Dispatches - Red Tractor

[Chris F]

Lot of comments on the thread. Has anyone actually followed up with dispatches?

 

[Jackov Altraids]

4 separate points there,
Own nothing
Rent everything
Be happy
Make big corporations even richer

Not in list order but
I very much doubt 3 of the above will result in the fourth

I'm sure you must mean that 3 of the points won't make the 3rd point the result?

Although they won't admit it, the big corporations know that consumerism is not sustainable.
To this end, they are moving their business models to supply 'services' rather than simply making more 'stuff'.
It is much more profitable to supply goods on a hire basis and control the market.
Very few buy new cars or houses out-right. Most people don't even own music, games or videos these days but just pay to 'stream' them.
This is why so many want to invest in fake meat and proteins, it would become a licence to print money if it become widely adopted. You can't patent and control beef and chicken etc.
Reducing consumerism is an important thing to do but transferring control of everything we do and use to big business is very worrying.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Hi, thanks for reply. Sympathise with your situation. A struggle.

Am not totally sure I agree that the general public do not care about farming. I live in a village in south Lincolnshire surrounded by arable farmland. I generally socialise with non farming folk - as that is who lives in the surrounding villages - and they all express an interest in what is happening in the fields once they know what I do for a living.

As to my family well my generation, so me and my cousins, mostly older, are all in our 60s. Our parents being farmworkers encouraged education and getting away from working on the land as labourers as they had done. And so my cousins are either retired teachers, bank clerks, servicemen or tradesmen - my brother is a welder by trade. Only I ended up anyway involved in Agriculture, and then as a 'hanger on'. And my family experience I can think of is mirrored by other similar families who accompanied me at primary school in the 1960's in my original Fenland village.

As ever, interesting times. H.

And the villages around me seem thriving with expensive houses, a thriving pub just opposite our house and a full school with waiting list. That despite not a farmworker in the village. And so that is rural life in today's South Lincolnshire.

No need for sympathy, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think in the 1800s (not that long ago anyway), expenditure on food was 90% of income. Now it's 8%. That's the cause of the problem.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

No I have drafed something but not sent yet-waiting for editing by our more learned colleagues on here.

* drafted

 

[Grass And Grain]

Not quite sure what to make of the dispatched programme. Would have been a non programme if they'd have said everything was OK. So the find some sort of vegan ex EA person who surprisingly says chicken farming is bad.

I don't really think you can pin anything on RT. They got bad press, but things looked reasonably good. Only comment I've got about RT is that it is hailed as this oh so marvelous scheme, but it can only audit for 1 day of the year. RT can't be there 365 days. Not sure how you improve that for day to day issues if for example a staff member isn't doing there job correctly. Some things can be improved at RT - some things can be audited in real time, that would help, but would only help for some aspects.

RT probably has increased standards on farm, but we all know it's also quite hopeless at assuring a lot of things.