Big changes ahead then

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
You're a farmer- it's not your job to feed the masses or take on a burden the same size as society. Farmers merely do what the market obliges them to do. At the end of the day you could feed every last child in Britain single-handedly but it won't put a shirt on your back.
Without some good will we are all stuffed in my view. It cannot just come down to money. IMO a lot off what’s gone wrong over the last 20 years is down to greed. Those fertiliser plants should have been nationalised. It’s bad enough seeing kids on TV abroad starving but the prospect of farming here for the very highest price we can get while kids go hungry sickens me. If that really is farmers attitude then they shouldn’t be surprised if there land is nationalised.
One lesson from history of the Corn Laws sticks in my mind. Two people were shot and killed by the militia here in Lincolnshire for each daring to take a scoop of grain off a passing barge to feed their families. We are no where near stage but once shortages bite they cause real hardship and are almost impossible to reverse quickly. Politicians meddle at their peril.
 
It's not really a huge problem though, we can just switch to rapemeal, a byproduct from all the OSR being processed. Oh hang on, HMG have massively reduced OSR cropping by banning neonics to appease public opinion. :facepalm:

No problem then, we'll just use palm kernal instead, no problems with that at all...

Will Tofu, Quorn, etc be outlawed as a result, seeing as livestock only get to eat the waste products from human food production? Every cloud.

There are other sources of protein, and plenty of other countries can grow sunflower, OSR, etc. It's not the end of the world.
 

bobk

Member
Location
stafford
Well exactly USA chicken fed on Soya from Illinois. Cargill are on the case already. And excellent for securing trade deals and false accounting with regard to UK greenhouse gas production. Simples.
I see Cargill have stopped glucose production in Manchester .... due to a power outage ... wtf
 
Without some good will we are all stuffed in my view. It cannot just come down to money. IMO a lot off what’s gone wrong over the last 20 years is down to greed. Those fertiliser plants should have been nationalised. It’s bad enough seeing kids on TV abroad starving but the prospect of farming here for the very highest price we can get while kids go hungry sickens me. If that really is farmers attitude then they shouldn’t be surprised if there land is nationalised.
One lesson from history of the Corn Laws sticks in my mind. Two people were shot and killed by the militia here in Lincolnshire for each daring to take a scoop of grain off a passing barge to feed their families. We are no where near stage but once shortages bite they cause real hardship and are almost impossible to reverse quickly. Politicians meddle at their peril.

Why the heck should fertiliser plants be nationalised? You think the government can magically buy gas cheaper than private business? Run the plants at a subsidised loss? We know where that ends up.

More to the point, why should the market-collectively speaking- give a fudge if the price does quadruple? Farmers will use less of it. They will harvest less grass or grain. I'm not being deliberately and obliquely facetious here but we can all see that this is going to lead to a shortage of actual farmgate commodity in the coming months. The supply will reduce and unless demand drops drastically, the price is going to have to go up or folk just won't bother. But it's not like farmers made an absolute killing when fertiliser was cheap, did they? They got their bit of margin and that was that. People here can no doubt remember times when fertiliser and dairy cake was £100/tonne. I personally can remember seeing hipro soya at £220/tonne at the docks and rapemeal was about £130/tonne. I think I can remember buying a fair few tonnes of British sugarbeet at about £118/tonne as well. I don't think any one made any more or any less money at the time mind. The stuff was bought, margin was added and that was that.

And you and I both know that the price of fertiliser, even if fully accounted for and added to the cost of every egg, every litre and every lamb chop sold, would never be noticed by the consumer because it will be a tiny sliver of a fraction of the retail price of the stuff.

The population of this forum have seen grain prices at £60/tonne. They've farmed through BSE, Foot and mouth, that bint talking nonsense about salmonella in eggs- you name it. A rise in fertiliser and other inputs is just one next bump in the road. No matter what happens someone is going to be out there trying to buy your milk, your grain or your turkey. Twas ever thus.
 

deere 6600

Member
Mixed Farmer
Why the heck should fertiliser plants be nationalised? You think the government can magically buy gas cheaper than private business? Run the plants at a subsidised loss? We know where that ends up.

More to the point, why should the market-collectively speaking- give a fudge if the price does quadruple? Farmers will use less of it. They will harvest less grass or grain. I'm not being deliberately and obliquely facetious here but we can all see that this is going to lead to a shortage of actual farmgate commodity in the coming months. The supply will reduce and unless demand drops drastically, the price is going to have to go up or folk just won't bother. But it's not like farmers made an absolute killing when fertiliser was cheap, did they? They got their bit of margin and that was that. People here can no doubt remember times when fertiliser and dairy cake was £100/tonne. I personally can remember seeing hipro soya at £220/tonne at the docks and rapemeal was about £130/tonne. I think I can remember buying a fair few tonnes of British sugarbeet at about £118/tonne as well. I don't think any one made any more or any less money at the time mind. The stuff was bought, margin was added and that was that.

And you and I both know that the price of fertiliser, even if fully accounted for and added to the cost of every egg, every litre and every lamb chop sold, would never be noticed by the consumer because it will be a tiny sliver of a fraction of the retail price of the stuff.

The population of this forum have seen grain prices at £60/tonne. They've farmed through BSE, Foot and mouth, that bint talking nonsense about salmonella in eggs- you name it. A rise in fertiliser and other inputs is just one next bump in the road. No matter what happens someone is going to be out there trying to buy your milk, your grain or your turkey. Twas ever thus.
Less food produced bigger population more demand is it too simple
 

Kevtherev

Member
Location
Welshpool Powys
No it isn't- ruminants can do without it totally without issue, many people do. I doubt soya is even economic to use in beef rations now given the cost of it.

How did your grandfathers rear cows or pig or chicken back in the day before hi pro soya meal was even a thing? I think most contributors to this forum would agree the current food chain is borked beyond belief anyway so should we be too worried about it changing?

Good old fashioned grass feed milk, beef and lamb and scale back the intensity on pig and poultry production would be no bad thing. Probably healthier for those us eating it, too.
They kept less,lived a simpler life without extravagance grew a lot of feed on farm with the only lorries leaving the farm with produce and fat stock/milk/eggs.
Sometimes less is more….
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
The West bans imports of tat from China and emissions problems solved.
If only it were that simple.

Did you see the piece about the EU car plants being close to closing due to lack of magnesium to harden aluminium into allow panels? We responded to China dumping magnesium on the EU market in 2003 by closing the only remaining EU magnesium plant. Now 87% of the world's magnesium comes from China. It's not feasible to just stop buying it, not in the short trem at least.

Lots of other goods are the same now.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 4 2.3%

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

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  • 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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