I've had enough with this blaming ,'Everyone had their chance'

Nope paid by student fees

 

Would anyone do any job for £7,000 when minimum wage is about £13,000? Can't see it.

 

I am totally pro-agriculture. But don't understand why we need to subsidise upland sheep farms to damage the environment and produce poor quality lamb.

Farm incomes are a joke (as you will know) because you can invest in an expensive bit of new kit and it reduces your apparent income. So farmers can be very asset rich but cash poor. As I said if its so bad, get out and let some else do it. Why are land prices so high? because lots of people want to be farmers. They all want to be really poor - right?

 

Don't think any of the land around here is owned by James Dyson et al unless he is James Dyson-Jones or -Davies and still land prices are high.

Any why should any one in Tarn worry about your income if they can buy food produced by someone else cheaper

Farm subsidies to the richest UK farmers are way above those in rural France and the figures are online for all to see. I have done my research.

 

Very well said, sir! Hope the farming industry gets sorted out properly

 

you voted out after all those subsidies you receive from the EU, whats going to keep you afloat in future? Boris' millions?

the so called £350 million a week it costs us to be members of the EU?

I very much doubt it...

by the way, there are more countries in the EU who have higher immigration levels than we do, and they seem to be coping ok

 

Bloody big village then...there are over 40,000 farms in the UK.

 

Not having a go mate, but I keep hearing about arable/beef/dairy farmers losing money so why do they do it???

 

Nice to hear a sympathetic voice....Farmers all over the country will be reassured by that message....Farmers don't just up sticks and get a better paid job in some totally unrelated industry , giving up their lifelong home..a home often passed down through generations ...several of my friends were born and brought up on farms...it's a way of life not a job .

 

I can't comment about Arable or Beef...but Dairy farmers have been shafted for years..particularly smaller ones... supermarkets would rather import milk than pay British farmers a small profit ( hopefully that is changing...but it's too late for many )...my mate at Harrogate packed up after several years of being offered less than the price he could produce it at .
Farming is a job you're usually born into , not something the careers officer suggests or you happen to see advertised in the job centre . Your life ..your farm and your home are all intertwined...powerful bonds that lofty professionals or city dwellers ( generally ) both do not get ,and are also not capable of the hard graft and long hours needed....no index linked rises for farmers.

 

Just like mining was in Barnsley. That's the point, why should a farmer have a right to farm, but not a miner to dig coal.

I do take your point about dairy farmers. they have been shafted, its not good for them, the cows, or humans who drink eat too much fat. But that the supermarkets not the EU.

 

Interesting posts and points of view, redtotheend.

Back in the 1975 referendum, the CAP played quite a big part in my decision to vote out, reflecting your current opinion.

I'm amazed that the CAP has hardly been mentioned this time around.

Mind you, about 10 years ago, I lived next to a farmer for 4 years (a self-made millionaire, nice bloke, good luck to him). He told me that he had been asked to leave 2 fields fallow for a year under the "Set aside" scheme, and he was paid £75,000 for doing so (ie doing nowt).

Last week my barber told me his brother was a hill farmer in Italy, rearing sheep, and that without the EU subsidies he would not be able to make a living.

 

I'm not a farmer and I don't fully understand the CAP.

I do know the UK farmers received approx 25% of our overall contribution to the EU.

What worries me are the standards set down by the EU will no longer apply and in order to compete on a world market we will see standards fall as limits on what can be used to enhance our food stuffs are reduced.

How will our farmers compete with GM infused products from the US and I don't want to think about drinking Chinese milk?

If we maintain current standards, we won't sell anything as we will be too expensive, especially if we have no-one willing to work to back breaking long days on a very small wage actually crop picking when needed.

I'm not having a go at farmers and it is a geniune question. The CAP may not have been right and no doubt needed reform but we are now out of it and will have no say.

 

Bit harsh, that, Y Goch.

Of course, I'm too polite to say why should we pay university staff to produce research no one wants to read? :nails:

Sorry, but you set yourself up for that.

 

I was of course being deliberately provocative. But I think it’s fair to ask why should we massively subsidies upland agriculture, when it is damaging to the environment and produces a product of little value and not support the mining industry. We need both food and energy. The argument is typically usually about supporting the culture and landscape. However, there so few farmers in the UK, I am not sure why they are so powerful as a political lobby.

As for funding university research… That the driver of the economy in the modern world and we fund our universities to a much lower level than our competitors. But you are in Cambridge so you know that.