Agriculture

[Oldjohnw]

I was puzzled listening to the Farming programme this morning. Tje Australian Agriculture representative was uber excited about doing a trade deal with the UK (I am less so: they stuff hormones into their beef and have largely battery hens and he said we'd have to drop our standards). He said they lost out selling lamb 45 years ago when tariffs were imposed by the EU. He also said that they lost out to New Zealand. Funny - I must have missed the bit where NZ joined the EU.

I am also puzzled because I am sure that last time I looked out my window there were lambs in the field. Why import at all?

[Paulatic]

Supply and demand
The UK production can’t supply what’s required all year around. NZ and Oz can produce it cheaper than us and being on the other side of the world slits in nicely.
Without an EU subsidy the UK will have to
1 pay a subsidy
or Lamb will need to be dearer than it now is
or We can import cheaper meat from elsewhere.
One guess as to how a Tory thinks. They can afford to buy good produce but the rest of the plebs can eat inferior imported food.

[Cyril Haearn]

Transporting food thousands of miles round the world is madness

[Cyril Haearn]

Mentioned this elsewhere, but it is relevant here
Just been reading George Ewart Evans about farming in Suffolk, he asserts that life hardly changed for 2 000 years until steam and infernal combustion machines were introduced

A farm that needed dozens of workers now needs two
Where did the displaced labourers go? Come to think of it, many of them didnae return from ww1 + ww2, -99

[thirdcrank]

... One guess as to how a Tory thinks. They can afford to buy good produce but the rest of the plebs can eat inferior imported food.

I think it's a mistake to assume there's a single POV.

The divisions going back to the Corn Laws are still there. The big landowners will harvest subsidies and I fancy things like sheep farming, which seems to be marginal and only viable with subsidies will quickly collapse. Also, in addition to the traditional split between manufacturing and agriculture, private equity is syphoning off all it can to tax havens.

Not forgetting that the biggest profits from land tend to be made when houses are built on it.

[Oldjohnw]

It does appear that blaming the EU was disingenuous since NZ sells lamb. Possibly that NZ got their act together more quickly and better.

[thirdcrank]

I believe that sheep farming represents a much larger part of the NZ economy than it does of the UK's. It it's big there and marginal here.

eg NZ scientists developed ways of making modern fabrics from wool - merino - where shearing sheep here is an extra cost and it's only carried out for the welfare of the sheep. What was once a valuable part of this industry is now largely waste.

[[XAP]Bob]

Transporting food thousands of miles round the world is madness

Not necessarily.
It can often be more efficient to transport food than to produce the conditions to grow it in an otherwise unsuitable climate.

You could argue that we should only be eating seasonal food and making our own jams and chutneys to preserve the food to the off season, and we never needed fridges or freezers in the past....

But that world has passed.

[99.9%certain]

Transporting food thousands of miles round the world is madness

Why?
We've been doing it for 100s of years.

[Cyril Haearn]

Because it uses lots of resources
One can have a perfectly good diet using local foods
I, for example, am feasting on cherries today, collected free, no need to buy fruit for a few months, apples, pears and plums are next
Potatoes and parsnips are easy to keep
I do not have a fridge, no need, cooling wastes a lot of energy

Planning to gather a lot of free apples this year, no need to buy fruit all winter if one stores them properly

[mikeymo]

I believe that sheep farming represents a much larger part of the NZ economy than it does of the UK's. It it's big there and marginal here.

eg NZ scientists developed ways of making modern fabrics from wool - merino - where shearing sheep here is an extra cost and it's only carried out for the welfare of the sheep. What was once a valuable part of this industry is now largely waste.

https://www.peta.org.au/issues/clothing/cruelty-wool/mulesing-barbaric-unnecessary-cruelty/

[mikeymo]

Mentioned this elsewhere, but it is relevant here
Just been reading George Ewart Evans about farming in Suffolk, he asserts that life hardly changed for 2 000 years until steam and infernal combustion machines were introduced

A farm that needed dozens of workers now needs two
Where did the displaced labourers go? Come to think of it, many of them didnae return from ww1 + ww2, -99

Yes, life probably didn't change for 2000 years. For people who worked the land. Then it got a lot lot better with mechanisation. As far less of them were engaged in back breaking, hard, dirty, boring manual labour. And the farms could produce a greater quantity of food, at lower prices, so diets improved.

I gave away my rose-tinted spectacles a long time ago.

[simonineaston]

Words fail me: if in the light of what we now know (compared with say a decade or two ago...) about climate change, I simply cannot understand the wisdom in trashing our existing & well-established trade agreements with our nearest neighbours and talk instead of carting hundreds of tons of frozen animal corpses from one side of the world to the other!! It beggers belief!! If there is a god, then he/she must be on his/her knees, alternatively laughing and crying!

[Cyril Haearn]

Don't worry, the vets at Dover can inspect and reject the carcasses and send them straight back to Down Under

[Paulatic]

A number of years ago I watched a TV programme featuring milk production in the USA Vast yards with thousands of cows never seeing a field. Their production costs at that time were 6 pence/ litre ours at that time were 20 p / litre.
Large American guy interviewed standing beside a milk tanker said we’re waiting for the day we can supply the UK. The milk tanker he was stood beside was an aeroplane.
How disgusting is that!