BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴
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rick_chasey said:
Right, but if there are limits on where you can sell your food to?pblakeney said:
Sales, barter, seeds, animal feed....rick_chasey said:
So once you're growing enough for your lot, what's the incentive to grow more?Dorset_Boy said:More a collective farm, so rather than each grow a small amount, they would pool resources to share the growth of larger amounts.
There's a reason the "kulaks" had more food than the collectivist farmers, and so why they were so reviled by communists. They were more productive and farmed more food!
As I said, maybe if you get away from the Rusky version, then there might be something to it.0 -
Sell off some land to someone more needy.
Life needn't be this difficult.The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
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Do you not think that is already the case? There are massive companies involved in UK farming. It's not all the single farmer living in a stone cottage helped by his wife and kids to manage a few dozen cows. We have the world's largest 'vertical' farm in the UK and I'm working with a company that builds massive glasshouses on landfill sites using the gases from the landfill to provide the energy.rick_chasey said:TBH, the mindset needs changing from farming to agribusiness. That's what it needs to be.
I would have thought in Cambridgeshire you would have seen the massive farms that are owned by big businesses and run by farm managers and contractors.
I'll break it to you now that fishing also is no longer dominated by 3 or 4 blokes going out in a little family owned boat either.0 -
You may well be absolutely right, but I don't really recognise the UK as a big agri-exporter generally - it's not played out in the stats either.Pross said:
Do you not think that is already the case? There are massive companies involved in UK farming. It's not all the single farmer living in a stone cottage helped by his wife and kids to manage a few dozen cows. We have the world's largest 'vertical' farm in the UK and I'm working with a company that builds massive glasshouses on landfill sites using the gases from the landfill to provide the energy.rick_chasey said:TBH, the mindset needs changing from farming to agribusiness. That's what it needs to be.
I would have thought in Cambridgeshire you would have seen the massive farms that are owned by big businesses and run by farm managers and contractors.
I'll break it to you now that fishing also is no longer dominated by 3 or 4 blokes going out in a little family owned boat either.0 -
But there's not a lot of point exporting from your country when the country has a fairly significant deficit in the production v supply ratio. You're really only going to export items that have a higher value elsewhere. Why sell your wheat to some African countries if the domestic market is prepared to buy it all? This is why I don't see how dropping our standards to get market share is worthwhile.1
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Surely you want to be producing so much there's loads to export.Pross said:But there's not a lot of point exporting from your country when the country has a fairly significant deficit in the production v supply ratio. You're really only going to export items that have a higher value elsewhere. Why sell your wheat to some African countries if the domestic market is prepared to buy it all? This is why I don't see how dropping our standards to get market share is worthwhile.
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rick_chasey said:
Surely you want to be producing so much there's loads to export.Pross said:But there's not a lot of point exporting from your country when the country has a fairly significant deficit in the production v supply ratio. You're really only going to export items that have a higher value elsewhere. Why sell your wheat to some African countries if the domestic market is prepared to buy it all? This is why I don't see how dropping our standards to get market share is worthwhile.
For comparison, as I'm sure you know, France (for example) has twice the land area for roughly the same population. Makes it easier to have a food surplus, at least in the good years, and with high input/high output systems (which, incidentally, tend to have a bigger environmental impact). I know we've had the discussion of Dutch systems before: if that's the model you'd aim for, then, yes, I probably have a different view of how farming should work in the landscape.
And, if you don't know, not all of the UK is like Cambridgeshire: if it were, we'd be more likely to have a food surplus.0 -
Markets are good at ensuring only profitable farms survive. That is not the same as productive farms or 'good' farms. If we were just going for good we wouldn't have feedlots, sow crates or battery hens. Especially given that we don't actually need to eat that much meat.rick_chasey said:Markets are good at creating good farms. You want to free market it as much as possible.
I understand there needs to be protection from unsustainable farming practices - I think humanity as a whole benefits from ruling those out.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
That's due to limitations on suitable land, mostly. It sometimes feels like you barely know the country you live in.rick_chasey said:
You may well be absolutely right, but I don't really recognise the UK as a big agri-exporter generally - it's not played out in the stats either.Pross said:
Do you not think that is already the case? There are massive companies involved in UK farming. It's not all the single farmer living in a stone cottage helped by his wife and kids to manage a few dozen cows. We have the world's largest 'vertical' farm in the UK and I'm working with a company that builds massive glasshouses on landfill sites using the gases from the landfill to provide the energy.rick_chasey said:TBH, the mindset needs changing from farming to agribusiness. That's what it needs to be.
I would have thought in Cambridgeshire you would have seen the massive farms that are owned by big businesses and run by farm managers and contractors.
I'll break it to you now that fishing also is no longer dominated by 3 or 4 blokes going out in a little family owned boat either.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition2 -
rick_chasey said:
TBH, the mindset needs changing from farming to agribusiness. That's what it needs to be.
Re-reading this, it reads like a plea for the UK to go into wholesale factory farming. I think that might be a difficult sell.
Whatever your view on individual systems, farming has profound effects on may aspects: the quality of the food we eat; the stewardship of the environment and the land we inhabit (good or bad - I'm not going to claim that all British farmers are saints); the treatment of the animals we eat.
Just to reiterate the point: the race to cheap food, regardless of the effects it has on the environment, animal welfare, and worker protection, really will be a race to the bottom, and to the worst practices in all areas. That's not to say that there aren't efficiencies to be made, but the further away from home, and requisite scrutiny your food production happens, the more likely it is that you will be eroding standards.
I'm sure that schooling could be done much more cheaply in classes of 100 or 200 (let's gloss over the educational outcomes, if cheapness/efficiency is all we're aiming for), but I doubt if many parents would buy into that prospectus.
Palming off food production to the 'most efficient' (i.e. cheapest) system is a cop-out on what standards we should be trying to promote. And putting up barriers to harmful practices seems entirely reasonable.
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If it’s sustainable then cheap food is absolutely the goal, surely.
Cheap food is a boon to literally everyone.
I get it, you don’t want to be putting sh!t food in your mouth, but as long as it’s healthy and not damaging and sustainable the goal is to make food as cheap as possible. That way it feeds as many people as possible.0 -
rick_chasey said:
If it’s sustainable then cheap food is absolutely the goal, surely.
Cheap food is a boon to literally everyone.
I get it, you don’t want to be putting sh!t food in your mouth, but as long as it’s healthy and not damaging and sustainable the goal is to make food as cheap as possible. That way it feeds as many people as possible.
Of course, simplistically, yes, but the devil is in the detail of how you achieve that.
Yet even that overlooks the profound effect that farming has on the land we inhabit. Pretty much every square mile of Britain is the result of farming practices over the centuries, good and bad, and I think a lot of people would say that great chunks of it are very beautiful, in all its diversity. A lot depends on whether you think what we have is worth looking after, or at least having some positive influence over.
FWIW, I don't get all dewy-eyed over the 'wilderness' of Dartmoor: it was relatively industrialised in the C19 (quarries, warrens, the prison was predicated into reclaiming chunks of the moor and making big profits for the owner of the prison)... and, of course, it was previously a forest, until pesky humans came along and chopped all the trees down about 3000BC. Farmed landscapes are in constant flux (see the changes since WW2, with the drive for greater production), but good farmers are aware they need to leave the land they steward in good shape for the next generations. And make money. Of course.0 -
Define not damaging? Keeping chickens in cages that are too small for them to move in gives perfectly healthy meat for us to eat but it ain't great for the chicken. But hey, it's going to die anyway so what does it matter?
What do you mean by sustainable too? You might be able to get double the yield by ploughing and reusing fields every year but eventually you'll end up with a dust bowl that can't grow anything.1 -
Well yes that is not sustainable. I mean it literally.Pross said:Define not damaging? Keeping chickens in cages that are too small for them to move in gives perfectly healthy meat for us to eat but it ain't great for the chicken. But hey, it's going to die anyway so what does it matter?
What do you mean by sustainable too? You might be able to get double the yield by ploughing and reusing fields every year but eventually you'll end up with a dust bowl that can't grow anything.0 -
rick_chasey said:
Well yes that is not sustainable. I mean it literally.Pross said:Define not damaging? Keeping chickens in cages that are too small for them to move in gives perfectly healthy meat for us to eat but it ain't great for the chicken. But hey, it's going to die anyway so what does it matter?
What do you mean by sustainable too? You might be able to get double the yield by ploughing and reusing fields every year but eventually you'll end up with a dust bowl that can't grow anything.
And that's where you get into the mire of who defines 'acceptable' standards, how they are policed, and how you pay for them. It all comes at a price.0 -
Ha, re my reference to reducing costs in education, there are other ways to do it:
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Relevance?rick_chasey said:French economy grew by 0.5% this quarter.
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Comparison of in/out?TheBigBean said:
Relevance?rick_chasey said:French economy grew by 0.5% this quarter.
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Gosh, why didn't anyone think of this before?
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UK growth is similar.briantrumpet said:
Comparison of in/out?TheBigBean said:
Relevance?rick_chasey said:French economy grew by 0.5% this quarter.
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I think they are winding you uprick_chasey said:
Right, but if there are limits on where you can sell your food to?pblakeney said:
Sales, barter, seeds, animal feed....rick_chasey said:
So once you're growing enough for your lot, what's the incentive to grow more?Dorset_Boy said:More a collective farm, so rather than each grow a small amount, they would pool resources to share the growth of larger amounts.
There's a reason the "kulaks" had more food than the collectivist farmers, and so why they were so reviled by communists. They were more productive and farmed more food!0 -
It really is hilarious. "Taking Back Control: let the crops rot!!" I swear they are both just doing some random lottery game where they pick policies out of a hat. The only rule is that logic or consistency is banned.
Good job that Brexit sorted out the split in the Tory Party.
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If a priest says he’s religious, no one cares.
If a priest says he’s atheist, you should probably pay attention.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jacob-rees-mogg-admits-i-was-wrong-to-say-brexit-would-not-cause-dover-delaysRees-Mogg went on to suggest that Britons might believe “going to Portugal is more fun because the Portuguese want us to go and the French are being difficult”.
“Why should we go and spend our hard-earned money in France if the French don’t want us?” he asked, before insisting he was not calling for a boycott.
Stevo is JRM & ICMFP1 -
rick_chasey said:Rees-Mogg went on to suggest that Britons might believe “going to Portugal is more fun because the Portuguese want us to go and the French are being difficult”.
“Why should we go and spend our hard-earned money in France if the French don’t want us?” he asked, before insisting he was not calling for a boycott.
Stevo is JRM & ICMFP
JRM has got this one right, mind you. Why go where you're not welcome? Go somewhere that wants you to be there and welcomes you. It's common sense."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
In my limited experience of travel, the behaviour of border guards does not typically represent or even correlate with how welcoming the locals are.
I certainly hope it doesn’t when it comes to the UK!
Plus you’re doing holidays wrong if you think holidays in countries are fungible.
A holiday in France is not the same as a holiday in Portugal.0 -
Stevo_666 said:rick_chasey said:Rees-Mogg went on to suggest that Britons might believe “going to Portugal is more fun because the Portuguese want us to go and the French are being difficult”.
“Why should we go and spend our hard-earned money in France if the French don’t want us?” he asked, before insisting he was not calling for a boycott.
Stevo is JRM & ICMFP
JRM has got this one right, mind you. Why go where you're not welcome? Go somewhere that wants you to be there and welcomes you. It's common sense.
Still not acknowledging that Dover is different from airports then?
Mind you, did JRM mention Macron?0
