Brexit future is bright

Jim Bullock

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
I am not ashamed to say that I voted Remain, and I understand that I was in the minority of UK farmers (70% voting Brexit). So far I am not seeing any benefits just increased input costs (fuel, machinery and chemicals) and as we are still in the EU even if /when the pound rebalances against the Euro I am not going see any improvements in commodity prices.
Now that the dust has settled it appears that our single farm payment will be history by 2019 to be replaced by community environmental payments. So instead of having 2 million farmers on our side we will be just be a very small voice against a massive urban population that really couldn't care less about where it's food comes from and will care even less if it comes under more financial pressure, added to which would like to see money spent on the NHS rather than it being given to individual farmers.
I need to produce a five year plan for our business. Would some of the Brexiters be able to put some figures to how the future for a 750 acre arable farm is going to shape up. . .? Am I going to see fewer rules when it comes to all the pieces of regulation that come with farm assurance and any future environmental payments..
A columnist in this weeks FW is suggesting that 'Brexit future is bright if we all work together ' . I am all in favour of working together, but history suggests that it just doesn't work in the UK and most farmers compete with their neighbours and never work with them.
I admit that I really didn't believe that the UK would vote to come out of the EU and cannot believe that so many UK farmers voted to come out.
So now ....all you Brexiters .....please enlighten my how my future is going to be better outside the EU.. I need facts and figures not personal attacks which have occurred in other threads.
 

banjo

Member
Location
Back of beyond
Get off your Arse and stop being so pessimistic, every other buisness in the uk has similar problems without receiveing help and they manage.
You have a nice size farm there that should make a tidy profit if thought through properly, maybe not the £50.000 Range Rover on the Xmas list this year though, cut your cloth accordingly and get on with it!
 

chickens and wheat

Member
Mixed Farmer
Maybe the necessary belt tightening and efffiency maximising will lead to a better agri system in the UK, but I fear this will see the end of the family farm, replaced by large scale share farmers/co-operatives
But are these large scale business really more efficient? Nobody knows or loves his land more than a tenant farmer already eeking out his maximum from the land by knowing its variabilies, but commonly not able to maximise on machine/input costs due to the farm not been big enough.
We have half tried working together via machinery rings/co-operating with neighbours etc, but as expected its never quite so simple.

Id like to build a new chicken shed but the future is too uncertain for me to go borrowing heavily at present, its only 6 months since I bought half the farm from the landlord and I am surrendering from the rest after harvest
If the brexit vote had happened last year it would have been at about the time when I was awaiting a reply to my bid from the landlord , and news from the bank re funding the purchase, scarey enough as it was
 
I am not ashamed to say that I voted Remain, and I understand that I was in the minority of UK farmers (70% voting Brexit). So far I am not seeing any benefits just increased input costs (fuel, machinery and chemicals) and as we are still in the EU even if /when the pound rebalances against the Euro I am not going see any improvements in commodity prices.
Now that the dust has settled it appears that our single farm payment will be history by 2019 to be replaced by community environmental payments. So instead of having 2 million farmers on our side we will be just be a very small voice against a massive urban population that really couldn't care less about where it's food comes from and will care even less if it comes under more financial pressure, added to which would like to see money spent on the NHS rather than it being given to individual farmers.
I need to produce a five year plan for our business. Would some of the Brexiters be able to put some figures to how the future for a 750 acre arable farm is going to shape up. . .? Am I going to see fewer rules when it comes to all the pieces of regulation that come with farm assurance and any future environmental payments..
A columnist in this weeks FW is suggesting that 'Brexit future is bright if we all work together ' . I am all in favour of working together, but history suggests that it just doesn't work in the UK and most farmers compete with their neighbours and never work with them.
I admit that I really didn't believe that the UK would vote to come out of the EU and cannot believe that so many UK farmers voted to come out.
So now ....all you Brexiters .....please enlighten my how my future is going to be better outside the EU.. I need facts and figures not personal attacks which have occurred in other threads.
The general sentiment that I have seen is that the future will be better because the wheat will be separated from the chaff ie some farmers will survive, some will not. There will be lots of opportunities at the expense of farmers leaving the industry. There are no facts and figures though. The future will just be a lot tighter.
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
It is far too soon after the referendum for the dust to have settled. Everybody just needs to calm down for a while.. Your grain sales will benefit from the £ dropping, which will more than outweigh your fuel price rises.

The remainers have made such a fuss that it is almost like the have made all the doom and gloom that project fear predicted come true, to spite those who voted leave.

Be patient and stop fussing and worrying. There really is nothing you can do until things become clearer in the months, not days, to come.
 

Jim Bullock

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Get off your Arse and stop being so pessimistic, every other buisness in the uk has similar problems without receiveing help and they manage.
You have a nice size farm there that should make a tidy profit if thought through properly, maybe not the £50.000 Range Rover on the Xmas list this year though, cut your cloth accordingly and get on with it!
Sorry no Range Rover ..an N Reg Defender... Just struggling from one financial crisis to the next...750 acres on rented land is not a great earner. And I have got off my arse over the last twenty years to cut cost and improve income. You have not answered my question as to how I/We are going to be better off outside the EU. I accept that we are there now and will cut my cloth accordingly. If I could have seen all of the regulations ( hedge cutting, NVZ, s , field margins, waste disposal, animal I'd. Etc etc etc )done away with, I would make have been the first to have voted Brexit,but all I see is all of the regulations and none of the benefits.
 
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banjo

Member
Location
Back of beyond
Sorry no Range Rover ..an N Reg Defender... Just struggling from one financial crisis to the next...

every working person in this country is struggling since the banking crisis, everyone is skint. We have been sucking on the tit from the eu while the poor were starving.
Nothing personal and sorry for being abrupt ( stressful day ) I'm just fed up of this pessimistic stuff on the telly and radio all the time, borrowings cheaper, the low pound will help exports and other country's will find it dearer to export to our country ( New Zealand )
The working persons wages will level out instead of dropping and house prices are going down ( helping young couples to own a house at last )
If people ain't careful they will talk themselves broke for no reason, It's looking at the glass half full, not half empty and two years before you need the big decisions making.
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
I sometimes wonder how and why we allowed ourselves to get into a situation where we utterly depend on on a large BACS payment to arive in our Bank accounts to survive.

Trouble is that it was forced upon us by the EU by the invention of IACS, followed by SFP, then BPS. Every Estate Agent, Landlord, grain merchant, spray manufacture, fertiliser manufacturer and machinery dealer we use knows we get it and that is why we are constantly in a muddle.

Worse still, that payment has allowed rules and regulations to beat us over the head with, or we don't get the money. No sub and they cannot control us. And governments love to be able control the countryside and provide cheap food to voters to keep them happy. Should we allow them to continue to do so?

The EU will collapse one day and probably sooner now we are leaving it.. Bloody good job too! One day we will get back to some proper farming with what the market will need. Sooner the better.

Apart from the very first few years in it, mY father did much better before we joined the EEC than the last 35 years we have been in the EU.

Both my Granfathers did very well indeed way before we joined the EEC.
They privately educated my parents, who struggled more to privately educate me. My kids weren't so fortunate. But have you noticed that just about every rep from every company You buy from seems to privately educate their kids?

It's all a matter of perspective that has become unbalanced, thanks to those subs.

Unless you own and farm good, high yielding land or have development land you can raise capital on to keep bunging money into your farm business, you are going to be in difficulties. It was way passed time to change the system and now we can.

It won't happen over night, but we have just taken the first step. Be patient!
 
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Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
I don't plan any more. With wild weather and three volatile business partners I follow the philosophy of sergeant Troy.

The past was yesterday, the present is today and the future in tomorrow.

Keep calm and carry on. It'll blow over.
One of the best Farming stories ever with sergeant Troy. Far from the Madding Crowd. Both the original and new films are good.

Troy was no farmer though, was he? You are either born into farming or marry into it.

There really isn't any other way unless you have one hell of a lot of capital.
 

reverand

Member
Location
East lancs hills
It does look like survival of the fittest will prevail but the big concern is new entrants, how and why do they get their foot in the door. If scale is the only way, that needs massive capital investment. Existing farmers won't be here for ever.
If you can afford to farm you can afford not to farm, i.e it's not a great investment
 
Location
Cheshire
It does look like survival of the fittest will prevail but the big concern is new entrants, how and why do they get their foot in the door. If scale is the only way, that needs massive capital investment. Existing farmers won't be here for ever.
If you can afford to farm you can afford not to farm, i.e it's not a great investment

New entrants will enjoy the opportunities that the CAP closed. Buying entitlements or quotas, paying inflated rentals is the biggest brake on new entrants ever invented.
 

Muck Spreader

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Limousin
All I can suggest at the moment it to make sure you have a reasonable cash reserve that is accessible. Keep reviewing you costs at every opportunity, sell off any assets that are not being worked to their full potential, can contractors do some of the work more cost effectively. For future investment I would bare in mind the current subsidy regime will probably not be fully replaced before 2020 but IMO it will be more on a pillar 2 basis plus more generous grants for diversification projects. Basic commodity production may in future be covered by a base price insurance regime. But who knows for sure, but a cash reserve always helps you sleep easier, even if it is going down in value a bit.:(
 

Derrick Hughes

Member
Location
Ceredigion
I sometimes wonder how and why we allowed ourselves to get into a situation where we utterly depend on on a large BACS payment to arive in our Bank accounts to survive.

Trouble is that it was forced upon us by the EU by the invention of IACS, followed by SFP, then BPS. Every Estate Agent, Landlord, grain merchant, spray manufacture, fertiliser manufacturer and machinery dealer we use knows we get it and that is why we are constantly in a muddle.

Worse still, that payment has allowed rules and regulations to beat us over the head with, or we don't get the money. No sub and they cannot control us. And governments love to be able control the countryside and provide cheap food to voters to keep them happy. Should we allow them to continue to do so?

The EU will collapse one day and probably sooner now we are leaving it.. Bloody good job too! One day we will get back to some proper farming with what the market will need. Sooner the better.

Apart from the very first few years in it, mY father did much better before we joined the EEC than the last 35 years we have been in the EU.

Both my Granfathers did very well indeed way before we joined the EEC.
They privately educated my parents, who struggled more to privately educate me. My kids weren't so fortunate. But have you noticed that just about every rep from every company You buy from seems to privately educate their kids?

It's all a matter of perspective that has become unbalanced, thanks to those subs.

Unless you own and farm good, high yielding land or have development land yo raise capital on to keep bunging money into your farm business, you are going to be in difficulties. It was way passed time to change the system and now we can.

It won't happen over night, but we have just taken the first step. Be patient!
Best post ever written
 

roscoe erf

Member
Livestock Farmer
I am not ashamed to say that I voted Remain, and I understand that I was in the minority of UK farmers (70% voting Brexit). So far I am not seeing any benefits just increased input costs (fuel, machinery and chemicals) and as we are still in the EU even if /when the pound rebalances against the Euro I am not going see any improvements in commodity prices.
Now that the dust has settled it appears that our single farm payment will be history by 2019 to be replaced by community environmental payments. So instead of having 2 million farmers on our side we will be just be a very small voice against a massive urban population that really couldn't care less about where it's food comes from and will care even less if it comes under more financial pressure, added to which would like to see money spent on the NHS rather than it being given to individual farmers.
I need to produce a five year plan for our business. Would some of the Brexiters be able to put some figures to how the future for a 750 acre arable farm is going to shape up. . .? Am I going to see fewer rules when it comes to all the pieces of regulation that come with farm assurance and any future environmental payments..
A columnist in this weeks FW is suggesting that 'Brexit future is bright if we all work together ' . I am all in favour of working together, but history suggests that it just doesn't work in the UK and most farmers compete with their neighbours and never work with them.
I admit that I really didn't believe that the UK would vote to come out of the EU and cannot believe that so many UK farmers voted to come out.
So now ....all you Brexiters .....please enlighten my how my future is going to be better outside the EU.. I need facts and figures not personal attacks which have occurred in other threads.
how can we we don't have any details yet so no facts or figures to give bit early in the day but still we needed yet another brexit thread
 

Ukjay

Member
Location
Wales!
Apart from the very first few years in it, mY father did much better before we joined the EEC than the last 35 years we have been in the EU.
Both my Granfathers did very well indeed way before we joined the EEC.
They privately educated my parents, who struggled more to privately educate me. My kids weren't so fortunate. But have you noticed that just about every rep from every company You buy from seems to privately educate their kids?

It's all a matter of perspective that has become unbalanced, thanks to those subs.

Unless you own and farm good, high yielding land or have development land yo raise capital on to keep bunging money into your farm business, you are going to be in difficulties. It was way passed time to change the system and now we can.

It won't happen over night, but we have just taken the first step. Be patient!

One important point here - and I'm not knocking anyone so don't shoot the messenger, but 35yrs ago - people didn't think chickens grew on plastic trays, they appreciated milk came out of a cow, and ate more seasonal crops.
Twatsco et al weren't the massive conglomerates they are today, forcing many farming businesses into massive debt, worst case to go under due to severely hostile buying practices, simply because they have the resources to ship goods in from anywhere overseas - so at last minute dot come, can offer a far lower price than what had been agreed or you can keep your goods mentality.

Bonus driven buyers, bonus driven bankers, corporate greed - it is all the same result. Massively Exagerated pay deals for the ones at the top making the rules, whilst squeezing the b*lls of working class. This is life now so we need to accept it, and work within these constraints, or make positive changes.

Evolution (if one could call it that), has unfortunately taught us that everything is a commodity, even livelihoods, and indoctrinated into the newer generations mindset that everything is disposable - even local businesses, until this realism hits their own pocket, whereby they then bleat how hard done by they are.
People's ignorance really astonishes me, they moan about the cost of food, but they are happy to pay £100 for sky multi room hd tv, but ask them to pay another 50p on a 2ltr bottle of milk for example - sheez, you may as well have asked them to pay your mortgage off!

People are now so disjointed from how much things cost, what it takes to produce etc - it is going to take a bloody miracle to get realigned, but I fear the ignorance will never change unfortunately. We are far too used to sticking our fingers in our ears and going la la la, unless of course it falls on their own doorstep.

To balance the equation, the farming industry will also have some skeletons hiding away in its closet somewhere, and it is not for me to judge either way - but if the UK farming industry cannot srand together collectively without hidden agendas, then you will surely meet a stalemate whereby the decision is going to end up being along the lines of stay in farming or go and do something else, whereby for farming families who have cared for stocks, tended to land for years, will be a real heartbreaking decision for them, and one I personally would never like to be in a position to have to do.

You have certain people moving their manufacturing business abroad to maximise the cheap labour, then buying up 1000's of acreas of land in the UK- again, one assumes is creating pressure for the farming community, but this is becoming the new gold bar for the super rich, as land is finite - so the more you own, the more power your going to have further down the line.

We are in one big broiling pot of greed, and personally I cant see it getting changed. You eitger adapt, or in the end you will have even tougher decisions.
 

More to life

Member
Location
Somerset
One important point here - and I'm not knocking anyone so don't shoot the messenger, but 35yrs ago - people didn't think chickens grew on plastic trays, they appreciated milk came out of a cow, and ate more seasonal crops.
Twatsco et al weren't the massive conglomerates they are today, forcing many farming businesses into massive debt, worst case to go under due to severely hostile buying practices, simply because they have the resources to ship goods in from anywhere overseas - so at last minute dot come, can offer a far lower price than what had been agreed or you can keep your goods mentality.

Bonus driven buyers, bonus driven bankers, corporate greed - it is all the same result. Massively Exagerated pay deals for the ones at the top making the rules, whilst squeezing the b*lls of working class. This is life now so we need to accept it, and work within these constraints, or make positive changes.

Evolution (if one could call it that), has unfortunately taught us that everything is a commodity, even livelihoods, and indoctrinated into the newer generations mindset that everything is disposable - even local businesses, until this realism hits their own pocket, whereby they then bleat how hard done by they are.
People's ignorance really astonishes me, they moan about the cost of food, but they are happy to pay £100 for sky multi room hd tv, but ask them to pay another 50p on a 2ltr bottle of milk for example - sheez, you may as well have asked them to pay your mortgage off!

People are now so disjointed from how much things cost, what it takes to produce etc - it is going to take a bloody miracle to get realigned, but I fear the ignorance will never change unfortunately. We are far too used to sticking our fingers in our ears and going la la la, unless of course it falls on their own doorstep.

To balance the equation, the farming industry will also have some skeletons hiding away in its closet somewhere, and it is not for me to judge either way - but if the UK farming industry cannot srand together collectively without hidden agendas, then you will surely meet a stalemate whereby the decision is going to end up being along the lines of stay in farming or go and do something else, whereby for farming families who have cared for stocks, tended to land for years, will be a real heartbreaking decision for them, and one I personally would never like to be in a position to have to do.

You have certain people moving their manufacturing business abroad to maximise the cheap labour, then buying up 1000's of acreas of land in the UK- again, one assumes is creating pressure for the farming community, but this is becoming the new gold bar for the super rich, as land is finite - so the more you own, the more power your going to have further down the line.

We are in one big broiling pot of greed, and personally I cant see it getting changed. You eitger adapt, or in the end you will have even tougher decisions.
I like that post but don't be bitter about things you can't influence the job has always evolved it's the pace of change that's the problem
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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