Agents’ cheery outlook post-BPS

Many of our buyers(or their accountants) work on the basis of what price will keep us producing so factor in sub payments and will increase prices to us to keep us producing.I actually think the opposite will happen we are only 60% self sufficient in food in UK and need to import . We have irritated a lot of the world recently for all sorts of reasons and may not be able to get all the food we need so easily what with weather issues in grain producing parts of the world. Sheep are the best example, where is the collapse that was predicted? or is it still coming,prices for cattle are still firm and grain is moving upwards. In Scotland we have a new rent system about to be introduced based on productive capacity so maybe not all bad news. Add a summer coming up with everyone stuck in the UK and like last summer food sales especially for barbecues will increase.
What is this new rent system? Is it for the traditional type tenancies? Does it take sfp into account?
 

SteveHants

Member
Livestock Farmer
If a landowner has any savvy about him he will perhaps be wise not to touch such lease schemes. I fundamentally dispute the notion that it is possible to offset emissions with a 25 year lease when it takes millions, or hundreds of millions of years for carbon to be taken back out of the active carbon cycle and returned to be locked away in fossil carbon reserves. We take fossil fuels buried deep under ground, we burn it and we add 10bn tonnes of previously inactive carbon to the active carbon cycle each year. For reference 10bn tonnes of carbon is by my rather rough calculation is equivalent to the carbon held in 1 million ha of forrest..... Tell me, how does a 25 year lease have the slighted impact on how much carbon is in the active carbon cycle? Such schemes may transfer wealth between emitters, consumers, land owners and carbon traders and it may help ease the conscious of the emitters. So yes a business opportunity perhaps for sponsored wildflower meadows, water meadows and other measures to maintain and improve biodiversity but it the stated aims of such schemes refer to offsetting carbon emissions then they would be both a fraudulent and mis-selling. Such schemes of durations less than a million years can fundamentally not offset carbon emissions in any meaningful way!!

It's not just about carbon sequestration - look wider than that, it's about the monetising of environmental "services" that come from the environment. A rare habitat is an environmental service, of value to humanity, the value of which becomes monetised under the idea of "Natural Capital" (NC is defined as “elements of nature that directly or indirectly produce value to people, including ecosystems, species, freshwater, land, minerals, the air and oceans)about which I have already talked. Thus businesses are willing to lease such a thing to ensure its continued existence, to mitigate their environmental footprint.
Stocks and flows.png


Below is the accounting system used to calculate such things: https://seea.un.org/sites/seea.un.org/files/ca7735en.pdf

Edited to add: You should also read and digest this: https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/9476/Costanza et al Nature 1997 prepublicaton.pdf
 
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jendan

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northumberland
:scratchhead: Fk that for a mugs game. That plan put you working 100 hours a week, on course to earn £50K in a good year but stand to loose £500k in harvests like 2020 and in a grave at 50.
I was being sarcastic.I think it is an appalling way to farm.There should be a decent living to be had for a family on 200 acres of good grade 3 land or better,mixed farming. A vibrant rural farming community and with jobs right through the supply chain.It is what the CAP was set up to do,rather than most of the sub money going to the biggest landowners.
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
It's not just about carbon sequestration - look wider than that, it's about the monetising of environmental "services" that come from the environment. A rare habitat is an environmental service, of value to humanity, the value of which becomes monetised under the idea of "Natural Capital" (NC is defined as “elements of nature that directly or indirectly produce value to people, including ecosystems, species, freshwater, land, minerals, the air and oceans)about which I have already talked. Thus businesses are willing to lease such a thing to ensure its continued existence, to mitigate their environmental footprint. View attachment 936684

Below is the accounting system used to calculate such things: https://seea.un.org/sites/seea.un.org/files/ca7735en.pdf

Edited to add: You should also read and digest this: https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/9476/Costanza et al Nature 1997 prepublicaton.pdf
such things should be bought not leased...
 

jh.

Member
Location
fife
I assume you have 500 acres?

How about no subs over 327ac, and double for those under that threshold? 🤣
I wish lol

Maybe no subs full stop and we make it work or die. I just used 500 acre as a base as below that a farmer could possibly do with support to have "outside the family" full time wage/wages coming out and keep some folk in jobs .

If big is efficient they shouldn't need subs towards production . Bit like giving Tesco hand outs to let 100 small shops die.
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
Arguably those businesses has developed to operating soundly and productively within the framework government has put around it. We are where we are. Look at most industries from airplanes and car manufacturing, energy production (be that renewable or otherwise) etc. many fall down without some government support somewhere in the scheme of things.

At the launch of the SFP the rhetoric was all about divorcing subsidy payments from your farming activities so that you could all be prepared for those subsidies to go. That’s a long time in business to get prepared for what’s about to happen, and even now you’ve still been given notice. Any business that hasn’t reacted accordingly to those warnings has only got itself to blame.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer

SteveHants

Member
Livestock Farmer
Thanks, that's very interesting. Their method is wide open to challenge but their conclusion is very good. A shame it appears to be ignored by every government and mainstream economist as just too inconvenient.
There are other calculations out there which have come up with arbitrarily different figures, if I recall correctly.
I'm not sure how "ignored" they are if the FAO is endorsing them, and the theory is part of the rationale behind ELMS and other schemes for business.
 

SteveHants

Member
Livestock Farmer

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
At the launch of the SFP the rhetoric was all about divorcing subsidy payments from your farming activities so that you could all be prepared for those subsidies to go. That’s a long time in business to get prepared for what’s about to happen, and even now you’ve still been given notice. Any business that hasn’t reacted accordingly to those warnings has only got itself to blame.
Thats a fair point, though many were convinced subs would never go, indeed many still believe ELMs will directly replace their BPS income :rolleyes:
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
Many of the things require maintenance - this is where farmers are best placed.
Of course, large business could buy the land themselves and install a manager to create the habitats they want.
Have you read the source material?
No. I am not in the business of being a low paid park keeper so a highly polluting business can feel better about themselves and how much good they are doing.
 

Robw54

Member
Location
derbyshire
You can’t claim the retirement pay off then pass the farm to your son. It’s a get out completely payment.


How does this work in reality - the entitlement are only tied to the land at point of claim - does it exclude the land/company or farmer from any future scheme?

Be a hefty tax bill for some as well I would imagine.
 

Tubbylew

Member
Location
Herefordshire
Its not only the hedge removal, I have started to realise whilst we have not removed hedges here in a generation most of us do not managed our hedges very well, and I put myself in that category. We have some shockers. Hedge cutting has always been a necessary evil, we have rather treated our hedges with less respect than they deserve! In general we have 2 types of hedge on this farm, those that have grown up to be a line of mature trees and those that are short and thin and provide little food or shelter this time of year. I am starting to see the error of our ways, the problem is hitting a hedge every year or every other at the same high is the lowest cost of maintenance, good hedge management can be expensive and time consuming excise with insufficient financial incentives for land owners to focus much time on it.
S'funny I was saying the very same to a hedge laying client the other day whilst he was lamenting how poorly farmers treated their hedges, I said nearly exactly what you've written, but I also told him, that back in the day, there was an army of farm labourers managing hedges, they've all gone and expecting every farm to go back to rotational managment won't happen overnight.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 34.6%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.2%

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

  • 1,286
  • 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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