Brexit and Farming.

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Cunobelin
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by Cunobelin »

If import tariffs are introduced (as is likely) the produce will become too expensive to be viable in the EU market, so unless there is a market in the UK, it will simply go to waste
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531colin
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by 531colin »

Cunobelin wrote:If import tariffs are introduced (as is likely) the produce will become too expensive to be viable in the EU market, so unless there is a market in the UK, it will simply go to waste


Would that depend on the EU continuing to subsidise their own farms, as well as putting an import tariff on UK produce? (I think the Eurocrats would want to do that, although people on low wages in some EU countries might not want to.)
Does anybody know what happened to Obama's scheme to flog off surplus wheat to the EU?
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531colin
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by 531colin »

Paulatic wrote:I'm not certain of all the facts on the NZ subsidy cuts but I believe before they were cut they were in encouraging production. High fertiliser use and heavy stocking. After subsidies they've gone into a better balanced way of farming which is more in tune with the environment.
The current subsidies we have in the UK are linked more to environmental issues now than they used to be. The majority of farmers I know have always played the system. When headage payments were the thing the land was constantly overstocked. When farmers caught wind that future farm payments would be based on historical headage payments then they kept even more qualifying stock. Sheep were often referred to as 'field lice'.
Then with the Single Farm Payment you got the best payments if you took stock off. Phew that was a relief for everyone involved. My biggest worry, if the UK stopped farm subsidies, would be for the environment.
The trouble with subsidies is they are hatched up by people who, with little knowledge of farmers, believe they are clever. Before we joined the EU the farm grants and guaranteed price system for fatstock was, for any farmer with nouse, a licence to print money. The fiddles that took place were too numerous to remember even half of them.
After we joined the EU, initially we had food mountains, remember those? It was great producing anything which went into a mountain. Even better money for anyone looking after one. Worrying fact was though that grain mountain held enough wheat for 16 weeks. Where was the bread and biscuits going to come from in the rest of the year if we had a failed harvest?
My own experiences are predominantly with the livestock section. There has been some great harvests Brucellosis testing, BSE, Foot and Mouth, Tuberculosis testing and headage payments. Every single one of those schemes was open to easy,rarely detectable, fraud. It doesn't matter if they are EU rules or GB rules farmers have always been one step ahead of the guy carrying disinfectant a brush and a bucket in the boot of his car so he gets an extra 6p /mile in mileage allowance.
In my lifetime I now see the third generation of subsidy junkies. Pull away their subsidy and so many of them will not have a clue how to farm. Lessons might be learnt from New Zealand whether they will be relevent to the UK time will tell. I regularly cycle pass a large dairy farm managed on a NZ all grass outdoor system. Obviously locals say it will never work. I watch with interest.


This reads like somebody who lives in the real world.
climo
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by climo »

As usual Monbiot has a great piece on this
http://www.monbiot.com/2016/06/21/leave-well-alone/
Cyril Haearn
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Cyril Haearn wrote:
Drake wrote:I doubt that this country will ever be self sufficient in food production, but if brexit goes a head should there be more investment in home produced :lol: food, and less reliance on imports ?


I have a beautiful picture taken on High Street in the Lake District during WW2. Two horses ploughing the fell to grow oats. Britain could grow enough food if necessary, there is enormous potential for improvement without ruining the landscape. One big problem right now is that transport is much too cheap. I wanted to buy local sprouts but they cost more than imported ones.

We have plenty of cows in Germany but many stores offer Irish butter. They always have German butter too (always much cheaper) but apparently people gladly pay much more for the same product from far away. How senseless is that? May one buy German butter in Ireland?

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pete75
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

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Speaking to a farmer I know here in Lincs he says he wouldn't mind subsidies going as long as they're phased out over say 5 years. He thinks they'll just be fewer farmers farming more land. He currently farms 3000 acres, all arable and reckons he could double that within a few years if subsidies went.
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Flinders
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by Flinders »

As currently a lot of farm subsidies are not for food production or for the environment, but only for owning land, we could cut all of those tomorrow and food prices would if anything go down.

The problem with subsidies in the UK farming sector is that they mostly go to landowners who don't need the money and in many cases, are not even growing food, rather than those doing useful things like growing food or maintaining flood plains. A few large landowners get a small fortune every year for doing absolutely nothing they would not do otherwise. When the EU wanted to cap subsidies at £250,000 pa per farm, it was the UK tory government that blocked it. So don't look for any changes there. It's the big tory politicians and donors who get the big money, the tories will not change that.
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by pwa »

It could be argued that Brexit will give us a chance to re-jig farm subsidies so that they give us the outcomes we want. We must subsidise the activities that we need to happen but will not happen if market forces alone are at play. As already said, flood reduction measures are an example. So is maintaining hedgerows and patches of woodland, for wildlife conservation and landscape. Maintaining public footpaths is something farmers could do. Personally, I'd like to see rural tourism increased, so I'd like to see farmers getting cheap loans to develop accommodation and other facilities.
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Paulatic
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

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pwa wrote:It could be argued that Brexit will give us a chance to re-jig farm subsidies so that they give us the outcomes we want. We must subsidise the activities that we need to happen but will not happen if market forces alone are at play. As already said, flood reduction measures are an example. So is maintaining hedgerows and patches of woodland, for wildlife conservation and landscape. Maintaining public footpaths is something farmers could do. Personally, I'd like to see rural tourism increased, so I'd like to see farmers getting cheap loans to develop accommodation and other facilities.

We've had that, Business Development Schemes, in Scotland since 2008. They have now ended in 2016.
England has had a similar Rural Development Programme. The present scheme runs until 2020.
Wales also has there own scheme open until 2020 also funded be the EU so until anyone tells us what brexit is it's yet another uncertain thing for the future.
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pwa
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by pwa »

Paulatic wrote:
pwa wrote:It could be argued that Brexit will give us a chance to re-jig farm subsidies so that they give us the outcomes we want. We must subsidise the activities that we need to happen but will not happen if market forces alone are at play. As already said, flood reduction measures are an example. So is maintaining hedgerows and patches of woodland, for wildlife conservation and landscape. Maintaining public footpaths is something farmers could do. Personally, I'd like to see rural tourism increased, so I'd like to see farmers getting cheap loans to develop accommodation and other facilities.

We've had that, Business Development Schemes, in Scotland since 2008. They have now ended in 2016.
England has had a similar Rural Development Programme. The present scheme runs until 2020.
Wales also has there own scheme open until 2020 also funded be the EU so until anyone tells us what brexit is it's yet another uncertain thing for the future.


I know that there has been support for these things. I'm just saying that we will be able to prioritise things like this to support rural development in the future, subsidising things that we decide are important. That may or may not include food production. Personally, I cannot see how the landscape of Carmarthenshire can be maintained without dairy farming, and dairy farming will not survive without subsidies or protection through import tariffs. We have questions to answer. Brexit has not brought uncertainty. It was there already. The EU has failed UK dairy farmers. Maybe that doesn't matter to people who just want the cheapest possible milk and don't care about the countryside. I feel so distant from that point of view that I don't know how how to engage with it.
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Paulatic
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by Paulatic »

pwa wrote:[]

I know that there has been support for these things. I'm just saying that we will be able to prioritise things like this to support rural development in the future, subsidising things that we decide are important. That may or may not include food production. Personally, I cannot see how the landscape of Carmarthenshire can be maintained without dairy farming, and dairy farming will not survive without subsidies or protection through import tariffs. We have questions to answer. Brexit has not brought uncertainty. It was there already. The EU has failed UK dairy farmers. Maybe that doesn't matter to people who just want the cheapest possible milk and don't care about the countryside. I feel so distant from that point of view that I don't know how how to engage with it.


I think the point I wanted to make is. We have these incentives in place and I feel the very fact you think we need them tells me they have failed. The uptake of them hasn't been so good that you feel the tourist is adequately catered for. I've no doubt there is some genuine and very successful outcomes from these incentives. I've personally stayed on an excellent caravan site in Lincolnshire using such funding. There always has to be sufficient demand to make it a success. Throwing money into a project isn't guaranteed to create demand.
Sadly I know of, and cycle past, too many failed dreams and hopes these schemes have encouraged. I also know of too many where the long term plan was nothing to do with tourism or any other diversification but just a way to get financial help and possibly an aid to obtain planning permission. Enhancing the family home or bringing that old barn back into good order again.
We on this forum are probably far removed from the norm. Cycling in our countryside we appreciate what scenic value we have and see a source of our food being produced and care about it all. The impression I get from the general population is providing there are runways to enable holidays and motorways to get there quicker they don't give a toss where and how food is produced just so long as their plate is full.
Back in the 70's I had a week in France, with the agricultural college, visiting farms. We could not believe how dirty the French dairy farms were. Hopefully they've upped their game since then.
Flew there, my only experience of flying, and said I'd never do that again. It hasn't been difficult to stay true to my word. :o
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PDQ Mobile
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

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In the N Wales agriculture sector the EU has been broadly quite sympathetic and beneficial to such schemes.
Famers have been given a great deal of finance towards encouraging new woodland, regeneration of old, rebuilding of dry stone walls etc.
IMHO whilst the walling schemes have been well carried out (there is a clear benefit to the farmer!),
woodland schemes have bern much more hit and miss with some dreadful examples of outright cheating. That is the continuation of grazing of grant fenced woodland and the destruction of newly (grant aided) planted trees through grazing.

The policing of such schemes does not fall to Brussels but rather to the domestic UK Authorities responsible, The National Parks Authorities, CCW, etc; it is they that have failed here.

On the point about dairying.
It is also so easy to blame Brussels for the "plight" of the dairy farmer.
The squeezing ever lower of milk prices by the supermarkets and the "free economy" is more to blame in my view.
Cheapest in store milk price brings in the shoppers and they do their shopping at the same outlet.
A few pence more per litre would mean a lot to the pressed dairy farmer.
But this is not an EU problem per se. Switzerland's dairy industry is in major crisis for similar reasons and they are not EU.

That there are savings in the unit cost of pretty much any food item by larger scale production is a follow on from larger machines and holdings etc.
The advantage of smaller organic trending holdings, particularly on our landscape and ecology, is however significant.
But the price will be significantly more expensive foodstuffs. Sad but true.

Food is of course remarkably cheap to buy. I know this as a (non grant funded) smallholder- I simply cannot compete.
I fear more expensive food is a price many will not be prepared to pay.

It is my view that the EU is and has been, broadly speaking, beneficial to environmental (and infrastructure) issues here in Wales. Not perfect but generally in the right direction.
Our own domestic Govt agricultural bodies, far more under the sway of the production obsessed National Farmers Union of Wales, will be less happy, post Brexit, to carry on in the "sustainable agriculture" direction.

It is all very sad.
A UK Govt. unprepared to debate and compromise with our European nieghbours, backed by right wing press interests, has led us into this mess.
Now petrified they will loose power, they have become blinkered and dogmatic.
francovendee
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by francovendee »

Paulatic wrote:
pwa wrote:[]

I know that there has been support for these things. I'm just saying that we will be able to prioritise things like this to support rural development in the future, subsidising things that we decide are important. That may or may not include food production. Personally, I cannot see how the landscape of Carmarthenshire can be maintained without dairy farming, and dairy farming will not survive without subsidies or protection through import tariffs. We have questions to answer. Brexit has not brought uncertainty. It was there already. The EU has failed UK dairy farmers. Maybe that doesn't matter to people who just want the cheapest possible milk and don't care about the countryside. I feel so distant from that point of view that I don't know how how to engage with it.



Back in the 70's I had a week in France, with the agricultural college, visiting farms. We could not believe how dirty the French dairy farms were. Hopefully they've upped their game since then.
Flew there, my only experience of flying, and said I'd never do that again. It hasn't been difficult to stay true to my word. :o

This is becoming quite rare in my part of France. It used to be this way, old school farmers with small farms eking out a living. The majority of the farms are now large, having bought up small farms as the old guys retired. The milking parlours are modern and very clean. I suspect the've made sure they get a good share of EU money.
So far very few have ploughed up the hedgerows so we still get a lot of wildlife.
I find the French are very concerned about the quality of food and everything is clearly marked as to it's origin. Amongst the French we're friendly with they all prefer to buy French produce food.
When we first came to France buying French cars was the norm. Whilst there still are more French cars on the road, there is, I'd guess, 30% imported cars. I wonder if their preference for French sourced food will also decline.
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531colin
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by 531colin »

pwa wrote:......... Maintaining public footpaths is something farmers could do...........


Maintaining public rights of way is something farmers are already supposed to do....https://www.gov.uk/guidance/public-rights-of-way-landowner-responsibilities
.....Anybody ever seen a bridlepath across an arable field re-instated at a width of 2 metres after cultivation?

.....more likely to see surface water or slurry effluent directed onto rights of way, in my experience.
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Paulatic
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Re: Brexit and Farming.

Post by Paulatic »

Quite right Colin. It's also part of their cross- compliance. Not conforming can reduce their Single Farm Payment. I find it's a good one to remind them of if they are getting grumpy.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/guide-to-cr ... hts-of-way
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