The A50

delilah

Member
The lorry driver shortage has brought into sharp relief the inefficiencies in the food chain. Lorries belonging to different members of the cartel flying up and down the motorways in opposite directions, hauling identical loaves of bread and pints of milk. HGV’s are 2% of road traffic and emit 22% of road emissions. A radical solution is required.

I have identified a block of land just off the A50 at Uttoxeter, on which a mega distribution centre should be built. One hub from which all of England’s food can be distributed. Lorries reaching 90% of the population of England within 3 hours. No need for 8 companies retailing 90% of the food as we have now. They would just get in each others way, literally and figuratively. Just one business feeding the nation, unhindered by competition, that's what's needed.

To ensure similar efficiencies on the supply side, a series of food processing plants will be built along the length of the A50. A dairy at Stoke to process all of the milk. Cheshire to be home to the autumn calving herd, Shropshire the spring calving. Minimal milk miles; no need for any dairy cows further afield. In the early years there will be some inefficiencies due to the number of individual herds in each county, but over time a logical rationalization will ensure a small handful of mega herds.

And so on. A red meat abattoir at Knutsford. White meat at Foston. A bakery in Markfield. Fruit and veg packhouse at Kegworth. In each instance all of the nations requirements being met from one plant, thus ensuring minimal lorry movements to get the produce to Uttoxeter. As with milk, each sector will quickly rationalize to the point where only a small number of businesses are required to be the primary producers for each plant.

No need, then, for food production in the hinterland. Anything not close enough to the a50 to feed the nation, it can be rewilded.

Yes ?
 

Rob Holmes

Moderator
BASIS
Distribution firm ATL who are just off the A50 near JCB engines have expanded at least 10 times in last 5 years, there is a cheese processing plant at Foston too, was a farmer funded factory Amelca, which got then for unknown reason got shut shutdown, then was run by Wisemans and the Coop IIRC, it currently mothballed I think.
There was/are plans to build something on the land just of the A38/A50 junction at Toyota, but that has gone quiet.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Cracking idea Comrade. Could the government run this organisation, maybe taking the land by compulsory purchase, and instructing the proletariat on what they should do, and how they should do it?

I do hope those farmers from elsewhere don't think about rising up, or the Solent Green project will need to be accelerated.
 

britt

Member
BASE UK Member
"Unhindered by competition", that's called a monopoly, and we all know what they do!
I live in the area between the M1, M6, M42 and M69. It's Known as the golden triangle and the distribution centres going up around here beggars belief, but they are mostly for "consumer" (mostly imported) goods not food.
Markets need competition.
Food processing should be kept more regional, as its production tends to be, but where do you draw the line between economy of scale at the processing plant and distance of transport. The free market needs to decide that.
 

wrenbird

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
HR2
What's going to happen to the people in the areas you want to rewild ?
They will be re-educated at a series of camps to be built on the site of what was Heathrow airport. The first intake of inmates, sorry, students, will be housed in tents recovered from the recent young peoples musical events. These pioneer workers will then achieve fulfilment and enlightenment by building the accommodation for the many others that will follow in their re-educated footsteps. The people of the blighted countryside will be only too happy to leave their family farms to serve our glorious nation in the future utopia that lies within the M25.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
I assume it was a satirical post but it does make an underlying point. Competition and the free market are not working. Environmentally they are a huge part of the problem.

Economists, clever as they are, have so far been unable or unwilling to cost in the impacts of free market economic activity on society, ecology, climate or a number of other areas. Effectively they profit by allowing society and/ or the planet to pick up their "external" costs. This was described brilliantly by Professor DasGupta earlier this year in his landmark report https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review

I used to work for a private consultancy undertaking drainage survey. We were one of a number of such businesses providing the service to the water industry. We regularly found ourselves winning contracts on price and quality which required us to travel long distances to undertake survey in areas close to the offices of other competing contractors. The net effect is lots of vehicles passing each other on the road every day to deliver a service which could have been delivered locally. The ecological and climate cost of that was simply ignored in the contracts.

We were only one small example in a very small field of business.

In "free market" terms this is good because it generates huge GDP growth. In most other ways it's a catastrophe.

The food distribution and retail system is the same, only much bigger.

Btw, there's a lot of arable in North Shropshire so notperhaps it's the best place for the spring calvers......... ;)
 

quattro

Member
Location
scotland
There was no shortage of lorries on the M5 yesterday !
Worlds gone mad ..... one haulage firm I know is hauling apples down to Somerset and then picking up a load of apples in Somerset to bring back up to Hereford !!
I once met a lorry of ours with a load of carrots from down south to come upto aberdeenshire
I swapped trailers with him I had carrots on from Aberdeenshire to Cambridgeshire
I dare say there was a difference but neither of us could see any differance
 

Tomo23

Member
Livestock Farmer
Isn't that where the new uttoxeter livestock market was supposed to be built.

Trouble is the thousands ot staff at JCB moving in and out twice a day and the thousands of visitors to Alton towers everyday through summer.

That section of road can't handle that now let alone with another few hundred lorries a day.

We cart straw on the road between the uttoxeter a50 roundabout and JCB/crakemarsh, believe me, it won't stand much more traffic in that area.
 

Getnthair

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
SW Scotland
And if there are no drivers out there, they could ride ponies. Expressly.
No Indians out there either anymore, all good

I think you will find - particularly if "rewilding" - that the Indians will reappear.

It might be safer to circle the wagons around the M25?


I assume it was a satirical post but it does make an underlying point. Competition and the free market are not working. Environmentally they are a huge part of the problem.

Economists, clever as they are, have so far been unable or unwilling to cost in the impacts of free market economic activity on society, ecology, climate or a number of other areas. Effectively they profit by allowing society and/ or the planet to pick up their "external" costs. This was described brilliantly by Professor DasGupta earlier this year in his landmark report https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review

I used to work for a private consultancy undertaking drainage survey. We were one of a number of such businesses providing the service to the water industry. We regularly found ourselves winning contracts on price and quality which required us to travel long distances to undertake survey in areas close to the offices of other competing contractors. The net effect is lots of vehicles passing each other on the road every day to deliver a service which could have been delivered locally. The ecological and climate cost of that was simply ignored in the contracts.

We were only one small example in a very small field of business.

In "free market" terms this is good because it generates huge GDP growth. In most other ways it's a catastrophe.

The food distribution and retail system is the same, only much bigger.

Btw, there's a lot of arable in North Shropshire so notperhaps it's the best place for the spring calvers......... ;)

The Dasgupta Review is very interesting, thank you.

The economics of "growth" will continue to be destructive until we fully count the carbon/climate costs. We have to hope that these reports are not buried. :unsure:
 

Hjcarter

Member
Hmmmmm...... Last I heard that didn't work out too well in Russia, north Korea etc.....

I'd prefer stringent tax and planning controls on larger organizations and tax breaks for smaller companies to level the playing field up with extra incentives for showing local content.

E.g. £5 for Kenyan beans from a supermarket but £1 for the same weight of local runners from a neighborhood grocer. That would help spread the revenue more evenly throughout the economy, cut down on food miles and even out employment.

... although that's easy to say when you've had a bit of 6% Perry! :)
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
I once met a lorry of ours with a load of carrots from down south to come upto aberdeenshire
I swapped trailers with him I had carrots on from Aberdeenshire to Cambridgeshire
I dare say there was a difference but neither of us could see any differance
I bet the only difference was they were sold by different people to different buyers.
Competition can be good for sellers - although they don't always get a better price - but it does make the transport side a bit more complicated.
 

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