What Will Be The Turning Point?

[roscoe erf]

Farming still strong around here , must be more if an arable isue

but its changed less farms and less farming it

 

[teslacoils]

I think ultimately it comes down to what you actually enjoy doing, as long as it’s wiping it’s face financially and keeping you in groceries.
Some people like driving a telephone and it’s the only farming implement they possess. Some I’m sure make more money than I do and get a buzz from managing contractors and resources efficiently. In some ways it’s a canny way forward.
But here we are. My brother likes ploughing. So that’s it now, he ploughs it all in the autumn then goes off to his 6 months winter job. Simple system. We are not faffing with cover crops or running direct drills in concrete that can turn to lard over night. Myself, I’ll look after the crops, harvest some beet, maybe refurb another tractor. I could run the place from a telephone. There are plenty of people falling over themselves to do it, cutting one another’s throats. But I personally enjoy doing the work myself.
I’m not convinced there is real money in leisure either. The hotel and restaurant trade has historically been least return of any sector and I think that feeds through the leisure sector generally. It only looks rosy as a farm diversification until the grant runs out. Then it looks like hard work for menial jobs and low pay.
Farming is alright. I have tried a “proper job”. It got incredibly tiresome.
I think really the biggest loss we face as a country with the demise of small working farms is the loss of a balanced satisfying way of life. And we will only realise what we have lost when we have lost it. So I’m carrying on but yes I have surrendered my grain storage to the coop as I can only do so much at times of peak workload and my store just won’t meet modem standards.

Unsure. I'm not overly happy with the idea of say £3m of asset merely wiping it's face.

But if I'm being honest, I doubt there is more work on a small arable farm than can be done in the 28 days holiday of a *real* job.

 

[wrenbird]

I decided a long time ago that you are being deliberately obtuse on this issue. You are plenty intelligent enough to understand that the issue of market share can be addressed without the public having to change their habits in any way.

The bigger point, my answer to the question asked in the OP, is that we are where we are precisely because of the choices made by the generation of farmers doing all the whingeing. No-one put a gun to your heads and made you sell all the redundant buildings for housing. You could have turned them into employment creating work spaces for locals, or even, heaven forbid, rented a building and some ground to a young farmer and mentored them.

You have all created the industry we have today, by allowing your national bodies to be complicit in handing the industry over to corporate control. Stop bellyaching.

The change in consumer buying habits was not driven from the farmer up, it came from the rise of the supermarket down, farmers, on the whole, did not chose to sell to the supermarkets, changes in wider society meant that they were the only buyers.
Years ago I would lamb my ewes early, around Christmas,New Year, and have lambs ready to sell at the traditional Easter sales. There would be at least seven or eight local family butchers, mostly one man,one shop outfits, in Hereford market on a Monday morning, as well as buyers for larger firms, all competing to buy. They were all elderly gentlemen then,as were most of their customers, none of these businesses exist now, they didn't stop trading because I stopped selling to them, a lot went after the shiny new Tesco was built in the middle of Hereford.
There was no point in me producing lamb for an Easter trade that was no longer there, so I had to change what I produced, as did many others, the market changed and we had to respond, not the other way about.

 

[roscoe erf]

The change in consumer buying habits was not driven from the farmer up, it came from the rise of the supermarket down, farmers, on the whole, did not chose to sell to the supermarkets, changes in wider society meant that they were the only buyers.
Years ago I would lamb my ewes early, around Christmas,New Year, and have lambs ready to sell at the traditional Easter sales. There would be at least seven or eight local family butchers, mostly one man,one shop outfits, in Hereford market on a Monday morning, as well as buyers for larger firms, all competing to buy. They were all elderly gentlemen then,as were most of their customers, none of these businesses exist now, they didn't stop trading because I stopped selling to them, a lot went after the shiny new Tesco was built in the middle of Hereford.
There was no point in me producing lamb for an Easter trade that was no longer there, so I had to change what I produced, as did many others, the market changed and we had to respond, not the other way about.

bloody right we used to send our veg to the London markets picked up by many different buyers not one of those markets is left and it wasn't us farmers who closed them

 

[hoff135]

Up here in the hills of the north I’m afraid that rewilding is an unstoppable force. Report in the paper yesterday that a local estate has been sold. 3000 acres of heather moor for £7.5 million bought by Sta ndard Life. I can only imagine that this will be to facilitate carbon trading of some description.

Yeah all a sham, just so these companies can say they saved the planet.

Also crofts in the highlands have become the target of rich lifestyle buyers from the South. 20 acres on the west coast with a ruined croft house getting hundreds of enquiries from people looking for a Highland retreat. Heard one place the potential buyer flew in by helicopter to look at it.

 

[sheepwise]

Every spare acre still fully utilised in this area too. Can't think of any farms falling into a state of disrepair or rewilding.

Same here don’t know of any unformed land as plenty looking for it. Whole farms being bought for blanket forestry though at prices uneconomical to farm.

 

[bluebell]

i have lived in south essex nearly all my life, over 50 years? the same round here, growing up in my village most people were either involved in agriculture or had been ? the village had a social mix or dare i say working class people who either worked on the land or in factories in basildon, they went then by bike or if lucky a motorbike? to the more wealthy sorts who either owned small businesses or commuted to london? Its been changing round here since then, all the working class have now gone, soldup, replaced by young proffessionals with loads of money? to buy old properties knock them down to build bigger and bigger mansions? As for farming, what little of it thats left is farmed by a couple of large multifarm type operations? i could take round my area thats getting more and more built up? yet show you a few hundred acres of land that was farmed up to 20 odd years ago, and has now been left to go derelict? Nature soon takes over?

 

[bluebell]

If there ever happens to be a world crisis like ww2 when the UK had to turn to agriculture and food production as a priority? no way now could the food be grown produced, even with the latest nohow and advances in crop yields production etc ? Reason very simple, to much land has been lost to development and is being lost every year, plus a rapidly rising population? Now you dont need to be very smart to work that out ?

 

[Al R]

I decided a long time ago that you are being deliberately obtuse on this issue. You are plenty intelligent enough to understand that the issue of market share can be addressed without the public having to change their habits in any way.

The bigger point, my answer to the question asked in the OP, is that we are where we are precisely because of the choices made by the generation of farmers doing all the whingeing. No-one put a gun to your heads and made you sell all the redundant buildings for housing. You could have turned them into employment creating work spaces for locals, or even, heaven forbid, rented a building and some ground to a young farmer and mentored them.

You have all created the industry we have today, by allowing your national bodies to be complicit in handing the industry over to corporate control. Stop bellyaching.

When farms of 50 acre and under of not very productive ground plus the buildings are going for circa £1.5m and being turned into holiday let’s and caravan sites bought with money that has never seen farming the rest of us don’t have a chance. I know of a few in my area that have gone like that in the last few years. Then when London money is buying wet moorland for £25,000/acre just to rewild it and to attract wildlife species that arn’t in that area yet half a mile down the road on a “productive” farm we have plenty of those target species that they are spending mass amounts of money at to try and attract yet the wildlife may never favour those areas…

 

[Al R]

4 small farms that I farm the land on currently have 14 holiday cottages, I’ve met the owner of 1 of those farms.

 

[bluebell]

Its quite sad and rather depressing reading the comments on this thread, but its the reality that UK agriculture is? The turning point has gone? farming and food production has not been important to the uk since the 1970s? To try to make some form of farming as your career income and not a hobby has got harder and harder, the lack of profit plus the increased rules and regulations have driven out alot of the small farming businesses.

 

[Al R]

Its quite sad and rather depressing reading the comments on this thread, but its the reality that UK agriculture is? The turning point has gone? farming and food production has not been important to the uk since the 1970s? To try to make some form of farming as your career income and not a hobby has got harder and harder, the lack of profit plus the increased rules and regulations have driven out alot of the small farming businesses.

Around here lack of succession has been the main driver, no children or no children that wanted to farm and then sell the farms as soon as parents have gone

 

[DrWazzock]

When farms of 50 acre and under of not very productive ground plus the buildings are going for circa £1.5m and being turned into holiday let’s and caravan sites bought with money that has never seen farming the rest of us don’t have a chance. I know of a few in my area that have gone like that in the last few years. Then when London money is buying wet moorland for £25,000/acre just to rewild it and to attract wildlife species that arn’t in that area yet half a mile down the road on a “productive” farm we have plenty of those target species that they are spending mass amounts of money at to try and attract yet the wildlife may never favour those areas…

I find wildlife likes a decent feed. They are drawn to sheep troughs and crops. Not much lives on poor grass and bracken. I think that without our beet and other crops next to the woods there would less wildlife. The biggest threat to wildlife is dog walkers.

 

[wrenbird]

Around here lack of succession has been the main driver, no children or no children that wanted to farm and then sell the farms as soon as parents have gone

The three farms I used to work part-time on 25-30 years ago all ceased to exist a long time ago for this very reason, they are far from being the only ones unfortunately.

 

[Al R]

I find wildlife likes a decent feed. They are drawn to sheep troughs and crops. Not much lives on poor grass and bracken. I think that without our beet and other crops next to the woods there would less wildlife. The biggest threat to wildlife is dog walkers.

Wildlife and wilderness, where nature groups have short cutted fencing and left areas go long and wild, after 5 years nothing can live there, nothing grows except rank grass, brambles and gorse which feeds very little.

 

[JP1]

If there ever happens to be a world crisis like ww2 when the UK had to turn to agriculture and food production as a priority? no way now could the food be grown produced, even with the latest nohow and advances in crop yields production etc ? Reason very simple, to much land has been lost to development and is being lost every year, plus a rapidly rising population? Now you dont need to be very smart to work that out ?

The National Farmland Trust - a not for profit organisation

The National Farmland Trust | Protecting your food source, protecting your farmland, protecting your countryside

www.nationalfarmlandtrust.org

 

[jendan]

Same here don’t know of any unformed land as plenty looking for it. Whole farms being bought for blanket forestry though at prices uneconomical to farm.

Farm stock sale yesterday north of Dumfries and west of Lochmaben,locals said it had been sold and going to be all planted.It will ruin the landscape eventually.

 

[Tarw Coch]

Its quite sad and rather depressing reading the comments on this thread, but its the reality that UK agriculture is? The turning point has gone? farming and food production has not been important to the uk since the 1970s? To try to make some form of farming as your career income and not a hobby has got harder and harder, the lack of profit plus the increased rules and regulations have driven out alot of the small farming businesses.

Your last line and the use of the word driven makes it sound like something that as happened, rather than something that is continuously happening, indeed I would say that if anything such change is gathering pace.

 

[toquark]

Farm stock sale yesterday north of Dumfries and west of Lochmaben,locals said it had been sold and going to be all planted.It will ruin the landscape eventually.

I find it baffling that the Scottish government whinges on about the concentration of land ownership in too few hands whilst simultaneously encouraging institutional buyers to plant family farms!

 

[bluebell]

can you really blame someone, to choose a far easier way to make a living from a farm than all the hassel worry and work that farming is, always was, but the opportunities to earn more money from non farming businesses didnt exist so much in the past to recently, an example is letting redundant buildings to small businesses as offices, small industrial units? That is not without its problems, but if in your area there is a demand for such, its a dam sight easier and more lucrative than how many farming enterprises are ?