Another few words for Government Ag policymakers!

DeeGee

Member
Location
North East Wales
Eisenhower said this 1956,
“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield”.
(2022 substitute pencil with computer keyboard!!!!!)
To emphasise those wise words of one great statesman: heed another, Winston Churchill who also said, during the war when German U boats were threatening to starve us into submission, ‘We must never, ever, let ourselves be in this position again!’

But none of today’s politicians can remember the days of food rationing: thus they have no respect for the importance of our agricultural industry, because they have never known food shortage.

To them, and to modern society, food always has been and always will be cheap and plentiful, and if our farmers can’t produce it cheaply enough we can easily just import it..........
 

Pilatus

Member
Location
cotswolds
To emphasise those wise words of one great statesman: heed another, Winston Churchill who also said, during the war when German U boats were threatening to starve us into submission, ‘We must never, ever, let ourselves be in this position again!’

But none of today’s politicians can remember the days of food rationing: thus they have no respect for the importance of our agricultural industry, because they have never known food shortage.

To them, and to modern society, food always has been and always will be cheap and plentiful, and if our farmers can’t produce it cheaply enough we can easily just import it..........
As so many politicians and the rest of us have never known food , water and energy to be really short ,my theory is that until it is really short , politicians and the general publics attitudes will not change. They will only change when it’s too late and the sh!t hits the fan :banghead:
 

Yale

Member
Livestock Farmer
History is doomed to repeat itself. People have memories but they die and new people don’t inherit their memories. And so we go on. Nothing is new under the sun.
Apart from it would seem the Chinese who have a historical track record for long term planning.

Maybe even they will struggle with their populations new standards of living and expectations.
 

Pilatus

Member
Location
cotswolds
History is doomed to repeat itself. People have memories but they die and new people don’t inherit their memories. And so we go on. Nothing is new under the sun.
I agree.
It is government ag policy that partly dictates whether they want farmers to grow flowers, trees OR FOOD .
The problem is the general public want both which is not sustainable with such a small land base in the UK, others may beg to differ.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
“Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.”

- Antoine De Saint-Exupéry.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
“Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: Love. They must do it for love. Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide.”

- Wendell Berry.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
“We are all complicit, and farmer-bashing is not going to help. We need farmers, more than any other profession. If lawyers, politicians, bankers, university academics or salesmen were to somehow disappear tomorrow, I think the world would muddle through pretty well. Some things might even get better. But if farmers were to vanish, most of us would be dead within a year.”

- Dave Goulson.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Winston Churchill is considered by many to be ‘the greatest Briton’. He is remembered as many things: statesman, war-leader, author, wit and painter. But he was also a farmer on a 350 acre farm at Chartwell in Kent. He had a particular love of his pedigree herd of belted Galloways (he called them ‘my belties’). He also kept pigs which won prizes at local shows. He famously remarked ‘I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals’

He was guest of honour at the 1953 NFU Annual dinner where he uttered the memorable line ‘Thirty million people living on an island where we produce enough food for fifteen million is a spectacle of majesty and insecurity this country can ill afford’

He also quipped, as he peered over his halfmoon spectacles at the ranks of farmers in their dinner jackets ‘I see you are in your normal working clothes’.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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    Votes: 78 43.1%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.8%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.6%
  • 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

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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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