Funny how some things never change. Sixty years ago I was busy with a fork and wheelbarrow cleaning out a heifer shippon. I was no more than eight at the time. This morning, there I was, with fork and wheelbarrow, mucking out heifers again. Admittedly my younger self would have appreciated the developments in muck fork technology. The one I’m using now is lighter, with a hollow metal shaft. The barrow hasn’t changed much, but being galvanised rather than painted, it’ll doubtless last better. Some things are apparently timeless and unchanging.
Other people are also trapped in an apparently timeless world. Our ruling classes are a prime example of this. So in the Netherlands, the last government decided that 30 per cent of all cattle farms need to be closed by 2030 in order to halve nitrogen emissions as decreed by EU regulations. Government policy was that Dutch farmers will be forced to either sell their land to the state now or face expropriation later. Given that the Netherlands is apparently the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world after the US, to cut their production is of rather drastic. Admittedly this plan is on hold because the farmers formed their own political party and this led to the collapse of the government at the elections. It’s not just the UK political class which is out of touch with the electorate.
In France, farmers are protesting at the cut in their income, and the incoming requirement to leave 4% of farmland fallow and the mandatory restoration of hedges. This comes on top of bitter arguments about irrigation projects, which have led to crashes. Apparently 58% of the water used in France goes to farming, 26% to drinkable water, 12% to cool down nuclear reactors and 4% goes to industrial uses.
These arguments parallel those in Spain, where farmers are also complaining. Apparently Spanish strawberry farmers are seeing their prices undercut by strawberries imported from Morocco. Because of the use in Morocco of water from sewage systems for irrigation, these strawberries can contain Hepatitis A. In the UK and EU we have regulations to ensure this doesn’t happen. But whilst expecting our farmers to keep up standards, governments have no problems about importing stuff cheap which does not meet those standards.
But in Spain as in France there are problems with drought and the amount of water going to agriculture. In Spain it is apparently 70%. Now it may be that there are people who think that washing the car or running a bath is more important than producing food to eat. If so, they should say so, and they can be issued with appropriate ration cards.
But perhaps somebody has noticed that the world is changing.
Science for Sustainable Agriculture is often described as a think tank. In a recent article, in which they look at a Defra report into the new Defra designed environmental schemes, ELMS, they pointed out that
https://www.scienceforsustainableagriculture.com/mattwridley6
“For action after action, the Defra-funded report indicates that achieving environmental benefits in land managed under ELMS actions can be expected to be offset by potentially more significant disbenefits elsewhere – both in terms of environmental and food production impacts. In simple terms, it recognises that land under the ELMS will be less productive, which will require the missing food to be produced on other land, including in other countries, which could result in overall worse outcomes for the food production, climate and the environment.”
The Defra report is here.
https://randd.defra.gov.uk/ProjectDetails?ProjectId=21327
So the policy that our political elite still clings to is to reduce food production in the UK and import more from abroad. But if countries like the Netherlands, France and Spain are also moving down that road, where do we import it from. Somewhere where your produce arrives with a side order of Hepatitis A perhaps?
But the world is changing. The world that existed when I first picked up a muck fork is a very different world to the world we have now.
We have a war in Europe. Danish and Swedish ministers, among others, have said that Russia could invade a NATO country in the next three to five years. Because we are no longer in the EU we tend to miss some items of news but 20 of the 27 member states increased defence spending. Some of them by considerable amounts. Indeed NATO and a number of EU member states have suggested that the UK consider reintroducing conscription as a way to help deter aggression.
But it isn’t just Europe. The rest of the world is less stable. The shooting in Moscow seems have been organised by ISIS–K. These have been fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere in Central Asia and Iran and are violently opposed to Shia Muslims. Russia, having joined in the Syrian civil war, having become allied to Iran, and having offered military support packages to African dictators facing Islamic or other insurgencies, has ended up very firmly on one side in the divide which splits the Islamic world. It just happens to be the side violently opposed by ISIS-K. So whilst Iranian proxies like the Houthis attempt to blockade the Red Sea, Iran and now Russia come under attack from ISIS and vaguely allied forces. But of course being hostile to Iran doesn’t mean they’re any less hostile to the West.
So given the total mess which is world politics at the moment, is it really sensible to adopt policies which reduce our food production and increase our imports from a less stable world?
♥♥♥♥
There again, don’t confuse me with somebody who might have a clue what they’re talking about
As a reviewer commented, “Should be mandatory reading for anyone moving to the countryside for the first time. Charmingly accurate and educational. Utterly first class.”
As another said, “Yet another quiet, but highly entertaining, amble through Jim Webster’s farming life, accompanied by Sal, his collie extraordinarie.
Sheep, cattle, government eccentricities and wry observations are all included.”
Tagged: Hepatitis A, Irrigation, muck fork, The Red Sea
Jim Webster 
What a mess. Where I live isn’t much better: telling us to restrict water usage, selling (our) water to California, then my watching …car washes pop up like fast food restaurants every time there’s a new development. I keep wondering how it’s affecting our did production as well.
Priorities. They tend to change when people get hungry 😦
What? Food doesn’t come from supermarkets?
It’s a scandal, who would have believed all those nasty dirty farmers were involved
Jim, you make sense to me. The land reform in South Africa and the violence farmers are facing is in this mix. Farmers put food on our plates. The maintenance of the countryside; hedges, verges, woodlands and natural habitats is all part of the very long days, you all work, seven days a week. Thank you.❤️
A lot of people have totally lost touch with the world as it is, confusing it with the world as they expect it to be.
what is the point of creating cleaner air, if we are starving to death? a lot of common sense is needed and soon…
absolutely
Time you moved to Australia, Jim, where some semblance of sanity prevails in the agriculture sector, unlike in Europe,
Yes there are times when it looks as if they are the grown up ones
Outsourcing food production is no different to outsourcing our manufacturing industries – in the eyes of a politician.
The emissions associated with ‘home grown’ are out sourced as well giving us extra brownie points for saving the planet.
The inconvenient fact that most of the EU countries are on the same trajectory, and will be trying to buy the same goods on an increasingly overcrowded global market has not sunk in yet.
Thousands of acres of good agricultural land are going into bird seed, trees, fallow or beaver swamps. That which isn’t, is under glass. Solar panels.
In most of our midland counties, the only growth area is houses.
That is sadly true. Even in Cumbria (of all places) I get companies contacting me to put solar panels on fields
Not forgetting the whole problem with the water; hosepipe bans in summer, floods each winter. It just needs to be stored efficiently and managed properly. It’s all about staying in power rather than doing anything useful with it once they’re there. And of course, they all make so many promises to so many people, often conflicting ones, that they can never get anything done anyway.
There is a problem with storing water. It takes up an awful lot of room. In Cumbria storing water basically means flooding another valley. Even valleys where there is no dam if regularly managed for drinking water. Windermere is perhaps one of the best examples. Elsewhere in the country you could perhaps flood some of the Pennine valleys but I suspect the impact on local populations would be too high.
We already pump water a long way but most transfer schemes involve water being transported along rivers. Nice plan here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5255218.stm
Another issue might just be to say ‘why are we building data centres in areas with no water?
https://think.ing.com/articles/data-centres-growth-in-water-consumption-needs-more-attention/
So it might make sense to move things to the water rather than move water to the things.
Logical and sensible as always. Yes, that makes sense. I see a lot of farmers round here building reservoirs and ponds to store water but at the same time, it’s quite obvious where their fathers and grandfathers ploughed out the ponds in the 1970s. And yes, the data centres might well bring jobs to areas where there aren’t many, which would be a bonus for people living there.
A lot of the ponds were for drinking water for livestock the farms no longer have. Getting permission for a farm reservoir can be tricky
Food is an essential for life. Much more so than other things, like a new car, or even a clean car. So, why are farmers being targeted? My sister, after decades of struggle, has had to finally bite the bullet and give up farming, selling off most of her land.
Importing food, quite apart from the lower production standards in many countries, has an impact on climate change. But governments aren’t interested in that, even though they mouth the words. If they were, the British government wouldn’t have given permission for a new coal mine to be opened in the beautiful county of Cumbria, nor allow further oil seeking in the North Sea.
What people forget about Cumbria was that the county has been and to an extent is, very industrial. The whole west coast was iron working and coal mining, with Barrow iron working and still shipbuilding. Walk round the central lakes you see the signs of the old railways, gunpowder plants, mine workings and similar.
So the locals are far happier with industry than the visitors 🙂 At the very least it means locals have jobs that pay a living wage
But yes food production is the one thing we cannot do without.
I was really commenting on the fact of opening a coal mine anywhere, and seeking for further fossil fuels in the North Sea rather than commenting on Cumbria. It’d be the same if the government decided that opening another coal mine in South Yorkshire which has always had coal mining.
We should pay out farmers a sensible amount of money for their very hard jobs. Up at the crack of dawn, or even before, and not finishing until late (6 or 7 pm if they’re lucky. That’s over a 12 hour day, 7 days a week) and having to get up in the middle of the night if a cow of sheep is in labour. No weekends off. Animals need feeding every day, even Christmas Day. Harvesting until the depth of night to get the grain in. And on top of that, getting peanuts for their hard work.
At one point, my nephew and sister were receiving less for their milk than it cost to produce. Is that fair? And people say that food is too expensive!
Which is one reason why so many East Europeans work on UK dairy farms now. They have a work ethic, assume they’ll work over 50 hours a week (and earn very good money)
My sister employed two eastern Europeans when they were still farming. She couldn’t get any British workers. They didn’t want the hard work.
A very common experience I’m afraid