CF

Absolutely spot on. This crisis is to a large extent of our making. Natural gas always did seem too good to burn. It’s a valuable raw material. We are also over reliant on it for fertiliser production and we need to wean ourselves off it. I’d say that will take decades to achieve without crashing food supplies.
In the short term we need to ensure we have sufficient ammonium nitrate for next years crops. Simple as. Priority number one.
Why isn’t somebody doing something? They seem to be fiddling while Rome burns.

Tony Blair started the big switch to burning gas, following on from Maggie shutting the mines.
 
Tony Blair recognised the "supermarket's armlock" on producers.
He also a knowledged a badger cull was needed (spider in the ink letters)
But what did he do about either ?
Sweet f a

I don't like the bloke either, I was just stating that it was under the Blair government we switched to burning huge volumes of natural gas to generate electricity. It was politically expedient at the time and gas was plentiful and dirt cheap. As most industry experts would no doubt acknowledge, there was never any guarantee it would stay cheap.
 

Bruce Almighty

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Warwickshire
I don't like the bloke either, I was just stating that it was under the Blair government we switched to burning huge volumes of natural gas to generate electricity. It was politically expedient at the time and gas was plentiful and dirt cheap. As most industry experts would no doubt acknowledge, there was never any guarantee it would stay cheap.
Sorry I wasn't disagreeing with you !
Another example of the damage Blair & his cronies did.
Not only was gas plentiful and cheap, so was imported foreign labour to do the work kids should have been doing - but he said they should be off to University.
 

Hindsight

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
Tony Blair started the big switch to burning gas, following on from Maggie shutting the mines.

My frien playing the anti New Labour card, deary me. The 'Dash for Gas' was a Tory policy. Begun by the privtization of the UK power network and short termism of most things that have arisen since Thachers Monetarism policies. Our Tony was elcted in 1997. By that time many Gas stations were built and planning obtained for many more.

 
My frien playing the anti New Labour card, deary me. The 'Dash for Gas' was a Tory policy. Begun by the privtization of the UK power network and short termism of most things that have arisen since Thachers Monetarism policies. Our Tony was elcted in 1997. By that time many Gas stations were built and planning obtained for many more.


Labour took the policy and doubled down on it. The installed capacity prior to 1998 was fudge all. Blair could have taken the decision to build coal fired plants, or more nuclear power, they were in power for rather a long time. Or did the nasty tories also do that?
 

Hindsight

Member
Location
Lincolnshire
Labour took the policy and doubled down on it. The installed capacity prior to 1998 was fudge all. Blair could have taken the decision to build coal fired plants, or more nuclear power, they were in power for rather a long time. Or did the nasty tories also do that?

They carried on with a Tory Policy. After all Mr Blair was a Tory. So it was and is a Tory policy.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
The most worrying thing and maybe the most telling thing about the CF stand off is that it leads me to the conclusion that the government seriously thinks that they can “let go” of U.K. agricultural production and rely wholly on food imports. I get the feeling that rather than do much about our home fertiliser and food production, they would rather we imported food as a finished product. This would of course fit in well with the rewilding, greening and exporting of carbon footprints and environmental issues.
If this is the case it’s a sorry kind of defeatism and a shirking of responsibility in my view.
It’s a real betrayal of the self sufficient self reliant independent Britain that many voted for at Brexit. An absolute betrayal.
 
The most worrying thing and maybe the most telling thing about the CF stand off is that it leads me to the conclusion that the government seriously thinks that they can “let go” of U.K. agricultural production and rely wholly on food imports. I get the feeling that rather than do much about our home fertiliser and food production, they would rather we imported food as a finished product. This would of course fit in well with the rewilding, greening and exporting of carbon footprints and environmental issues.
If this is the case it’s a sorry kind of defeatism and a shirking of responsibility in my view.
It’s a real betrayal of the self sufficient self reliant independent Britain that many voted for at Brexit. An absolute betrayal.

I don't think abroad can produce it cheaper
 

4course

Member
Location
north yorks
Tony Blair started the big switch to burning gas, following on from Maggie shutting the mines.
ah but the prat who has caused the demise of the uk farming industry as we know it is apparently now supporting the opening of a coal mine in cumbria .Theres now a case for come back arthur your country needs you .Plus it was the same lady,s mate who sold ici abroad and ruined the local economy in the north east
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I don't think abroad can produce it cheaper
I wouldn’t bet on that.
Governments sympathetic to food production.
Massive scale.
Minimal H and S.
Plant protection products we can’t use here such as neonics.
GM crops.
A lighter regulatory regime in terms of safety and environmental protection.
More lenient planning rules.

I bet there isn’t much rewilding going on in Brazil or much fuss if you bulldoze s hedge out. Badgers aren’t even protected in France last time I heard.
With the CAWF, the Johnson family of animal rights activists and the Goldsmith brothers in charge I would say Minette Batters is fairly close to an Arthur Scargill situation, but going a lot more quietly than he did.
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
Totally agree , Boris needs to tell them put up or fuk off
I fear Boris will tell them to fuk off. He will go a massive way down the road to making agriculture ‘carbon neutral’ through eliminating the production of N and its energy requirement with the added bonus of eliminating the ruminant livestock industry allowing the natural regression of land to wilderness and the mass planting of trees to satisfy the huggers.

Who needs food? It’s not on their priority list at all. They seem to presume, in all seriousness, that it literally grows on trees.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

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

  • 1,291
  • 1
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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