Subs in europe are changing fast too, and not for pro human food production
GFC was to go ahead - now not going ahead
- Thread starter Vader
- Start date
- Location
- People's Republic of South Yorkshire
What boils my p€€ most is all the talk that uk is some sort of biodiversity desert...
Everywhere I drive I see green. Hedges, grass, trees and nature.
Tourists flood to the hills and moors for the views.
Yet defra and the nature groups want to change it all.
Why? ££££££
Talk it down and get grants and funding to increase it.
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
Biodiversity HAS been lost.
95%+ decline in hay meadows for example.
Intensive farming HAS driven much of that loss.
That intensive farming was driven by political policy and rampant population increase though.
Don't simply blame the engineers for what the designers and accountants demanded.
If they want the diversity of 1800s farming back then they must explain where their food is coming from and pay for it.
There are BIG discussions to be had in society about all this. Sadly, we get knee-jerk short term political grandstanding instead.
The government 25 year environment plan is a good start IMHO. The trouble is, it's being ignored in everyday policy but they still expect it to happen.
If you want farming to deliver big environment gains as well as food security we're going to have to be paid much more for what we do but no politician or campaigner is willing to accept that. They want cheap food without the impacts of cheap food.
There IS thriving nature on British farms
. It's no longer in big blocks or well inter-connected like it once was though.
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- Location
- People's Republic of South Yorkshire
But hay meadows are not natural...Biodiversity HAS been lost.
95%+ decline in hay meadows for example.
Intensive farming HAS driven much of that loss.
That intensive farming was driven by political policy and rampant population increase though.
Don't simply blame the engineers for what the designers and accountants demanded.
If they want the diversity of 1800s farming back then they must explain where their food is coming from and pay for it.
There are BIG discussions to be had in society about all this. Sadly, we get knee-jerk short term political grandstanding instead.
The government 25 year environment plan is a good start IMHO. The trouble is, it's being ignored in everyday policy but they still expect it to happen.
If you want farming to deliver big environment gains as well as food security we're going to have to be paid much more for what we do but no politician or campaigner is willing to accept that. They want cheap food without the impacts of cheap food.
There IS thriving nature on British farms
Same as hedges not.
Gov and public have no idea what they want really. They want to rewild, but keep certain man made in natural stuff.
Also they only report stuff like birds in decline, never the ones increasing as they not sounce of ££.
There is NEVER again going to be interconnected nature as the population is to great now along with to many pets and un natural increase in predators.
Uk nature has to be managed to keep I roughly balanced, but public don't like management as it involves culling.
Prime example is red squirrel. public sad they dying out, but wont agree to cull greys.
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So true, too many have no idea how nature interacts and how most of what they call nature is actually the result of man's control of it , the most worrying part is that many of those in government and the so called environmental experts are totally ignorant of how nature works.
Homesy
Member
- Location
- North West Devon
If we want return Britain to it's "natural" state we'd all have to leave. Biodiversity is one thing but we all have to eat. Importing more food just exports environmental damage abroad. There is no such thing as natural farming.Biodiversity HAS been lost.
95%+ decline in hay meadows for example.
Intensive farming HAS driven much of that loss.
That intensive farming was driven by political policy and rampant population increase though.
Don't simply blame the engineers for what the designers and accountants demanded.
If they want the diversity of 1800s farming back then they must explain where their food is coming from and pay for it.
There are BIG discussions to be had in society about all this. Sadly, we get knee-jerk short term political grandstanding instead.
The government 25 year environment plan is a good start IMHO. The trouble is, it's being ignored in everyday policy but they still expect it to happen.
If you want farming to deliver big environment gains as well as food security we're going to have to be paid much more for what we do but no politician or campaigner is willing to accept that. They want cheap food without the impacts of cheap food.
There IS thriving nature on British farms
- Location
- Durham, UK
These nature groups wouldnt have a job if they diddnt claim the uks biodiversity is crap. It suits their narrative to spout this rubbish
But it is rubbish compared with where it was 30 years ago, let alone 50 years ago. Biodiversity is in rapid decline largely because it is not sufficiently valued by society.
Farmers could/can help but we need encouragement and not threats and blame heaped on us.
- Location
- People's Republic of South Yorkshire
Any decline has 1 cause that can not be solved, over population.
Only if you think youself unatural
- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Don't know. Jury out
Still inexplicable how the NFU and AHDB went along with it and up until very recently the NFU acolytes poo pooed all of us laying down the questions
And as we know, more than half of the world’s biodiversity lies beneath the soil’s surface. How many politicians/activists even know about that?
Politicians have to have something to "sell".
The product of a malfunctioning machine is defective, whether its mechanical or political.
The largest part of the political machine is us.
I prefer mammals over microorganisms, I think it is in my (human honestly) nature.
Politics can be about the manipulation of our nature, for good or bad.
It is difficult for honesty to become popular, because it loses to pleasurable lies.
This is not new.
The layers of abstraction are.
A politician is selling the control he/she/whatever has to a paymaster.
How close are we to being their paymasters?
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This is it exactly, they want it all, cheap food and more nature, to get it, what they ask is be less productive and diversify, which on paper I am sure when the environmentalists were pushing for change to the committees that formed policy, they sounded ok because, non of it effected anyone on those committees.Biodiversity HAS been lost.
95%+ decline in hay meadows for example.
Intensive farming HAS driven much of that loss.
That intensive farming was driven by political policy and rampant population increase though.
Don't simply blame the engineers for what the designers and accountants demanded.
If they want the diversity of 1800s farming back then they must explain where their food is coming from and pay for it.
There are BIG discussions to be had in society about all this. Sadly, we get knee-jerk short term political grandstanding instead.
The government 25 year environment plan is a good start IMHO. The trouble is, it's being ignored in everyday policy but they still expect it to happen.
If you want farming to deliver big environment gains as well as food security we're going to have to be paid much more for what we do but no politician or campaigner is willing to accept that. They want cheap food without the impacts of cheap food.
There IS thriving nature on British farms
the reality is less farmers, less production.
diversification, will either take farmers out of farming or make them less farming productive.
neither outcome in reality makes farming a living, which all the schemes miss, farming has to be a living, making a living from the land has been a staple of our species, it’s the reason we exist, to dally with that basic concept is fundamentally stupid, yet we have seen it for the last 60 years or more, subsidies or payments that separate food production from profitability has put us where we are, can it be any other way now?
the more sub we get the less supermarkets will feel they need to pay, while I don’t know this is a correct fact or not but, from memory it’s 1p in the price in a 325 gram bit of cheese, is the farmers cut of the retail price of cheese.
this is the reality, it’s the way consumers consume, what we produce, that makes food expensive, the meal out has little to do with farm gate food prices, the ready meal, again is the same. Food is cheap at the farm gate, but it’s not for the consumer, food inflation the big nasty that governments hate is less about farming and more about everyone above us.
it all comes down to who sits between the farmer and the consumer, and what that consumer expects from there food.
can the system be fixed?
If so in what way?
local produce box schemes?
Seasonal ones, and what of the meat and dairy side, is the only diversification worth doing become producer, processor, and retailer as well?
we all know farming can and will absorb a lot of profits, that it has been starved of for a long time, until we own a Mr Dyson type farm where we are looking at long term investments rather than what do we make do with and what to mend.
A Mr Dyson type farm is what we should look like, employees to do things safely, not one man struggling on his own doing jobs best done with 2 or more. Everything boils down to money. What would our industry look like if we had Mr Dyson levels of finance?
expansion would end as who would sell land?
if profits from production doubled permanently what would happen?
- Location
- Herefordshire
This may not be representative but our farm had a lot less hedges and woodland on a 1765 map of the farm than it has now.More grass/Hay meadows though .Biodiversity HAS been lost.
95%+ decline in hay meadows for example.
Intensive farming HAS driven much of that loss.
That intensive farming was driven by political policy and rampant population increase though.
Don't simply blame the engineers for what the designers and accountants demanded.
If they want the diversity of 1800s farming back then they must explain where their food is coming from and pay for it.
There are BIG discussions to be had in society about all this. Sadly, we get knee-jerk short term political grandstanding instead.
The government 25 year environment plan is a good start IMHO. The trouble is, it's being ignored in everyday policy but they still expect it to happen.
If you want farming to deliver big environment gains as well as food security we're going to have to be paid much more for what we do but no politician or campaigner is willing to accept that. They want cheap food without the impacts of cheap food.
There IS thriving nature on British farms
I have seen really old photos of the blackdown hills, it was far more open then, not so many trees
- Location
- East Yorkshire
Bit disappointed BFU not part of 2nd review. Any comment from our hierarchy?
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
Has that been publicly stated?
Any idea when this second review is due and who is to be consulted?