Have some of that Chris Packham

SLA

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
I do find the rubbish they spout interesting, it shows what utter rubbish is being spread as fact and influencing people who don’t know any better, it really makes me wonder what as an industry we can do to put some balance back
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
###

You decide what you do with your land within a framework of legislation, regulation and subsidies, and subject to the overriding imperative to have to make a profit to survive.

We can only speculate as to the state the environment would be in without the restrictions imposed by legislation and regulations, and the financial support available to encourage eco friendly management.

Just imagine if there were no restrictions on the use of herbicides and insecticides. Or run off. Or disposal of carcasses. Or removal of hedges. No SSIS to bother with. No restriction of what wildlife you could kill. Imagine what it would be like if you had free rein, governed only by the need to make a profit to survive.

I, for one, am glad that the semi educated idiots have some measure of influence and control.

You got that bit right. I'm going to do what I bloody well like on land I've paid a mortgage for. If you want to see something different done with the land, you can buy it from me.
 
I do find the rubbish they spout interesting, it shows what utter rubbish is being spread as fact and influencing people who don’t know any better, it really makes me wonder what as an industry we can do to put some balance back


It might help if you clarified which industry you are referring to.

Are you referring to farming, or to the shooting industry?

Most farmers are either indifferent or well disposed towards birds of prey. For the most part they don't affect their operations. It's the shooting industry that is the problem.
 
You got that bit right. I'm going to do what I bloody well like on land I've paid a mortgage for. If you want to see something different done with the land, you can buy it from me.


Still using DDT then?

Shooting buzzards?

Leaving carcasses about?

Spreading raw sewage?

Doing what you bloody well like?

Or are you farming within the rules and regulations imposed by ignorant twits?
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
##

Sorry, but that's not how eco systems work.

Apex predators don't threaten the existence of species they prey on.

It would be an evolutionary dead end if it did work like that. Both the apex predator and its prey would be wiped out.

The primary threats to wildlife are loss of habitat and lack of food, not natural predation.

Please learn the basics of how to quote properly. It's not rocket science and is a darned site easier than understanding interacting lifecycles, which you obviously have even less clue about.

Top predators prey on more than one species and as long as there are plenty of a single nutritious species left they will prey on that. Very like humans do actually and you lay the blame on them for most things it seems to me.

There is no loss of habitat. There are more wildlife reserves, uncultivated borders and valleys and woodlands managed for wildlife than there has been since before the First World War. Less agricultural chemicals and fertilisers used on less cultivated land than since the 1930's, fertilisers and chemicals since the 1960's.
The only things that there are more of, and that is a result of farmers doing more than their fair share, is top level predators. What do those raptors eat? They are not vegans, believe me.
 
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SLA

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
Let’s actually look at what has changed in the last 60 years
-urban development/sprawl
-infrastructure development
-industrial development
-human population
-cat population
-dog population
-garden/allotment use/management

When the impact of the above has been analysed and monitored to the extent agriculture has then we might start getting somewhere.
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
Still using DDT then?

Shooting buzzards?

Leaving carcasses about?

Spreading raw sewage?

Doing what you bloody well like?

Or are you farming within the rules and regulations imposed by ignorant twits?

1. DDT was used up until the 1960's when its persistence was recognised, mainly in relation to bird's eggs. It is not generally used in agriculture but is used in limited applications in Africa, mainly as a household insecticide where the balance of benefits to humans is very positive and it saves thousands of lives annually.

2. Carcasses are not left about and it is a criminal offence to do so in the EU. Farmers are not even allowed to bury dead animals even though pets and millions of humans are buried annually and all of nature's animals die and rot naturally.

3. Raw sewage is not allowed to be spread in the UK. Treated sewage can be by specialist contractors that must test the product and the land for pollutants such as heavy metals. Indeed the only way to get rid of human sewage is to treat is and use it as fertiliser where possible, as it is certainly frowned upon to pump it into the oceans.
If a truly organic agriculture was to be demanded, then all human sewage and animal waste would have to be recycled to the land as fertiliser. That's just the way nature works.

4. Better that farmers do what they like within a framework of good husbandry rather than allow ignorant tossers to decide for them.

5. While some farmers, just like some businesspeople and some workers can be feckless, there are fewer and fewer of them these days due to a combination of education, economics, pride in their work and their environment and peer pressure.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
Good for you.

Why was it thought necessary to introduce legislation to stop hedges being removed?

How much has been paid out in Hedgerow and Boundary Grants?
maybe because, it was government policy to remove hedges and encourage farmers to do that, so large fields became the norm (culturally, as well as economically) and once government pressure causes culture to change, it is hard to change it back, therefore legislation was needed to make a 180 degree about turn in ideas. Agriculture being in many ways a traditional system (I do or THINK this, because my father did, as did his father!) when government prioritises production above all else, farmers continue to do or think that, even when government priorities change.
 
Never done any of the above. You really are a piece of work.


The point is you can't do what you bloody well like on your land.

You operate within the rules.

And the rules were imposed by ignorant twits who live in towns.

The question you should be asking is why the ignorant twits who live in towns thought they had to impose those rules.

Why wouldn't they let farmers do what they wanted?
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
The biggest irony here for me is that hedgerows are not a natural occurrence - they are a man made thing! The species that we put into our hedgerows wouldn't naturally grow in tight rows & would grow into large bushes & trees without our trimming - great for pigeons and other large birds, not so good for smaller birds which require dense cover for protection.

As ever statistics can be used to support any given agenda - for instance we are often told of the decline in certain small birds compared to say 60 years ago; what those statistics don't say is that bird numbers may well of been higher than natural due to the decline in predators caused by us and by the encouragement we gave the small birds in providing nice artificial habitats.
also point of interest, somewhere here I have a copy of the enclosures act, for the top of the farm, so I guess if we go back far enough, a lot of hedges did not exist, and were planted by landowners (lucky that then there was not such a big conversation lobby, as I can imagine "stop planting hedges in our lovely open countryside")
 
The point is you can't do what you bloody well like on your land.

You operate within the rules.

And the rules were imposed by ignorant twits who live in towns.

The question you should be asking is why the ignorant twits who live in towns thought they had to impose those rules.

Why wouldn't they let farmers do what they wanted?


Another question you should be asking is just what the place would be like if the ignorant twits/tossers who live in towns hadn't introduced all those rules and regulations and farmers had been allowed to do what they wanted, governed only by the iron rule of having to make a profit in order to survive.
 

joe soapy

Member
Location
devon
60 years ago the priority was very much slanted to food production at whatever cost it took to feed our population from our own resources. There were grants for farm amalgamations, mass drainage, training for improving ground and productivity and schemes to reduce rabbits badgers, foxes and birds or prey. Trapping of birds and animals was encouraged and widespread.

And yet, we are told there was more biodiversity and more birds. Those idiot 'conservationists' or 'greens' of today just cannot accept that unless those animals at the top of the food chain are kept to manageable numbers, they decimate the animals and birds that they prey upon. It has to be 'the farmer's are the buggers at fault!'

As you say in your first sentence, hedges are NOT natural features of the countryside. They were physically erected, not so long ago actually, to improve the management of farm livestock. To improve productivity and provide shelter when necessary.
While I'm not against hedges, there are parts of the country that have at least twice the length of hedges required for efficient production with modern machinery and often where there is no longer any grazing livestock present. There is as much shelter in a twenty acre field as there is in a five acre field. The both generally have four hedges boxing them in.
Over this side of the country, hedges only make up a tiny proportion of wooded and 'waste' areas and where farmers were sensible enough to make use of the grants of the 50's to late 70's to amalgamate field, they are generally now at a sensible size of between 5 and 25 acres, depending on topography and land use, which is acceptable to everyone. Where they are smaller, it become uneconomical to farm in many cases and the temptation then is to develop them into caravan sites or just build houses on them if in a suitable location.

We are extremely fortunate that it is farmers that decide what to do with their land rather than some Council committee made up of semi-educated idiots like some mentioned in these types of topics on TFF, otherwise the place would be a complete shambles. Where farmers are totally prevented from managing their land you get dozens of birds of prey following tractors rather than songbirds and animal life dominated by aggressive predators like badgers, foxes who decimate the biodiversity so sought after by the soppy do-gooders, who then project the blame back to farmers who are doing exactly what they are told and getting the very results that they were warned would happen by those farmers.


when hedges were first done they were kept to small fields because it was too much work to carry the stones any distance, in areas without stones the fields are generally much larger.
most of our main were at 40 acres except around the yard
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
I'll just leave that speak for itself.

Yes, it must surprise you. Where do you assume any loss of habits is lost to? Any habitat that is lost these days tends to be for roads and building development while habitats on farmland comes and goes over time and land rotation etc as it always has done but is actually gaining in area every year both by famers voluntarily leaving some less productive areas for economic reasons to benign neglect or to less intensive management, sometimes encouraged by some official schemes. Thousands of acres are under some kind of environmental schemes alone and tens of thousands of acres are just not farmed as intensively as they used to be for economic reasons.

Your ignorance of such matters is nothing short of astonishing, however personally I have met plenty of wallies in all walks of life so it's not so surprising really. The really ridiculous thing is that people like you have a voice these days and, to make an apt analogy with nature, birds of a feather flock together. You are wasting your time here though, because you are actually talking with people who are intelligent, have practical experience and who basically don't tolerate much shite.
 
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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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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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