Super/Mega Farms

[oldoaktree]

Has the age of the Mega farm started every where?
In County Durham this seams like an unlikely thing to be happening but I feel it is slowly but surely happening as the same few farmers/ business men take on for sale/rented land that become available.
Is it similar elsewhere in the UK .

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Before everyone gets carried away farms have been getting bigger for all my lifetime and others before .60 years ago there was 190000 milk producers in England and Wales now there are 9000 and falling .it's just more noticeable now .

 

[Sonoftheheir]

Certainly here in my little world they have. Several long established family farms around the area have sold up these past couple of years. With their land either being rented out to the big boys or the big boys buying it. Seems quite a few men in their early 60's without their children interested in farming taking early retirement.

 

[joe soapy]

It happened in the mid 1800's, the Bedford estate amalgamated farms into 600 acre blocks with the very latest design buildings

 

[Daniel]

Certainly here in my little world they have. Several long established family farms around the area have sold up these past couple of years. With their land either being rented out to the big boys or the big boys buying it. Seems quite a few men in their early 60's without their children interested in farming taking early retirement.

Be nice to find a way of getting hold of some of it?!

 

[Sonoftheheir]

Be nice to find a way of getting hold of some of it?!

Must be a way? even if some local young( ) farmers got together somehow?

 

[Flat 10]

Saw 2 agrifacs in adjacent fields today on the way to prickwillow and dormann and JD trailed have been sailing past mine today

 

[Daniel]

Saw 2 agrifacs in adjacent fields today on the way to prickwillow and dormann and JD trailed have been sailing past mine today

Yeah they're the ones with the amazing nozzles that can spray in a hurricane.

 

[Daniel]

Must be a way? even if some local young( ) farmers got together somehow?

Let me know when you've worked it out!

 

[joe soapy]

Yeah they're the ones with the amazing nozzles that can spray in a hurricane.

They was trialing those near Stonehenge a few years back, could hardly stand in the wind but sprayer kept on going.
Seen another one by the canal near langogollen ??, good job we was in a boat, he had a dog following him around checking the coverage

 

[oldoaktree]

It happened in the mid 1800's, the Bedford estate amalgamated farms into 600 acre blocks with the very latest design buildings

Nowadays they have land in 3 county's or more .

 

[joe soapy]

Nowadays they have land in 3 county's or more .

Mostly sold off here. Can easily tell a duke built house, they all have boarded roofs. Think they had a 24 man sawpit in the woods.
The main value for oak trees was for the bark for ships.
fascinating history of the family online

 

[Grain Buyer]

bark was for leather tanning.

 

[joe soapy]

bark was for leather tanning.

think in the dockyard was for calking, they used massive amounts

 

[glasshouse]

They are not really farms,
They are pharms, totally dependent on chems with little real farming going on

 

[ajd132]

Why is there so much pessimism around large scale farming? Because small farmers can't keep up and sell up? Isn't this all human nature?

 

[penntor]

It happened in the mid 1800's, the Bedford estate amalgamated farms into 600 acre blocks with the very latest design buildings

Yes, all paid for from mining dues, they were in financial trouble before the likes of Devon Great Consols etc.

 

[joe soapy]

Yes, all paid for from mining dues, they were in financial trouble before the likes of Devon Great Consols etc.

The farm estate was losing money, by putting the farms into larger economic units it became possible for the tenants to pay worthwhile rents and keep the landlord
in the hedonistic style he craved, it also provided stable employment locally

 

[glasshouse]

The farm estate was losing money, by putting the farms into larger economic units it became possible for the tenants to pay worthwhile rents and keep the landlord
in the hedonistic style he craved, it also provided stable employment locally

Fewer tenants, fewer workers= more cash for landlord.
true in 1800, truer today.

 

[glasshouse]

Its all in here!