55.3M), France ($47.1M), and Austria ($28.7M).
The fastest growing export markets for Bananas of Netherlands between 2019 and 2020 were Germany ($32.4M), France ($27.4M), and Italy ($13.7M).
If you've ever driven through the centre of Holland or flown over it you'll see rows of greenhouses the size of small towns.
Rows and rows and rows of them. If something can be grown hydroponically, it will be grown that way.
There's been a whole raft of innovation and technological progress in the area. It's more than just "flatlands are fertile".
https://www.wur.nl/en/newsarticle/first-dutch-bananas-end-up-as-cakes-vegan-meat-and-lingerie.htm#:~:text=The Neder Banaan greenhouse is,substrate, made from coconut fibres.
"The Neder Banaan greenhouse is the first and only banana greenhouse in the Netherlands."0 -
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No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
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He missed out that the UK customs declaration website has been down for a week. Did he have a point or was he just filling the word count for his fee?Stevo_666 said:An interesting article from a old Cake Stop favourite, Lord Frost:
https://telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/04/06/ultra-remainers-mobilising-prepare-ground-rejoining-eu/
A few choice quotes which are pretty accurate to the extent you wonder if he reads Cake Stop
"The Brexit battle seems long over. The titanic debates after the referendum, in which both Remainers and Brexiteers played to sweep the board, seemingly ended with near-total victory for the advocates of a real Brexit. With a supreme effort, Britain shook itself free of the European Union and became a full democracy once again, an outcome which had seemed impossible almost until the moment it happened.
The grand new free trade agreement we had been told would take 10 years to agree was put in place in 10 months. And the behaviour of the EU in 2021, from subverting the Northern Ireland Protocol to rubbishing the Astrazeneca vaccine, left few people interested in refighting old battles.
And yet. On the fringes of politics the unreconciled Remainers are regrouping."
And:
"Of course there is little chance of a serious “rejoin” campaign developing in the short term. Remainer Jacobitism in support of Ursula von der Leyen as the queen over the water is just too unpopular.
The leaders of the pro-EU cause recognise that themselves. Instead, their aim is to keep us aligned with the EU, often using the Northern Ireland Protocol as a weapon. They know that if the UK doesn’t diverge much from EU law, it will be much easier to take us back in later if events work in their favour.
To do this they have to get it established in the public mind that somehow Brexit is “already failing”, and thus destroy our nerve to do things our own way. Their picture of Britain is not the one the rest of us see: living with Covid successfully, leading on Ukraine, coming out of the economic downturn faster than Germany, and with PMI business confidence levels higher than the eurozone or the US. Instead, they try to suggest that, whatever problems the world has, we in Britain have them worse.
They use any argument that comes to hand. Last autumn it was HGV drivers and the threat to the Christmas turkey supply chain. This month the story is the latest trade figures and delays at Dover (the latter caused, in fact, by the withdrawal of P&O ships)."
And finally
"The economist Tim Worstall noted this week that “the EU had 1973 to 2020 to show that UK membership was a good idea. 47 years. Let’s measure Brexit by that same standard.”
See y'all in 2069...1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
rick_chasey said:
Anyway, point scoring about Nethlerands aside, my point is, there is a country very close to the UK with a very smilar regulatory environment (for now), which is vastly superior in terms of efficiency and productivity, and it is as much to do with investment, technology and innovation.
So there is something for the UK to aim for rather than trying to constantly maintain a status quo while the rest of the world streaks ahead.
I'm not trying to have a go at the UK here - it's more, I think there is a lot of opportunity and headroom to really make something out of the current situation in the UK.
But that would not involve just copying the CAP or duplicating it. The solutions you see in places like Ned are also efficent on labour - a lot of things are picked by machine. That type of development clearly makes sense in a post-Brexit environment
I don't know oneUK farmer who wants to stand still and not get more efficient within the framework landscape (real and metaphorical) we have. You're simply ignoring all the other factorsat play and saying that because Holland has a highly intensive (fuel and fertiliser) agriculture sector that the UK is therefore, by definition, inefficient. It's bananas.0 -
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
It is not set up well for this current post-Brexit environment.
It relies too much on cheap labour and it is not competitive internationally.0 -
Have you ever been North of Watford or further west than Oxford. Clearly you haven’t got a clue about the country you live in.rick_chasey said:
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
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.rick_chasey said:
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
Yes, it does, but very little of it equates to Dutch/Norfolk standards. FFS, go talk to some farmers and tell them they are backwards. You're talking a load of twaddle. That's not to say that there are some inefficient farmers (there will be inefficient businesses in most sectors), but if you see how many (for instance) dairy farmers have sold up in the past 30 years, and the increase in productivity/efficiency as a result, you'd realise how much more efficient it is now than it was back then.1 -
I’ll not argue farming is necessarily dynamic but it’s not just about mountains.rick_chasey said:
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
It is not set up well for this current post-Brexit environment.
It relies too much on cheap labour and it is not competitive internationally.
Farmers are being actively encouraged to re-wild land for environmental reasons.
Not just CO2 related but also flood resistance measures.
We have large tracts of high quality land that are farmed and the rest is a bit rubbish. The backbone of the country is peaty sandstone moorland getting increasingly harsh from Derby northwards.0 -
Oh dear, you clearly have never spoken to any farmer or farm manager. You really haven't got much of a clue on this one, and you have repeatedly demonstrated in recent months you haven't much of a clue about the countryside and its management.rick_chasey said:
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
It is not set up well for this current post-Brexit environment.
It relies too much on cheap labour and it is not competitive internationally.0 -
The report posted upthread seems to indicate that indeed, the farming sector is not able to cope in the current environment.Dorset_Boy said:
Oh dear, you clearly have never spoken to any farmer or farm manager. You really haven't got much of a clue on this one, and you have repeatedly demonstrated in recent months you haven't much of a clue about the countryside and its management.rick_chasey said:
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
It is not set up well for this current post-Brexit environment.
It relies too much on cheap labour and it is not competitive internationally.
So arguing for the status quo *will not work*. Simple as.
Reform needs to be beyond cutting a bit of red tape. It needs to be an innovative sector, and it plainly is not. Look at UK farming productivity over time:
https://www.nfuonline.com/archive?treeid=54478
That whole article is quite good, looking at what drives growth and productivity.
Something needs to change. Brexit has put under enormous strain, clearly. It cannot operate as it has been.0 -
Self confessed townie tells farmers they don’t know what they are doing. Rick must be related to Tim nice but dim from Harry Enfield.0
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Dorset_Boy said:
Oh dear, you clearly have never spoken to any farmer or farm manager. You really haven't got much of a clue on this one, and you have repeatedly demonstrated in recent months you haven't much of a clue about the countryside and its management.rick_chasey said:
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
It is not set up well for this current post-Brexit environment.
It relies too much on cheap labour and it is not competitive internationally.
Can't remember if RC watched Clarkson's Farm, but even on a rather nice & big farm, with the oversight of a proper manager, the challenges were laid bare. I think RC would just cover it all with greenhouses & nitrogen, heat everything with Russian gas, and tell all his neighbours how inefficient & backwards they are.0 -
It's pretty basic.briantrumpet said:Dorset_Boy said:
Oh dear, you clearly have never spoken to any farmer or farm manager. You really haven't got much of a clue on this one, and you have repeatedly demonstrated in recent months you haven't much of a clue about the countryside and its management.rick_chasey said:
Not all countryside is mountainous.Dorset_Boy said:
No. You can't stick a greenhouse on a Welsh mountainside, or in the Lake District on on millions of other acres of the UK countryside. So what can be done in large parts of the Netherlands simply cannot be done in large parts of the UK, as plenty have tried to explain.rick_chasey said:Fair enough. You get the point I'm making.
UK has plenty of arable land. You are being a defeatist whiner if you don’t see this Brexit as an opportunity to revamp a backwards agricultural settup
It is not set up well for this current post-Brexit environment.
It relies too much on cheap labour and it is not competitive internationally.
Can't remember if RC watched Clarkson's Farm, but even on a rather nice & big farm, with the oversight of a proper manager, the challenges were laid bare. I think RC would just cover it all with greenhouses & nitrogen, heat everything with Russian gas, and tell all his neighbours how inefficient & backwards they are.
The rest of the developed world has improved productivity, and the UK has not.
What gives? I don't think the UK environment is so unique that it is the *only* environment that has capped agricultural growth.
And anyway, the point is this: under Brexit, it cannot survive in its current form. The whole discussion comes from that very report, right?
So something has to change. All you guys are doing is shooting it down because RC is a townie and doesn't know anything, but not changing is to kill it off. You do realise that, right? Brexit has screwed it. It's change or die.0
