Spencer
Member
- Location
- North West
Op wasnt taking mid summer was he, take a photo today for relevance?
Sad looking farms
- Thread starter paul&mandy
- Start date
- Location
- Cirencester
Yes I completely agree with you, hopefully they will pay me to plough it all up again too!! I also see other farms who have done nothing, no SFI, no Stewardship etc etc and are still just trying to carry on. I would wager some of these will not be in business within a few years time. No money for investment, only just enough to keep the business going with a dwindling SFP, once that stops, they'll stop.The government don’t want grass flowers bird seed etc, what they do want is votes & power & they have convinced themselves that for now there are more votes to be had in appearing to be green rather than feeding our exploding population, when food becomes scarce & more expensive they will cynically go in exactly the opposite direction.
Money from Stewardship here will be invested in doing up buildings etc with a view to rent out if needed and if farming becomes profitable again with no RT or GFC then I may grow crops again but I want to be in that position where I am not forced to grow crops. I think anyone who has even slightly diversified will understand.
It was reported in the papers last week that a couple in the East Midlands had received a letter from their council, which stated that their house was going to be
purchased by the Council ,and used to house immigrants. The Council then stated that a mistake had been made and apologised to the house owners.
To me, the fact that a letter like this had been sent shows that our "Lord and Masters" consider that other people's properties/land is really theirs, and they
can do as they"see fit and proper".
i said in an early post it’s obviously not so pretty today BUT it is achieving its aim a feeding a lot of birds / providing habitat for all sorts of wildlife
it will be pretty again through summer, some is annual so will be redrilled in spring and some 2 year mixes will be topped to return seed and they should great for another year
driving about the country recently there are plenty of cash crops not looking very pretty right now, waterlogged, zero wildlife habit of feeding, drains running brown, erosion, run off and leaching all polluting and slitting up watercourses …………. is that “pretty” or worth tax payers cash ? and more importantly will it make the farmer a living this year ?
There is no climate commitment in reality just a rearranging the deck chairs to pretend to be doing something, polluters now simply pretend to offset their pollution by using others existing nature, imports are somehow used to offset home production pollution free.
Housing etc is going up everywhere to house people that at one time did not contribute to pollution in their own country yet some how this is never counted.
Be honest it’s in reality total bullish!t & we all know that it will make no difference to the planet what ever.
- Location
- Ceredigion
We already have our version of SF1 that's been running for a few years
It's called growing for the Environment, uptake was small.
Farms around here are small and tightly stocked ,living off a shoe string , a lot of them can't just give up their headlands to grow flowering weeds , and who would pay for all the temporary fencing to keep stock off it , there are thousands of Welsh lambs grazing here that will go back soon so slurry can go on for 4 cuts of silage and grazing , I'm certainly not fencing headlands off , on a 4 acre field I would have nothing left
We don't all farm 100 acre fields you know
there are some serous commitments made that will cost big if not hit
no one should “give up” anything
but if better paying alternatives are an OPTION then that’s good news and that’s what we have in England under sfi
So we import everything & cause zero pollution, what a load of crap. Cost big to whom, the Chinese etc.
Clive of course you are right great britian has all ways imported a lot of its food, going back hundreds of years, i think there was a repeal of the corn laws, re, end of the napoleonic wars, (1815), the very big difference between say before WW2 and now, is one the loss and continued loss of productive farm land, that could grow food, with lost over 2million acres and counting since the end of WW2, and two the UKs population growth, its currantly more than 12 million more and growing fast?
- Location
- Cirencester
How many of those 2 million acres you state are golf courses and pony paddocks?? Think you'd be surprised. Maybe if they stopped the "boats" population growth would possibly slow but then I'm aware I shouldn't say such things.
- Location
- NSW, Newstralya
the UK ( previously Great Britain ) has been importing food now for at least 300 years or more
that was one of the main drivers of colonial expansion wasn’t it ?
refrigeration was invented to allow importation of meat from the southern hemisphere. . .
Love the way large arable farms & estates milking the system try to pretend they are doing it to save the planet rather than feather their own nests, you can’t blame them really if the government decides to bung them a sweetener, what annoys me is that it rewards those that have cashed in by destroying the countryside at the expense of those that have not, what happened to that phrase “the polluter pays” we used to hear so much about.
I suggest you trouser your ill gotten gains, stop pretending it’s for any other reason than financial gain & let the rest of us get on with our farming!
I suggest you trouser your ill gotten gains, stop pretending it’s for any other reason than financial gain & let the rest of us get on with our farming!
serf
Member
- Location
- warwickshire
I don't get the fact it's described as " for the public good" when In fact that pretty piece of greenery will only be seen by you and your staff and that's it also the public wouldn't even know it was there in the first place and won't see a jot of personal benefit to any of them
Seems pie in the sky fairytales to me ....
Every reason to fight back then. Why should we sit back and just take it. I think slow uptake on SFI actually did us some good as they had to come up with more incentives, trouble with our Industry is we sell ourselves out to easily
I don't get the fact it's described as " for the public good" when In fact that pretty piece of greenery will only be seen by you and your staff and that's it also the public wouldn't even know it was there in the first place and won't see a jot of personal benefit to any of them
Seems pie in the sky fairytales to me ....
we farm around a village and are covered in footpaths - plenty will see it
but that’s just a part of the “public good” more wildlife, carbon sequestration, reduction of synthetic nutrition and pesticides in water, less soil erosion/ silting. - all these are good and in many case save the tax payer cash further down the chain fixing these issues. - tat is public good
ie - you can pay a water co to have a a residue removed fro your water or remove slit from a river etc OR you can pay farmers to reduce the uses at source
- Location
- Ceredigion
How many of your smaller livestock farms will benefit from it
But they may indeed sell half their stock
A close friend in Kent told me yesterday that the only farms sighning up are those on poorer land , the big yield wheat growers were not
too late - commitments were made, it will cost the tax payer if they are not met
- Location
- Co antrim
Hats off to the 1s that have done this wilding nonsence, meanwhile here in ni most progressive farms are chasing litres and cow numbers, think il stick to that and leave growing docks and nettles to the rest of yous professional farmers