Critical Mass

Flatlander · Nov 28, 2021

The rot set in nearly thirty years ago when IACS was introduced. The general population saw themselves as funding farmers. The 90s were golden years in some respects, after the initial, crunch of iacs introduction farming did well and the GP saw farmers as sponging off Europe and they were funding it indirectly. Since then it’s been slowly chipping away at farmers to where the next generation want nothing to do with it. Farms will become part of bigger ones and they will answer to supermarkets and become their puppets, theses farms will be owned by investors looking to avoid inheritance tax,carbon tax or any other scam to shuffle money around but not to farm in a traditional way. Family farms are a going to be a novelty in twenty years and the subject of a reality show on tv showing how things used to be.

Treg · Nov 28, 2021

steveR said:
The "Miners" of the 2020s?

Or the Canaries

Vorest Tat · Nov 28, 2021

Bury the Trash said:
but we're still here

But for how much longer??...... I farm(140 odd ewes) cos its a life style choice, rather than paying the bills. Oh has a job!! I can't see my son bothering?

thorpe · Nov 28, 2021

CornishTone said:
I spoke to a chap the other day who spent 20 years in the RPA and recently came home to run the family farm (poacher turned game keeper.. or the other way round).

He is convinced ELMS and all its spin offs are being set up to fail. Government want rid of the hassle and cost of paying farmers. If they make the scheme unworkable and financially unacceptable, uptake will be low enough to wash their hands of it. They can then put what ever aspects of it they want into legislation rather than make it voluntary. If they use the stick, it's easier to make the industry pay them through fines!

He also reckons Red tractor is already being lined up to work as a sort of privatised regulator to keep whoever's left in line with increased access to market schemes.

Just one mans opinion of course but, a man with something of an insight into the inner workings of the machine. I've no idea if he's right... I hope he's a crazy conspiracy theorist but think of all those small family farms going up for sale, ripe for tree planting and prime carbon offsetting territory for the big corporates to wipe their arses on! Fewer farmers and more trees! Boris and Carries wet dream!!!

rt a regulator it already is doiing trading standards job and we pay them££££££ trading standards cost us nowt!

thorpe · Nov 28, 2021

kiwi pom said:
I tend to agree, every generation thinks the one following is less talented, but they're fine, maybe just skilled in different things.
My house was built in the 70's, according to TFF it would have been built by skilled craftsmen with years of experience that you just don't find anymore but it wasn't, it was built by muppets. Just this morning I've found problems with the way the roof was built, I always seem to be fixing the last generations feck up's, I suspect my kids will fix mine.
There are skilled people about today and there are useless people. Its always been the same.

my house was built in the 70s also, i dread having to have a plumber electrcian or anybodie in to do any work its embarrising ! had to have a new boiler and heating system fitted last year , i heard a cry of i dont belive it! i thought of god what now? the plumber came through laughing that in 20 years in the job he had never seen radiator brackets nailed to the wall, and that was just the start of it.

thorpe · Nov 28, 2021

Lowland1 said:
That’s the long and the short of. The average age of farmers gets older and they’ve failed to encourage younger people into the industry we’ve lost a generation for some reason. Younger people tend to have a more upbeat and positive attitude they think there is a future as they are looking forward whilst us older folk look backwards and remember the good bits and forget the bad.

we encouraged a family member into the job he ended up doing summers here and winters in nz . he feck off to nz 3 years ago and not come back! good for him.

Vorest Tat · Nov 28, 2021

Bill the Bass said:
Won’t make any difference to what the OP is about, small family farms, particularly livestock ones are simply not wanted; not wanted by politicians, civil servants, planning authorities, animal welfare and environmental charities, the big four retailers, large landowners, the list goes on.

That is the cold hard truth of it

kiwi pom · Nov 28, 2021

down n'dirty said:
I do wonder who is going to farm the land and produce the food the country needs, in years to come. The area in which I live has quite a few farmers approaching retirement age or even well past it, with no successors to follow on. In my own case and those of my immediate neighbours, our children have all decided to follow easier and more lucrative careers- and who can blame them when farming has been so poorly rewarded in recent years. For those of us who will remain,I think the tide is finally turning, as more and more land is taken out of production, the world population contiues to grow, fertiliser costs increase and our chemical armoury is continually being depleted. The years of a cheap and under appreciated food supply might finally be coming to an end- lets hope that there will be young farmers around who want and can afford to enter the industry, that can take advantage of it!

There's plenty of people that would be quite happy to farm if the opportunities are there. Its an easier sell these days as it's not the physical job it once was. As long as there's a living to be made, people will do it.
As for the skills needed, I don't see that as too big of a problem either, yes farmers have some skills but they are also just managers, even if they don't have direct employee's. Think about it, vets, mechanics, agronomists, contractors, land agents, accountants, grain merchants, stock agents etc are all bought into the farm to carry out specific tasks. The business owner just steers the ship.
Its common to wonder, how things will be when you're not there, be it a job or business. The reality is, things will be just fine. We're not as important as we think.

Lowland1 · Nov 28, 2021

Flatlander said:
The rot set in nearly thirty years ago when IACS was introduced. The general population saw themselves as funding farmers. The 90s were golden years in some respects, after the initial, crunch of iacs introduction farming did well and the GP saw farmers as sponging off Europe and they were funding it indirectly. Since then it’s been slowly chipping away at farmers to where the next generation want nothing to do with it. Farms will become part of bigger ones and they will answer to supermarkets and become their puppets, theses farms will be owned by investors looking to avoid inheritance tax,carbon tax or any other scam to shuffle money around but not to farm in a traditional way. Family farms are a going to be a novelty in twenty years and the subject of a reality show on tv showing how things used to be.

it was before IACS that the rot set in. Blame it on the CAP with the much publicised wine lakes and butter mountains all paid for with tax money. I used to get stick at school for being a farmers son in the early 1980s. This thing of farms getting bigger is nothing new I remember neighbours talking about the 1970s labour government allowing insurance companies to buy up land because they thought it would be easy for them to nationalise it. There will always be a need for good farmers because it's a skill that cannot be learned from books or at college's the problem is government doesn't want to know that. Those people who can keep going will reap the benefits.

delilah · Nov 29, 2021

@Janet Hughes Defra on Friday you asked me (on the '200 acres' thread) to expand on what I meant when I said that ELMS needed to use Critical Mass as a criteria in its development. Being lazy I thought I would let others do the expanding for me.

Just to add to one of the points made on here: It has been suggested that Government wishes to see ELMS fail/ to see the £3Bn whittled away to nothing, because the politicians and an urban public have no appetite for supporting agriculture.
Make a list of all of the things that the politicians and the public expect from the countryside. It's a fair old list, before you even get to 'food on the table'.
If you don't use the £3Bn/yr to reverse the decline in critical mass, then I can guarantee, with absolute certainty, that £30Bn/yr will not buy you those public goods.

DrWazzock · Nov 29, 2021

I don’t know if “subsidy” helps or hinders critical mass. As my neighbour used to say, “I could buy your family’s farm with my BPS cheque and have plenty left over”, and many small farms here have gone that way.
Then on the other hand if we just stopped farming and closed the gate we would soon have an oak and sycamore wood here without lifting a spade, which is what Lord Gokdsmith wants isn’t it?
I think grants and subsidies tend to benefit “schemers”, dilute the worth of hard work and real efficiency and only seem to inflate input prices.
In my view they do nothing but distort the reality. Take them away and we would see where priorities really lie.
If the public really want greening and public access then let’s have a turnstile on the public footpath and see how folks really value it when the cash is really coming directly out of their own wallets rather than being skimmed from their hard earned wages by the tax man.
If Mr Cummings hadn’t left, taking the brains with him, then I think subsidies wouldn’t soon be gone and the whole system would have been none the worse for it.

Lazy Sod · Nov 29, 2021

Flatlander said:
Many farm skills only come later in life

I learnt many skills as a teenager as my father wouldn't spend money on anything if he could help it.

Barleycorn · Nov 29, 2021

Clarkson will save us, and I'm not joking.

Bury the Trash · Nov 29, 2021

Bogweevil said:
I find young people soon acquire all the skills and knowledge they need and with the energy of youth do amazing things.

Yes left alone to get on with something but not after ......
'No one here vacinates,drenches , trims a hedge drives a tractor ploughs a field , how to minimise compaction, soil damage etc, etc without first getting instruction on how to do it from me .
I have seen plenty who are sent out to do work , and arent taught from the start, and often with very expensive tools and machines, they're bad habits start right there.
First-hand instruction from an experienced person in the field on the job is the only way, not from a book , some post on the internet or youtube vid by some trendy young thing.

The More people with good practical traditional and modern skills the better. wether they are old or young or in between.

Bury the Trash · Nov 29, 2021

delilah said:
To paraphrase some recent posts on here:
‘The EA staff aren’t what they were. Can’t even hang a gate properly.’
‘The vets aren’t what they were. I seem to know more than they do.’
‘The Defra staff aren’t what they were. Just don’t understand the practicalities.’
‘The Ag colleges aren’t what they were. Crying out for lecturers with practical experience.’

My late uncle worked for the EA, before that the NRA. He also had a farm. Not a big one, but big enough for him to keep his hand in and to pass on skills to my cousins should they wish to use them in later life. Through the centralist food system policies we have rigorously pursued in recent decades, we have managed to wipe out tens of thousands of such farms. The repercussions are everywhere. Less and less people have the skills and knowledge required to keep the countryside running.

There are people who will tell you that it doesn’t matter. That it is the free market at work. That skills die out because they are no longer needed. They are wrong. They should talk to my colleague working her socks off developing a business based on wool. A business that is all of a sudden highly relevant in a World waking up to the dangers of micro-plastics. She is having to train people from a standing start. All of the skills she needs are in the churchyard. Look at the work the RBST have done with breeds that were deemed no longer relevant but are now once again relevant. As it is with livestock, and seed varieties, so it is with skills.

ELMS as it stands is going to turbo charge the loss of critical mass in UK agriculture. Any individual, any organisation that sees the folly of this, needs to put whatever effort they can into getting Defra to see sense. Because if they don’t, there will be no-one left on the ground to deliver ‘public good’.

Excellent post .

Flatlander · Nov 29, 2021

Lazy Sod said:
I learnt many skills as a teenager as my father wouldn't spend money on anything if he could help it.

Sounds like my dad lol. I can remember when he bought a welder. I wanted to try and jokingly after I’d had a go he said my welding look like the bottom of a parrots cage. Pushed me in to learning myself to weld. We learn a lot of basics from them and don’t realize I guess.

Lazy Sod · Nov 29, 2021

I taught myself to stick weld in the mid sixties. I have never got on with mig. My mig is on permanant loan to a friend. He's 87 and still working! I imagine that I might get it back one day. I found that, with a dampish workshop, the wire would rust and stick in the liner. I only weld very occasionally these days, so the quality of my welding has rather declined.

kiwi pom · Nov 29, 2021

Bury the Trash said:
Yes left alone to get on with something but not after ......
'No one here vacinates,drenches , trims a hedge drives a tractor ploughs a field , how to minimise compaction, soil damage etc, etc without first getting instruction on how to do it from me .
I have seen plenty who are sent out to do work , and arent taught from the start, and often with very expensive tools and machines, they're bad habits start right there.
First-hand instruction from an experienced person in the field on the job is the only way, not from a book , some post on the internet or youtube vid by some trendy young thing.

The More people with good practical traditional and modern skills the better. wether they are old or young or in between.

This isn't meant as criticism but how do you know you're doing it right when you teach?
As a farm/contracting worker I've been told the "right way" to do jobs many times. Obviously I'm always happy to do something the way my employer wants (as long as it's legal and safe) but I have noticed over the years that the "right way" seems to vary dramatically from boss to boss.
I do agree that there's often not a lot of actual training in Ag, something I didn't really notice until I worked elsewhere. I think that applies to farmers as well as their staff though.
I find YouTube VERY handy

thorpe · Nov 29, 2021

i could of wrote the you tube bit , try the classic rock show.

Jsmith2211 · Nov 29, 2021

Says a lot that even the enviromentalists dont like elms...

Critical Mass

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100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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