Farming

Latest Articles

Farming
Page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Next

Downsizer Forum Index -> Conservation and Environment

Author

Message

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46247
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 23 11:56 am Post subject:

some relevant btl thoughts

----------------------------------------------------

CaressOfSteel
CaressOfSteel
20 minutes ago
14

Running out of salad is inconvenient and embarrassing for Brexit Britain, but it should be ringing food security alarm bells with everyone.

In the event of shortages, domestic supply will always be met before food is exported. Governments will not allow food to be exported while their own people go hungry.

Now imagine a simultaneous failure of the cereal crops in Europe, North America and Australia. With repeated droughts and other climate-related disasters this is actually quite likely to happen in the next 20 years.

Britain barely produces 50% of the food required to feed its population in a good year. It hasn't produced enough food to actually feed all of its citizens since the mid-1800s.

The EU has an annual agricultural surplus of €347 billion, the USA and Canada have a surplus of $20 billion and Australia produces nearly three times as much food as it consumes. Because of Brexit, the UK is uniquely exposed to this potentially catastrophic risk.

Awang86
Awang86

CaressOfSteel
18 minutes ago
7

I completely agree with you. Seems like the UK is going to experience what it did to Ireland, India and a plethora of other countries on this planet
blutgraetsche
blutgraetsche

CaressOfSteel
16 minutes ago
3

The EU's CAP exists for that very reason first and foremost - food security, which is much easier to achieve in cooperation with others, especially when you're an island that can not feed itself for hundreds of years.

But the whining and bickering about CAP was nowhere louder than in the UK.

Enjoy the Brexit, Sir.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15997

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 23 9:25 am Post subject:

I do buy tomatoes now, but think they come from along the coast as we are fortunate enough to have a reasonable climate here most of the time. Still grown in glass houses though. I don't know where the onion sellers came from here; may have been Normandy, but they never tried scaling the hill out of the city as it wasn't worth their while. I can understand the Bretons and Welsh being able to understand each other.

Food security is something that governments have been neglecting for a very long time in the UK. For some reason they forget the dire straights we got into during and just after WWII. There was still rationing until 1954, and even after that somethings were very expensive or in short supply. When I was a child in a suburban area we only had cream out of tins and Australian or NZ butter as English was a real luxury.

Ty Gwyn

Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4613
Location: Lampeter

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 23 1:58 pm Post subject:
Being around the same vintage i remember the cream in tins but we mainly had Welsh salted butter,Shir Gar packed by a company in Swansea

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46247
Location: yes

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 23 3:04 pm Post subject:

sub spam is even worse than spam

dried egg is a useful ingredient for improvised jellied flame fuel, not as good as fresh egg whites for that or as food

tinned shergar might be ok, yeigh or neigh? my brittle pony was quite nice vale food

we did have a reliable food supply chain with more than survival rations remembered from "olden times", it was fragile but functional and had more than some robustness in extremis and a few quality controls for day to day stuff

when wewus young, we had a few chips of gravel and no ice if we was lucky

Last edited by dpack on Sat Feb 25, 23 3:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46247
Location: yes

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 23 3:17 pm Post subject:
ok different perspective we need to eat well now and in the future best done as part of a continent or as a few craggy islands?

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46247
Location: yes

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 23 4:28 pm Post subject:
one two dont ask about the back of the net or crabpots

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 8955
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 23 8:24 pm Post subject:
Interesting Grauniad article by Jay Rayner https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/25/you-can-blame-the-weather-and-brexit-but-theres-more-to-the-uks-food-supply-crisis

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15997

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 23 8:58 am Post subject:

When our son was at college 20 years ago, they had a talk by someone from the NFU, who even then was concerned about the way that prices were affecting farming. The supermarkets have become too powerful and by dictating prices have forced too many growers/farmers and others out of business.

I agree we need to look at the way money is distributed in the UK. It has got far worse over the last 15 years, but the roots of all of this go back to Maggies economic policies of selling off all the utilities and everything else to the private sector. We were told at the time that they were 'more efficient' than the public sector, but having worked in the private sector, and now having to deal with them sometimes, large enterprises, whether public or private never cease to amaze me by their inefficiency.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46247
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 23 10:19 am Post subject:

dont be too harsh on thatcher, she was a puppet, she did not even know she was until maurice explained it to her with 7 bullet points , handwritten on one sheet of foolscap, during a near silent 45 minute one to one and the walls meeting

parts of that covered why somebody like her was picked as a potential mp, how she got the opportunity* to be nominated/elected as a mp, why she was fast tracked to leadership and what she was fronting and for who once in power

she thought she was a patriot, nah, she and her handlers were angleton's puppets in the strategy of domestic tensions to ensure airstrip one was subservient and willing to be a primary nuke target

*that bit is pretty funny unless you were the incumbent mp that courtney entrapped with a gay hussar

a distraction from the food issues, but in some ways relevant, if only as an example of looking behind the curtain providing a different perspective

back to food, the supply chain does need to allow for a sustainable farm gate price as well as logistics/retail costs and punters who can afford the products

i notice lord sainsbury of the aisles has decided to pony up £2 mil to the labour party

Nicky cigreen

Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Posts: 9887
Location: Devon, uk

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 23 11:50 am Post subject:

I'm quite depressed by all the stuff on social media around the very idea of not having tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce at this time of year. The 'hilarious' memes going around suggesting we make salad out of turnips and swede ho ho...

yet in this house we don't have fresh tomatoes and lettuce at this time of year.. because, you know.. they aren't in season. We do have lovely salads though, I use carrot and celeriac, red cabbage etc.

I think the main problem is the media.. again. Tell people there is a shortage and there will be a shortage as everyone rushes out to buy extra of something they probably don't need. Meanwhile our local veg box supplier has salad available.. as does the little greengrocer in the village.

The most depressing part is the public's view that it is their RIGHT to have out of season salad ingredients all year round. When did this happen? When did it become so normal? bah!

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45676
Location: Essex

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 23 12:05 pm Post subject:

Nicky cigreen wrote:

The most depressing part is the public's view that it is their RIGHT to have out of season salad ingredients all year round. When did this happen? When did it become so normal? bah!

100% right

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46247
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 23 2:54 pm Post subject:

with a good energy supply out of season salads are not a technical problem, see renewable leccy etc

as to "right to, out of season", as they are discovering there are no rights to food at all if that requires sustainable business models and the means for them to pay if either or both are lacking

the public, ummm, i think i will side with the planet while throwing seed on stony ground for the mice and birds

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46247
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 23 9:33 pm Post subject:

just for fun

a slightly conflicted message from the darkside, not noted for being greenly protective of the world

if it was a try at putting folk off tomatoes, it missed

if it is about polluted water, the joined up thinking that goes with learning about that does seem at odds with the "house opinions"

odd world sometimes, i might be over thinking it, they might have a mole or a fool on the staff

:lol

Ty Gwyn

Joined: 22 Sep 2010
Posts: 4613
Location: Lampeter

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 23 11:34 pm Post subject:
I used to know someone back home who used to sell tomato plants around the local village pubs,everyone said they grew great tomatoes with Geraints plants. He collected them from the sewerage farm.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15997

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 23 8:31 am Post subject:

Tomato seeds are very difficult to kill. If any get into our compost heap they grow like mad. They also grow well in any field where 'humanure' is used, in the same way as at the sewage farm as that is where it comes from.

Nicky, I agree with you, but on the other hand, tomatoes are useful. I have vivid memories of school salads served up on the coldest day of the year with cold meat or flan and cold chips. Diced beetroot, shredded cabbage, grated carrot. We also had a joke that it was very difficult to eat politely as it all slipped off the fork.

	Downsizer Forum Index -> Conservation and Environment	All times are GMT Page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Next
Page 2 of 5

View Latest Posts