how long before we're all organic?

[Treg]

Nope, no loans involved in the Ag business here.

It will be politicians who throw us "under the bus" by holding us to higher standards and costs, all the while encouraging the cheapest sh!t 'mystery meat' and crops sprayed with residues of every banned agchem from the rest of the world, to undercut UK producers at every opportunity.
As per the 'horse meat' scandal, when it comes to welfare standards and quality 99% of the population will turn a blind eye, and few will care about feeding school kids 3 month old chlorinated chicken and meat with residues of 'angel dust', as long as it's cheap, as long as "the shareholders approve", and the education departments save enough to pay for the councillors pay rise.

And don't try and pull the 'organic' BS Graham. Of all the organic farmers I know, the ones actually making a go of it are the ones who are 'sub hunting' for the conversion grants before getting out, or staying in and fiddling the fertiliser balance sheet to hide the extra loads of bought in hen pen.
The rest of them with the Soil Associations wool pulled over their eyes, frankly, lets not go there.

I was going to stay out of this argument until you wrote that crap.
I've been Organic for 10years+ & can see the benefits it's brought to the farm -
Better soils
Better Profits
Bats
Healthier stock
Healthier Me
Positives for UK ag - I've shown several vegans around & they can see not all livestock farming is as they're being shown .

There are a number of farmers on this forum who seem to be trying their hardest to damage UK ag (not you @PSQ but you've made me angry with your comments ), they even make me feel like going vegan , certainly put off Scottish beef with your out door feeding pens or slatted sheds and dairy what the @%$# is wrong with you lot nobody wants factory farming but there's a big bunch of you who seem to be chasing it, I won't be buying it thanks.
And you arable lot spray this spray that, your killing the insects, your killing the soil & your killing OUR PLANET.

There is a small percentage of really good farmers on here ( thank you for your comments & I learn alot from you guys) I would list afew but wouldn't want to leave a good one out
The rest of you get off your backsides & do something constructive for UK ag

 

[warksfarmer]

New head of Natural England and the man who will provide most subsidy and direction to farmers post BPS and post-Brexit is a Friends-of-the-Earth and WWF fanatic.
He and the Urbanites will only pay for picture-postcard farming with soundbites such as 'organic'.
surely cant be long before subsidy only directed to non-chemical farms?

I’ve been saying this for a long while but everybody says I’m mad.

Am I?

It’s coming and fast so all aboard the train or get out!

 

[warksfarmer]

I was going to stay out of this argument until you wrote that crap.
I've been Organic for 10years+ & can see the benefits it's brought to the farm -
Better soils
Better Profits
Bats
Healthier stock
Healthier Me
Positives for UK ag - I've shown several vegans around & they can see not all livestock farming is as they're being shown .

There are a number of farmers on this forum who seem to be trying their hardest to damage UK ag (not you @PSQ but you've mad me angry with your comments ), they even make me feel like going vegan , certainly put off Scottish beef with your out door feeding pens or slatted sheds and dairy what the @%$# is wrong with you lot nobody wants factory farming but there's a big bunch of you who seem to be chasing it, I won't be buying it thanks.
And you arable lot spray this spray that, your killing the insects, your killing the soil & your killing OUR PLANET.

There is a small percentage of really good farmers on here ( thank you for your comments & I learn alot from you guys) I would list afew but wouldn't want to leave a good one out
The rest of you get off your backsides & do something constructive for UK ag

Very well put and I completely agree.

Don’t forget the big agronomy companies also need to be held accountable as its them who have conned their ‘loyal’ customers into be input addicts.

 

[ollie989898]

I don't see what there is to complain about.

If the powers that be ban all fertiliser and chemicals, the supply of product will be curtailed, you will produce less but also spend less and you will in all likelihood make as much money anyway. Are we that wedded to the idea that we need to be handing thousands to the makers of fertilisers and agrochemicals?

 

[Neddy flanders]

I’ve been saying this for a long while but everybody says I’m mad.

Am I?

It’s coming and fast so all aboard the train or get out!

yes I heard you. No I don't think you're mad.

 

[DrWazzock]

We get brainwashed in to chemical usage.

We need herbicides for OSR, but wait a minute, I grow stubble turnips and never need herbicide on those. They grow away faster and smother the weeds maybe because they haven't been knobbled by .........a herbicide.

We cant survive without neonic seed dressings on the sugar beet, but I suddenly realised today I have been growing fodder beet without the neonics coating for years with respectable yields but nobody told me there would be a problem so there wasn't one.

Then there are growth regulators. Let's develop a tall weak strawed variety then chuck a load of N at it, then shorten it with a growth regulator. WTF?

Makes you wonder.

 

[Scribus]

We get brainwashed in to chemical usage.

We need herbicides for OSR, but wait a minute, I grow stubble turnips and never need herbicide on those. They grow away faster and smother the weeds maybe because they haven't been knobbled by .........a herbicide.

We cant survive without neonic seed dressings on the sugar beet, but I suddenly realised today I have been growing fodder beet without the neonics coating for years with respectable yields but nobody told me there would be a problem so there wasn't one.

Then there are growth regulators. Let's develop a tall weak strawed variety then chuck a load of N at it, then shorten it with a growth regulator. WTF?

Makes you wonder.

Worth remembering that the modern agrochemical industry sourced its original brews from the leftovers of the oil industry. They literally went round to the refineries and asked what sort of nasties remained at the end of the processing that might be used as soil fumigants.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

It's also perhaps hardly news that the big corporations have been in your gov'ts' ear for decades helping to fuel these beliefs:

*Specialisation is the way forward
*More yield is the way forward
*Public health is the problem of the public health service, nothing to do with food

It's cunningly moulded the situation to the point that few can now afford to cut back - you can see the desperation in many of the comments on here that yield is primary, all other factors seem secondary to yield.

Call me old fashioned, but if you "aren't getting paid enough" for what you produce, why produce so much?

 

[Beowulf]

It's also perhaps hardly news that the big corporations have been in your gov'ts' ear for decades helping to fuel these beliefs:

*Specialisation is the way forward
*More yield is the way forward
*Public health is the problem of the public health service, nothing to do with food

It's cunningly moulded the situation to the point that few can now afford to cut back - you can see the desperation in many of the comments on here that yield is primary, all other factors seem secondary to yield.

Call me old fashioned, but if you "aren't getting paid enough" for what you produce, why produce so much?

Please don't talk sense on here, the natives get very annoyed about such witchcraft.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Please don't talk sense on here, the natives get very annoyed about such witchcraft.

Maybe if they were slightly more dispassionate it would help them see.

Unfortunately everything is "easy for me to say" but that's because the first lessons in life are how to survive, and how to use a language to communicate.
The crucial lesson oft missed is the need to be conservative, rather than running things at the redline - there is a limit, and you don't want to be at it unless the situation demands - and peacetime is not the time IMO

 

[Beowulf]

Maybe if they were slightly more dispassionate it would help them see.

This is the bit most of them struggle with.

Too many are hamstrung by what Father did, and Grandfather before him. They cannot possibly be seen to be doing anything different to their predecessors, because that would automatically be wrong. Father and Grandfather did it that way for years, so I'll carry on regardless and hope blindly for the best.

Fundamentally it's the difference between running a business and participating in a hobby, but any suggestions of such bring the masses to the altercation with their flaming torches and sharpened pitchforks.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

This is the bit most of them struggle with.

Too many are hamstrung by what Father did, and Grandfather before him. They cannot possibly be seen to be doing anything different to their predecessors, because that would automatically be wrong. Father and Grandfather did it that way for years, so I'll carry on regardless and hope blindly for the best.

Fundamentally it's the difference between running a business and participating in a hobby, but any suggestions of such bring the masses to the altercation with their flaming torches and sharpened pitchforks.

You're not suggesting that decisions are being made using archaic information, surely?

I hope you have plenty of corks for all the pitchforks coming your way!!

It's unnerving for me, to see how this prejudice has brought such destruction to UK and especially the Ag sectors, it's a real wake-up as to what could possibly go wrong, just as those horrific F&M BSE years scared the bejeemers out of me

It helps me focus on the present information that I can obtain, if I listened to my old man I wouldn't have a sheep on the place.
We are emancipated adults, not children...

 

[unlacedgecko]

You're not suggesting that decisions are being made using archaic information, surely?

I hope you have plenty of corks for all the pitchforks coming your way!!

It's unnerving for me, to see how this prejudice has brought such destruction to UK and especially the Ag sectors, it's a real wake-up as to what could possibly go wrong, just as those horrific F&M BSE years scared the bejeemers out of me

It helps me focus on the present information that I can obtain, if I listened to my old man I wouldn't have a sheep on the place.
We are emancipated adults, not children...

UK seems to want a population of grown babies who sit about sucking their thumbs till an adult in a hi vis vest comes to give directions.

 

[FonterraFarmer]

Not frozen meat.
Salted maybe

No , frozen actually!!!

 

[Global ovine]

Not frozen meat.
Salted maybe

Sailing ship "Dunedin" in 1882 left Port Chalmers for the UK with a load of frozen lamb. The freezer was driven by coal power. See....

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/first-shipment-of-frozen-meat-leaves-nz

This technology breakthrough was the catalyst for large scale pastoral farming in NZ. From that time until the 1960s, all meat processors/exporters were UK based companies.

 

[FonterraFarmer]

Please don't talk sense on here, the natives get very annoyed about such witchcraft.

Bro , no such thing as "witchcraft"down here, that's a northern hemisphere phenomenon, we have "I did it my way, and I don't give a feck what you think" attitude here.

 

[FonterraFarmer]

Sailing ship "Dunedin" in 1882 left Port Chalmers for the UK with a load of frozen lamb. The freezer was driven by coal power. See....

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/first-shipment-of-frozen-meat-leaves-nz

This technology breakthrough was the catalyst for large scale pastoral farming in NZ. From that time until the 1960s, all meat processors/exporters were UK based companies.

Not beyond the realms of possibility in the future for sail power and for the refrieration unit to be powered by renewable energy.

 

[glasshouse]

Sailing ship "Dunedin" in 1882 left Port Chalmers for the UK with a load of frozen lamb. The freezer was driven by coal power. See....

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/first-shipment-of-frozen-meat-leaves-nz

This technology breakthrough was the catalyst for large scale pastoral farming in NZ. From that time until the 1960s, all meat processors/exporters were UK based companies.

The first shipment was brought in by john swan and sons, who were our local auctioneers.
They should have been blackballed.
On the other hand there was a terrible outbreak of sheep "rot" about then so maybe there was a shortage
I knew it was 1882 and assumed it would be a steamship

 

[glasshouse]

You're not suggesting that decisions are being made using archaic information, surely?

I hope you have plenty of corks for all the pitchforks coming your way!!

It's unnerving for me, to see how this prejudice has brought such destruction to UK and especially the Ag sectors, it's a real wake-up as to what could possibly go wrong, just as those horrific F&M BSE years scared the bejeemers out of me

It helps me focus on the present information that I can obtain, if I listened to my old man I wouldn't have a sheep on the place.
We are emancipated adults, not children...

You two are typical of the know all hobby farmer types who pop up over here regularly, spouting off about how you are right and everyone else is wrong, and how you will make money by doing things a "new" way.
One by one they disappear slowly as their knowledge increases to encompass all the problems they werent aware of when they were spouting off, and their super low costs seem to have increased

 

[DRC]

The break effect of rape is not due to leftover bag N. It is very efficient at turning applied N into biomass and it is the high amount of this in the soil that gives a following wheat such a boost.

Rape haulm always used to get chopped back in , but now it often gets baled around here for bedding. This must have an effect on it being a good breakcrop. I stopped growing it years ago , so likewise, hardly use a slug pellet .