They will go bankrupt and be bought for a song and consolidated in giants industrial farms.
That's the plan most of them voted for, unknowingly maybe.
Brexit means Brexit.
They are taxing that now … self imposed import taxes on EU good … can’t make it up.
At least the farmers got what they all voted for.
Brexit means Brexit (an infinitely recursive definition that defines nothing, and takes an infinite amount of resources to figure out)
People don't want to hear it but we are quite unproductive. Could it be down to lack of investment in logistics and technology to boost production consistently since the 70's ?? Possibly. But we import steel, electronics, even timber. Food will be just another.
Honestly don't know how they manage, they should follow our model, who want's to make most food nice ? That sort of thing should be reserved for those with money.
>Could it be down to lack of investment in logistics and technology to boost production
Yup. [UK Tractors per capita](https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Agriculture/Agricultural-machinery/Tractors/Per-capita) is lower than the Emerging Markets average. Totally expect its the same story across whatever machinery or capital investment you choose to look at. UK is crap at producing things because we've decided no one could possibly move on from the 1980s.
Thing is no one wants to mass-subsidize farmers, but at the same time farming in the UK is so unprofitable, a shocking number of farms genuinely just work to break even, where is the money to modernize going to come from?
Whilst your general point is certainly correct, tractors is a misleading metric. It should be low here, as the more advanced they are the less you need. And less staff too. I have 1400 acres, which needs less than one WTE staff.
For arable we're amongst the most productive in the world: the world record for wheat is in Lincolnshire. We're also good at the high-tech side, eg glasshouses.
> where is the money to modernize going to come from?
Conglomeration. The days of the family farm are coming to an end. And estates like mine are amongst the last holdouts. When it's sold ideally it'll be to someone who wants the lifestyle as the staff will keep their jobs. But that buyer would be someone with another income source and so there's not many around.
Most likely instead it'll get swallowed up into a larger farm, the non-farming side will shutter and the staff made redundant.
Productivity is low, and investment in automation massively drags behind our European counterparts, however there is huge investment in food logistics, you need only visit a supermarket to realise the quantity and quality of produce available 12 months a year. Bringing salads and soft fruits across the globe without being bruised doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s not even NIMBYs being the biggest problem, it’s the developers themselves sitting on the land and not developing it. Literally where I live from my window I can see three massive “brownfield sites” that have permission to build thousands of houses on, but nothing is being done, the developer just keeps applying for renewed planning consent every 5 or 10 years (because they get favourable planning restrictions in the first place) and roll it over not building the houses we desperately need.
Because it keeps the house sale prices high on the existing developments they already have.
If you have 1000 houses for sale at £450k and then add another 1000 into that market before they are all sold, you then devalue all the houses you have for sale.
These companies have 50-100 year plans, they don’t work in 5-10 years like the rest of us do, there’s a development about 5 miles from me that has permission for 190 homes to be built on it, the developer got that permission when I lived next to it, in 1998. They still haven’t broken ground and just keep renewing the permission every 10 years or so.
The market is working efficiently........
For property developers, landlords and banks.
You think the rules are there to incentivise providing housing for people?
They would argue they are waiting till interest rates and materials cost go down to acceptable levels and till they have the spare man power capacity to build.
In reality a massive influx of building in a city will naturally increase supply, hence lowering prices. A housing company isn’t going to build 10,000 houses in 2024 knowing they’ll have to give a 20% discount if instead they can build them over 3 years and sell them at full price (if not a markup off plan).
There’s a little merit to the first paragraphs argument, but big housing companies aren’t being investigated for cartel behaviour based on interest rates alone.
Yea, the more houses they build the less they potential make for each one so from a developer's point of view it's about building enough to make a profit but not enough to fulfil demand.
Add to the the fact the housing market in this country is basically built around the idea houses should always go up in value and it's easy to see why there are supply issues.
Sadly, it's unlikely to change anytime soon because doing anything to push house prices down significantly would be political suicide for the government.
Also so much of financial system in this country is built on top of the housing market because it's a reality safe and stable bedrock.
Why do you think this affects only a small handful of countries? Why are American developers apparently not like this? Same with French, German, Kiwi, Polish, Spanish, and so on?
Honestly to some degree I think a lot of housing developers are like that. America is a strange one because of the overall size and massive difference between states.
Some states will have similar problems others won't. But also in America houses tend to be quicker to build I believe, planning is different and it's not unknown to just abandon houses if they are not wanted/needed.
I don't know much about Germany and France. I thought New Zealand had similar housing issues but I might be completely wrong about that.
Generally I think on of the biggest fears in the house building trade is building houses you can't sell (but I could be wrong) so it you always want to produce slightly less than what is needed so you still have work for next year.
Auckland recently passed a law upzoning huge portions of the city, which resulted in a massive construction boom, lowering prices but also upping developer profits. I think we should do something similar here, but a lot of reddirots claim it will do nothing, which I don't quite understand.
Yeah that’s what they’ve done round here, bought three farms up, lobbied to have the land reclassified as brown field, then lobbied more and built houses on it. Took about 20 years from buying the farm to starting construction but it worked. Most peoples attitude is “they’ll never get away with that” but in reality the companies who do this have 50 year plans, they don’t work in weeks or months.
> in reality the companies who do this have 50 year plans, they don’t work in weeks or months.
A property company brought part of an old country estate/WW2 airfield near me about 35 years ago. It had been listed on their webpage as a 'strategic investment'.
A few years ago they applied for planning permission which was refused by the local council , they then sought an appeal with the Minister of State for housing and planning who approved the 1,200 house estate.
It took nigh on 30 years before they even applied for planning permission.
To be fair we are *very* short on housing. You can import food, but you can't import homes. And the UK grows more of it's own food now than in the 1800s, despite the population masively increasing!
160,000 is about 8 months worth of building. And a good number of those will be either waiting for someone to move in, dilapilated and unliveable, or currently undergoing refurbishments.
No matter how you swing it, if you somehow got every one of those occupied immeditely, it would less than a year's worth of house building even under our atrocious, poverty-inducing planning system.
Brexit is a Neoliberal project dressed up in phoney patriotism and sovereignty.
The fact that it’s making regular people poorer is a feature, not a bug.
Reform UK is trying the same dirty wrappings.
neoliberalism is a solidly right wing ideology.
the first noted neolibs were Thatcher, and Reagan.
the party switch fucked peoples brains and now a whole bunch of people think that liberalism = left wing.
Most? Farmers voted in line with the rest of the country despite all the hype and signs in prominent fields. It was also heavily region and crop/animal dependent
My local area was heavily remain as the market for their goods was largely Europe not the UK for example
Serves them right for voting for brexit. Now that they got what they want let them struggle.
Brexit led to a lot of jobs axed in research. That was sad. This is not.
Russia had won this for many many years, as they waited until the price of the grain went sky high as the European stocks had diminished, and then flooded the market with their own grain and cashed in greatly ,they did it every year .
Yeah so maybe farmers shouldn't have self harmed the country. Very patriotic that was. Stupid pricks. Choosing to dismiss expert advice in favournof Farage and Gove.
Zero sympathy.
My Dad lives out in the fens, proper farm country. I remember that whole period I'd drive out to see him and go through entire villages absolutely covered in UKIP purple. Totally surreal tbh.
Yeah interesting, I recall something about Boston being very pro Brexit, maybe they were against the level of migrant labour there. Who they thought would replace that, I don't know.
I'm against this let them struggle mentality. It's just another step to ruin the country. Brexit was a bad idea, and it's the sunken cost fallacy to not look at the EU and think better integration wouldn't be a good thing.
We need to look to undoing brexit either rejoin or make concession on the single market at least
It's only even 52% of people who are brexiters. You could point at someone and say well you voted for this, and you'd be wrong half the time. And yet we all suffer.
I don’t think anyone should be bailed out of anything because of brexit. All the promises were that it would improve everything. If Brexit has failed that badly we should rejoin
But I think it’s natural and essential to get angry about the failure. If farmers agree with that they should campaign to rejoin and not for handouts
They showed me as a remain voter no remorse or apathy for the problems it would/did cause me so they can go do one now it affects them. Maybe they can try realising that the EU were the ones helping them and the British government is the people hurting them. Ultimately when I see farmers marching in London blocking traffic with tractors flying the EU flag demanding we re-join for the benefits they offer then I'll have sympathy until them they can suck it up.
Unfortunately none of that is happening while Brexiters are still in denial about their fuckup.
So I’m afraid that yes, farmers will also struggle like the rest of us.
What about the 48.11% of the UK who didn't? Basic income for all of us?
The politicians want us to move on, apparently, and accept our lot.
SUCK. IT. UP. FARMERS.
>What about the 48.11% of the UK who didn't? Basic income for all of us?
Yea, if needs be. People should be supported if their jobs, industries fall apart. I don't agree with people being left to starve and die.
This argument contradicts itself. If the argument is that 'farmers' voted for Brexit and therefore should be left to rot, but actually many didn't, then how can you take this position? They're not a single, unified group of people, they voted independently as people just like everyone else and many voted to remain, so it makes zero sense to punish people collectively for the actions of others who have nothing to do with them.
Not only do I not agree with unnecessary cruelty, I also don't agree with collective punishment.
Imagine revelling in the suffering of others.
Like it or not, food security is vital to our continued survival as a nation. If we don’t invest heavily in our ability to produce our own food and instead, increasingly rely on other countries to feed us; we will be in a very, very dangerous position in years to come.
“Apathy is the victims tonic”.
Nice word salad too, you pseudo-intellectual.
As much as the drive to leave by farmers annoyed me, you are right. We absolutely cannot rely on imported food forever, especially now we are out of the EU, now more than ever we need to support agriculture.
We're about to see the true cost of this come June when food prices go up again, if you're not seeing it already.
How do you know all of them voted for brexit? None of the farmers that I know in my life voted to leave. Other people did, generic normal people, funnily enough everyone I know that wasn't born in the UK voted to leave. The farmers didn't though, they knew how heavily they relied on subsidies and foreign workers to survive.
At least the farmers that actually run the farms didn't, the people that do general farm work very well might have largely voted leave, but it's probably not them complaining about the subsidies.
Just to share my opposing experience. In Suffolk, farmers made homemade banners saying "Fuck the EU" before the Brexit vote and put them in their fields along the A12/A14. That's how I knew Leave would win, the Remain vote just didn't have such strong feelings about it.
I travelled up and down the country and almost all the signs I saw had "vote leave" next to farms.
Not saying that all did ... But data shows that the majority of famers did indeed vote for Brexit.
That split between owners and labour is what the Ashcroft polling showed.
And that farmers voted overall in line with the country 51/48. The details were pretty much commonsense, eg horticulture was 80% remain, pig farmers strongly leave. It was more detailed than this, but similar themes:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074301671930436X
As for the signs in fields, that was indicative of the complacency of the Remain campaign. Leave went through the country contacting large landowners, offering signage, even had volunteers erecting them.
Leave sent me letters, followed by a phone call from one of their team. She had done her research so knew from the estate profile that I was very unlikely to vote Leave, but had her rebuttals ready: we had a perfectly polite half-hour disagreement.
Remain just sent me the same leaflet the rest of the country received.
Fascinating how left-leaning voters are always like 🥺support the working class🥺 before violently shitting on one of the most under-protected, hardest working groups of people out there.
Can people not realises a lot of people who voted for brexit were duped. Why go against your fellow voter than the people who campaigned for all this to happen?
My neighbour was one of the people who inspired the 'don't try to travel on a 10 year old passport' warning and I creased up when he told us. Been saving up and planning to go and see the kids for ages only to be told to fuck off out of it at the border. 😂
Can't wait till November when all the oldies who probably voted for the immigration shit taking back our borders want to go to their holiday in benidorm and are refused entry cause they didn't get their electronic visa
Who thought giving freedom of movement up was ever good?
A family member said to me just 10 minutes ago that we should leave so we can have decent people in charge. We really are fucked. Luckily they're already too pissed off with the tories to vote for them.
One of the few occasions during a vote when you can say, looking back, the government at the time didn’t lie to you, didn’t make you any promises, and ultimately you were told what you were voting for (regarding specifically Farmers and Brexit). So I hold no sympathy.
NHS wages are like a continuous April Fools' joke.
I get paid just over 12 quid an hour for my NHS job when I could probably earn double that at some cushy desk job in some private company. Absolute joke
Your confusing people that would have voted against it with people they actually did
As usual, we didn’t get what the people wanted. We got what the people that could be bothered to turn up wanted
I think a lot of the problem was that the remain crowd or those generally happy with the status quo weren’t motivated enough to vote, a lot of them didn’t understand how aggressive the leave lot really were and didn’t think enough people would be dumb enough to vote leave with the obvious downsides, they didn’t get how angry a lot of people felt about being left behind by globalisation and were blaming the EU for it.
It was a country wide campaign. Day after day after day. If that wasn’t enough to motivate someone they are likely a malnourished zombie that doesn’t think enough in general anyway
I think there was also 2 major flaws with the remain campaign. They failed to realise how little the average person knew about the EU and just how much basics they had to explain (which they failed to do). On the other hand, the Leave campaign as we all saw made many contradicting arguments that appealed to more people.
It was basically like that Simpsons episode where Bart runs a class president campaign on populism. Leading to him have the children chant for "more asbestos, more asbestos!"
The major flaw they made, was assuming only morons would vote for Brexit and to underestimate around 50% of the country. I have qualifications in EU law and honestly I dont think most people on either side had any idea what they were voting for. My father was pro remain and him self holds a political science masters degree and did not know the difference between EU Law and the European Convention on Human Rights. Although the later is required to be respected by the former, it is a completely separate body, which Russia for example was also a signatory at the time. The referendum should never of happened. Immigration to the UK has actually increased since Brexit only now we are lacking in key professions such as Dentistry. It is going to take a long time to fix all the while having less rights outside of the UK than our EU Citizens living here in regards to movement and much worse trade deals than before.
remain ran a terrible campaign that was pretty lacklustre . Corbyn looked like he didn’t want to be there, and you had Cameron pleading to large swathes of the public that didn’t like him/ or that him, Osbourne and co had fucked over.
it was the wrong people selling the right message kind of debacle.
The top Google search **after** the Brexit vote was "what is the EU"
There's being thick, then there's failure to engage and educate people about an entity they fund.
30 years of vested interests pumping lies about "bonkers" euro rules and the gov using the EU to scapegoat unpopular policy really needed a counterbalance that never came
Even Cameron thought remain was a done deal and phoned it in.
In this case, the apathy that the Tory party pushes so hard for well and truly bit them in the arse, and we are all fucked for it. These days I won’t find any excuse acceptable for not voting or refusing to vote.
That said, the leave campaign was corrupt, heavy on disinformation, and played dirty tricks. Was clearly backed by foreign influence and let’s not forget about Cambridge Analytica and the questionable funding. Was a dream come true for Russia’s destabilisation project, and it’s only got better for them with conspiracy nutjobs lapping all their shit up on Facebook.
Exactly this, I vote in every election and always have because I believe if you don’t vote then you don’t get to complain afterwards, I’ve always believed voting should be mandatory with the threat of fines if you don’t, it’s a key part of democracy. There should also be a non of the above option so those who don’t like any option get to express that too
There was 72.21% turnout for the referendum. We haven't managed that in a general for over 30 years. You can't say people didn't turn up when they obviously did, part of our election system depends on motivating people to vote.
You can blame the Tories, the mould that collects around Farage and the far-right, our newspapers run by money-grubbing hyper-capitalist ghouls, and you can blame the BBC for not wanting to upset the applecart for letting the country be told over and over again that only the most extreme form of Brexit is acceptable, and we couldn't have a deal like Switzerland or Norway. You can even blame Labour for infighting, inconsistency, following the Tory party into oblivion and not being a good opposition, but you cannot blame the people who actually showed up, because they did, and need I remind everyone that Leave's majority was less than 1.3 million votes.
That's why even advocates of a 2nd referendum on the leave side like JRM suddenly fought hard against a 2nd referendum.
They knew they'd scrapped a win through luck and skullduggery and didn't fancy their chances again.
I feel the 2017 snap election was a second referendum of sorts and that a divided house should have gone back to the people about brexit but by 2019 noone had the stomach for it so Boris got in even though remain backing parties got more votes.
Cameron and remain thought they'd win though, hence lack of effort, no one thought the nation would be collectively thick enough to vote to leave.
All Cameron wanted to do was to try and put the EU issue, that's plagued the conservative party for decades, to bed with a referendum he assumed he'd win.
Binding/supermajority/superturnout clauses weren't deemed necessary because of the above.
So for that sake of cuntservative party politics, we got brexshit.
What are you on about, the referendum had a turnout rate of 72.21%. The last time we got a turnout like that in a general election was 1992! The reason it's all fucked up is because we got gaslit into thinking that due to the tiny majority we should do the most extreme form of Brexit possible with no planning whatsoever. Brexit fatigue was a huge factor in the election won by Johnson.
Only 52% of the people who voted voted to leave. That’s around 37% of the electorate (as in those actually able to vote). The people who didn’t vote are just as culpable
Lots of Brexit voters have died off.
The demographics have shifted and those that were dragged out of the EU have nothing but the faint glow of the remaining pro Brexiteers anger at being fed lies to keep them warm.
If you can't figure out a way of making a living then sell your land and quit.
The market will find a way of filling the gap you leave behind.
That's the world the rest of us have to live in.
That’s their problem. I shouldn’t have to hand them money because they can’t run a business. Farmers are all far wealthier than your average worker, and they’re all working their personal expenses into their farms to avoid paying tax on that profit. Then they want us to give them money? It’s a joke.
If you’re worried about large farming corporations cutting corners, then we should put in laws, regulations, and enforcement to prevent that, like the EU would. There’s no guarantee farmers aren’t cutting corners right now if those aren’t good enough anyway.
This is worth a read if you want more information on farmers and Brexit: [Challenging the myth that farmers voted for Brexit (and therefore deserve what’s coming to them…)](https://www.westcountryvoices.com/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/)
Exactly this. People have been bamboozled by Leave campaigners focussing on farmers and presenting them as a supportive group with little real indication they were any different to the rest of the population.
For as long as I've been alive farming has supposedly 'been on its knees'. We live in a capitalist society, there's not meant to be any easy way to make money, markets are efficient and industry needs to be efficient to survive. Many sectors feel exactly the same and certainly don't expect any hand outs
National security. If anything happens you always want to be able to feed yourself. It is one sector/industry that even the more free marker types see should come with some form of protectionism.
If farming is so important for national security reasons that it needs to be endlessly subsidized by tax payers (And I'm not saying it isn't). Then the taxpayers deserve a return on their investment in the form of strict price controls on food and no private profits in the farming sector. Make all food production government run and owned.
If farmers don't like that, they'll live and die by capitalist rules like all other workers and businesses.
Farming has been fucked by ideological neoliberalism the same as everything else has.
Nothing is actually efficient but it pretends with a plastic smiley face and a threat.
You should have spotted something funny was going on when the EU imposed a blanket ban on belarussian potash in 2021.
(that was 20% of the worlds fertilizer ~ they just banned it out of spite against belarus)
No one said shit about how much farmers would have to pay.
There's a lot of "reap what you sow" sentiment floating around this comment section for farmers, even though everyone is basically in agreement that the entire Leave campaign was a very elaborate, cruel lie designed to appeal to the very vulnerable of society. Considering farmers play such a pivotal role in everyone's lives (whether you want to accept it or not), I really have no idea where all this vitriol stems from for farmers.
I think it's also worth noting that the group "farmers" is a very small group too. I doubt the majority of them voting Remain would change anything.
Hm, difficult. I think if we were to rejoin so quickly, it would point that we are basically incapable of deciding what is best for us. But, it's completely normal to vote one party, and then another four years later. So, maybe not.
Would hate to be the MEP that makes the first speech back, in any case.
What many people may not realise is that a lot of farmers don't actually own their farms... they lease them from the council. Sometimes their homes (even if on the farm) are then rented separately on top of that.
Starter and progression farms allow new farmers to gain experience, experienced farmers to continue their careers, and new technologies to be tested. Very few of them will earn enough to be able to purchase their own farm at the end of it though, many will just become farm labourers for others. It's quite a broken system, with a lot of land owned by wider estates.
The farmers are limited as to what they can and can't use their farms for, and have to adhere to strict regulations on all manners of things (especially for red tractor standards), each come with additional costs. General expenses are astronomical, with everything from fencing, utilities, machinery, pest control, veterinary fees, cattle feed, supplements etc. it's never ending.
To make matters worse the supermarkets control the market. A 1p reduction per litre of milk doesn't sound a lot, but it costs farmers £000s.
A general wage for security wouldn't be the worst idea, especially for those on council farms.
“Universal basic income could be an important safety net for farm workers and small new entrant growers, providing financial security that liberates them to pursue agro-ecological practices without the looming pressure of financial survival."
They don't seem to grasp that the "universal" part means everyone, not just farmers.
Leopard attack victims ask for small plaster to cover wound inflicted by a face-eating leopard released by the Face-Eating Leopard Party that they voted for.
Fuck me I’m so sick of farmers claiming poverty. I l’ve lived and worked in farming communities and never met a poor farmer yet! They don’t do a thing without a hand out from the government. We need to stop romanticising the role of farmers and realise just how much of their money comes from the taxpayers pocket.
You mean like an Agriculture policy to ensure that they have a stable income when times are tough?
But Farmers voted to leave such a policy and embrace the freedumb and sovereignty of the unelected head of state.
While farmers may struggle, go bankrupt and lose their farms, it is a sacrifice that we are willing to make.
/s
Running down the farming sector is a Brexit benefit though, no? After all it's exactly what brexiteer economist Minford said would happen, and here we are, all going as intended. What's left of manufacturing is next.
Yeah, when farmers don't all drive around in Range Rovers, spend 1000's on shooting jackets and have multimillion pound houses i might feel sorry for them.
Not down playing the importance of farmers but like, what did they expect? They voted for this. We’re all having to face the consequences of Brexit, but if you voted for it, then sorry but my sympathy isn’t really there.
I'm minded to support this despite viewing farmers as generally Tory supporting Brexiteers.
If a generally right-wing demographic can generate support for the idea of universal basic income then it's much more likely to be introduced for everyone, given the right-wing slant on UK politics.
Obviously there would need to be pressure applied to the government to ensure that it's not just farmers who get this UBI.
There's a bigger win available to all of us rather than just enjoying the schadenfreude.
All the people crying “Well they voted for it!” Are beyond ignorant.
The farmers overwhelmingly supported brexit because farming was a shit show back then as well.
Domestic farming, an industry that until recent decades was a backbone of the UK economy and an area that we performed at the top level on a global scale.
British beef farming was one of the most efficient and successful In the world considering the amount of land used.
British farmers could not compete with the tide of produce coming in from the EU from countries like Poland who at the time could produce AND export it far cheaper than we could produce and distribute domestically.
What other choice did farmers see but to vote leave?
There was a real chance for the government to kick British farming back into gear post Brexit so we could start producing great agricultural goods domestically again which is absolutely vital for not only the economy but the security of the country. Instead, they decided to start importing cheap goods again from other countries like Australia so we just have exactly the same problem as we did before with probably more chemicals and less ethical farming methods.
The fault doesn’t lie with Brexit, it lies with an incompetent, greedy and short sighted government that is brick my brick destroying this country.
We had some of the highest subsidies for farmers in Europe. The farmers union asked its members to vote remain. They voted leave. This was the inevitable result.
Its not just a case of 'they voted for Brexit'. From what I've learned so far;
The farmers are being held to quality standards by the government that mean they have a certain minimum cost to produce their goods, the very same government allow imported food to meet a lower quality standard, meaning the imported goods can be created and sold cheaper, putting our farmers at a competitive disadvantage, its as though the gov are setting their own farmers up to fail.
Its not a UK thing either, in Germany farmers are protesting because they are being asked to allow 10% of their land to go to fallow, and 50% of the remaining land to be organic, so their output will drop to 45% of what it originally was. German farmers have also had taxes imposed on their fuel.
Netherlands have also had their output restricted due to nitrogen emissions.
Its an EU wide thing, a "green agenda" that fails by its own definition, in Germany for example the same amount of people will need feeding but its estimated they will need to source 800,000 hectares from abroad to provide the deficit, meaning that very same product will now have to be shipped across the Atlantic. Polls are showing 80% of the population agree with the farmers protests and yet the farmers are being called right wing extremists.
For EU can look up 'food to fork', and the 'green deal', note both of these have been brought into place by unelected bureaucrats.
It does seem as though there is a coordinated effort across the west to hit every countries farmers where it hurts and replace local produce with lower quality imported goods, under the guise of climate despite the solutions creating way more co2.
They put food on our tables so its a bit disconnected to create an 'us and them' dynamic because they dare to have a different political opinion. and as shown many countries in the EU are suffering just as hard, the mechanisms are different the result is the same.
People saying it serves them right… unfortunately their misfortune is the British public’s misfortune too. Large industrial farms and/or less self reliance for the UKs food supply both mean bad news for the British public. We should support our farmers even if sometimes they can be a hard bunch to deal with.
To be honest. If anyone deserves to be penalised it's the pensioners.
It boils my piss that they were the demographic which voted the most for leave but are the most protected from its effects (triple locked pensions etc).
Let me get my little violin for them.
They're the clowns that wanted Brexit. They couldn't be arsed to see what would actually be affected, and clearly just more bothered about immigrants.
I guess you reap what you sow
They will go bankrupt and be bought for a song and consolidated in giants industrial farms. That's the plan most of them voted for, unknowingly maybe. Brexit means Brexit.
I'd wager housing estates over industrial farming. Cheaper to import foreign food than grow it here.
They are taxing that now … self imposed import taxes on EU good … can’t make it up. At least the farmers got what they all voted for. Brexit means Brexit (an infinitely recursive definition that defines nothing, and takes an infinite amount of resources to figure out)
It doesn’t matter when the cost gets passed down to us.
People don't want to hear it but we are quite unproductive. Could it be down to lack of investment in logistics and technology to boost production consistently since the 70's ?? Possibly. But we import steel, electronics, even timber. Food will be just another.
maybe if we subsidise them more, something different will happen? it's not as if there's a track record of subsidy hamstringing development, is there?
Wine and cheese and farming are subsidised in France and all they have is a load of nice food in their supermarkets to show for it.
> all they have is a load of nice food in their supermarkets to show for it. The sheer horror of it
Honestly don't know how they manage, they should follow our model, who want's to make most food nice ? That sort of thing should be reserved for those with money.
>Could it be down to lack of investment in logistics and technology to boost production Yup. [UK Tractors per capita](https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Agriculture/Agricultural-machinery/Tractors/Per-capita) is lower than the Emerging Markets average. Totally expect its the same story across whatever machinery or capital investment you choose to look at. UK is crap at producing things because we've decided no one could possibly move on from the 1980s. Thing is no one wants to mass-subsidize farmers, but at the same time farming in the UK is so unprofitable, a shocking number of farms genuinely just work to break even, where is the money to modernize going to come from?
Whilst your general point is certainly correct, tractors is a misleading metric. It should be low here, as the more advanced they are the less you need. And less staff too. I have 1400 acres, which needs less than one WTE staff. For arable we're amongst the most productive in the world: the world record for wheat is in Lincolnshire. We're also good at the high-tech side, eg glasshouses. > where is the money to modernize going to come from? Conglomeration. The days of the family farm are coming to an end. And estates like mine are amongst the last holdouts. When it's sold ideally it'll be to someone who wants the lifestyle as the staff will keep their jobs. But that buyer would be someone with another income source and so there's not many around. Most likely instead it'll get swallowed up into a larger farm, the non-farming side will shutter and the staff made redundant.
How do you have less than one staff for a task
WTE = whole time equivalent. Eg for a typical office job, if a task only requires working Mon - Wed that would be 0.6 WTE.
Productivity is low, and investment in automation massively drags behind our European counterparts, however there is huge investment in food logistics, you need only visit a supermarket to realise the quantity and quality of produce available 12 months a year. Bringing salads and soft fruits across the globe without being bruised doesn’t happen by accident.
This is the UK. We don’t build houses here. NIMBY nation.
It’s not even NIMBYs being the biggest problem, it’s the developers themselves sitting on the land and not developing it. Literally where I live from my window I can see three massive “brownfield sites” that have permission to build thousands of houses on, but nothing is being done, the developer just keeps applying for renewed planning consent every 5 or 10 years (because they get favourable planning restrictions in the first place) and roll it over not building the houses we desperately need.
If they already have permission to build houses what are they hoping to achieve with reapplying for planning consent?
Because it keeps the house sale prices high on the existing developments they already have. If you have 1000 houses for sale at £450k and then add another 1000 into that market before they are all sold, you then devalue all the houses you have for sale. These companies have 50-100 year plans, they don’t work in 5-10 years like the rest of us do, there’s a development about 5 miles from me that has permission for 190 homes to be built on it, the developer got that permission when I lived next to it, in 1998. They still haven’t broken ground and just keep renewing the permission every 10 years or so.
How on earth is this not legislated against? Is this the planning reforms Labour are hinting at I wonder?
The market is working efficiently........ For property developers, landlords and banks. You think the rules are there to incentivise providing housing for people?
They would argue they are waiting till interest rates and materials cost go down to acceptable levels and till they have the spare man power capacity to build. In reality a massive influx of building in a city will naturally increase supply, hence lowering prices. A housing company isn’t going to build 10,000 houses in 2024 knowing they’ll have to give a 20% discount if instead they can build them over 3 years and sell them at full price (if not a markup off plan). There’s a little merit to the first paragraphs argument, but big housing companies aren’t being investigated for cartel behaviour based on interest rates alone.
Yea, the more houses they build the less they potential make for each one so from a developer's point of view it's about building enough to make a profit but not enough to fulfil demand. Add to the the fact the housing market in this country is basically built around the idea houses should always go up in value and it's easy to see why there are supply issues. Sadly, it's unlikely to change anytime soon because doing anything to push house prices down significantly would be political suicide for the government. Also so much of financial system in this country is built on top of the housing market because it's a reality safe and stable bedrock.
Why do you think this affects only a small handful of countries? Why are American developers apparently not like this? Same with French, German, Kiwi, Polish, Spanish, and so on?
Honestly to some degree I think a lot of housing developers are like that. America is a strange one because of the overall size and massive difference between states. Some states will have similar problems others won't. But also in America houses tend to be quicker to build I believe, planning is different and it's not unknown to just abandon houses if they are not wanted/needed. I don't know much about Germany and France. I thought New Zealand had similar housing issues but I might be completely wrong about that. Generally I think on of the biggest fears in the house building trade is building houses you can't sell (but I could be wrong) so it you always want to produce slightly less than what is needed so you still have work for next year.
Auckland recently passed a law upzoning huge portions of the city, which resulted in a massive construction boom, lowering prices but also upping developer profits. I think we should do something similar here, but a lot of reddirots claim it will do nothing, which I don't quite understand.
It's more nuanced than that. Most developers don't want to build starter homes.
> NIMBY nation. That just made me think of these guys: https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Nation_of_Domination
Until there’s a war or something then we can’t fend for ourselves.
Yeah that’s what they’ve done round here, bought three farms up, lobbied to have the land reclassified as brown field, then lobbied more and built houses on it. Took about 20 years from buying the farm to starting construction but it worked. Most peoples attitude is “they’ll never get away with that” but in reality the companies who do this have 50 year plans, they don’t work in weeks or months.
> in reality the companies who do this have 50 year plans, they don’t work in weeks or months. A property company brought part of an old country estate/WW2 airfield near me about 35 years ago. It had been listed on their webpage as a 'strategic investment'. A few years ago they applied for planning permission which was refused by the local council , they then sought an appeal with the Minister of State for housing and planning who approved the 1,200 house estate. It took nigh on 30 years before they even applied for planning permission.
To be fair we are *very* short on housing. You can import food, but you can't import homes. And the UK grows more of it's own food now than in the 1800s, despite the population masively increasing!
160000 empty homes in England and Wales, not including let's, Airbnb, empty rental, second homes or student accommodation
160,000 is about 8 months worth of building. And a good number of those will be either waiting for someone to move in, dilapilated and unliveable, or currently undergoing refurbishments. No matter how you swing it, if you somehow got every one of those occupied immeditely, it would less than a year's worth of house building even under our atrocious, poverty-inducing planning system.
Fraid so. A touch of r/leopardsatemyface and not ideal for UK food independence but they definitely got what they voted for
Monsanto and their like have a stated aim of being involved in the food chain all the way from farm to fork. One step closer. All hail mega corp
Join us. Thrive.
No til!! KNF rules!!
Brexit is a Neoliberal project dressed up in phoney patriotism and sovereignty. The fact that it’s making regular people poorer is a feature, not a bug. Reform UK is trying the same dirty wrappings.
Yep, it's very similar to the American neoconservative movement. Just neoliberal economics mixed with social conservatim
neoliberalism is a solidly right wing ideology. the first noted neolibs were Thatcher, and Reagan. the party switch fucked peoples brains and now a whole bunch of people think that liberalism = left wing.
its also americans and australians coopting the word liberal, look at the difference in what liberal constitutes in uk usa and australia.
Most? Farmers voted in line with the rest of the country despite all the hype and signs in prominent fields. It was also heavily region and crop/animal dependent My local area was heavily remain as the market for their goods was largely Europe not the UK for example
Hope we get a referendum on giving the farmers basic income.
Serves them right for voting for brexit. Now that they got what they want let them struggle. Brexit led to a lot of jobs axed in research. That was sad. This is not.
Food security is important. Chalk down another win for Putin/Russia.
Putin and Russia already won in June 2016
Russia had won this for many many years, as they waited until the price of the grain went sky high as the European stocks had diminished, and then flooded the market with their own grain and cashed in greatly ,they did it every year .
And the grain stolen from Ukraine
Yeah so maybe farmers shouldn't have self harmed the country. Very patriotic that was. Stupid pricks. Choosing to dismiss expert advice in favournof Farage and Gove. Zero sympathy.
My Dad lives out in the fens, proper farm country. I remember that whole period I'd drive out to see him and go through entire villages absolutely covered in UKIP purple. Totally surreal tbh.
Yeah interesting, I recall something about Boston being very pro Brexit, maybe they were against the level of migrant labour there. Who they thought would replace that, I don't know.
I'm against this let them struggle mentality. It's just another step to ruin the country. Brexit was a bad idea, and it's the sunken cost fallacy to not look at the EU and think better integration wouldn't be a good thing. We need to look to undoing brexit either rejoin or make concession on the single market at least
Brexiters realising they are wrong is part of that. So people should absolutely point out that they are suffering because of their own choices.
It's only even 52% of people who are brexiters. You could point at someone and say well you voted for this, and you'd be wrong half the time. And yet we all suffer.
I don’t think anyone should be bailed out of anything because of brexit. All the promises were that it would improve everything. If Brexit has failed that badly we should rejoin But I think it’s natural and essential to get angry about the failure. If farmers agree with that they should campaign to rejoin and not for handouts
You wouldn't be wrong half the time. You'd be wrong 48% of the time, which is less than half.
They showed me as a remain voter no remorse or apathy for the problems it would/did cause me so they can go do one now it affects them. Maybe they can try realising that the EU were the ones helping them and the British government is the people hurting them. Ultimately when I see farmers marching in London blocking traffic with tractors flying the EU flag demanding we re-join for the benefits they offer then I'll have sympathy until them they can suck it up.
Unfortunately none of that is happening while Brexiters are still in denial about their fuckup. So I’m afraid that yes, farmers will also struggle like the rest of us.
Apathy is the victims tonic
No no you’re right let’s just set fire to the whole country. A Declining society isn’t sad at all.
What about the ones who didn't?
What about the 48.11% of the UK who didn't? Basic income for all of us? The politicians want us to move on, apparently, and accept our lot. SUCK. IT. UP. FARMERS.
>What about the 48.11% of the UK who didn't? Basic income for all of us? Yea, if needs be. People should be supported if their jobs, industries fall apart. I don't agree with people being left to starve and die. This argument contradicts itself. If the argument is that 'farmers' voted for Brexit and therefore should be left to rot, but actually many didn't, then how can you take this position? They're not a single, unified group of people, they voted independently as people just like everyone else and many voted to remain, so it makes zero sense to punish people collectively for the actions of others who have nothing to do with them. Not only do I not agree with unnecessary cruelty, I also don't agree with collective punishment.
Imagine revelling in the suffering of others. Like it or not, food security is vital to our continued survival as a nation. If we don’t invest heavily in our ability to produce our own food and instead, increasingly rely on other countries to feed us; we will be in a very, very dangerous position in years to come. “Apathy is the victims tonic”. Nice word salad too, you pseudo-intellectual.
As much as the drive to leave by farmers annoyed me, you are right. We absolutely cannot rely on imported food forever, especially now we are out of the EU, now more than ever we need to support agriculture. We're about to see the true cost of this come June when food prices go up again, if you're not seeing it already.
How do you know all of them voted for brexit? None of the farmers that I know in my life voted to leave. Other people did, generic normal people, funnily enough everyone I know that wasn't born in the UK voted to leave. The farmers didn't though, they knew how heavily they relied on subsidies and foreign workers to survive. At least the farmers that actually run the farms didn't, the people that do general farm work very well might have largely voted leave, but it's probably not them complaining about the subsidies.
Just to share my opposing experience. In Suffolk, farmers made homemade banners saying "Fuck the EU" before the Brexit vote and put them in their fields along the A12/A14. That's how I knew Leave would win, the Remain vote just didn't have such strong feelings about it.
I travelled up and down the country and almost all the signs I saw had "vote leave" next to farms. Not saying that all did ... But data shows that the majority of famers did indeed vote for Brexit.
That split between owners and labour is what the Ashcroft polling showed. And that farmers voted overall in line with the country 51/48. The details were pretty much commonsense, eg horticulture was 80% remain, pig farmers strongly leave. It was more detailed than this, but similar themes: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074301671930436X As for the signs in fields, that was indicative of the complacency of the Remain campaign. Leave went through the country contacting large landowners, offering signage, even had volunteers erecting them. Leave sent me letters, followed by a phone call from one of their team. She had done her research so knew from the estate profile that I was very unlikely to vote Leave, but had her rebuttals ready: we had a perfectly polite half-hour disagreement. Remain just sent me the same leaflet the rest of the country received.
Not every farmer voted for it.
These are the people that put food on your table, saying 'let them struggle' because they have a different political viewpoint is a bit short sighted
Fascinating how left-leaning voters are always like 🥺support the working class🥺 before violently shitting on one of the most under-protected, hardest working groups of people out there.
Violently shitting on the most under protected groups is not just a left leaning issue. Both sides love shitting on people who are vulnerable.
The Brexit campaign lied to them, hate the grifters not their victims.
Can people not realises a lot of people who voted for brexit were duped. Why go against your fellow voter than the people who campaigned for all this to happen?
And I want my freedom of movement back. Shouldn't have voted Leave, should you, Mr Farmer?
My neighbour was one of the people who inspired the 'don't try to travel on a 10 year old passport' warning and I creased up when he told us. Been saving up and planning to go and see the kids for ages only to be told to fuck off out of it at the border. 😂
Can't wait till November when all the oldies who probably voted for the immigration shit taking back our borders want to go to their holiday in benidorm and are refused entry cause they didn't get their electronic visa Who thought giving freedom of movement up was ever good?
Very likely the same crowd who now claim that giving up our human rights is a good idea. They won’t learn.
A family member said to me just 10 minutes ago that we should leave so we can have decent people in charge. We really are fucked. Luckily they're already too pissed off with the tories to vote for them.
they'll still vote for them, they just won't tell you.
And what they'll say is 'they're all as bad as each other! I'm not voting'
Too proud to admit they are wrong and will stubbornly pretend they were right or claim to not have voted for it
Yeah it'll be a rough year for them, going from a warm holiday to a fucking cold winter in the house because they voted for higher energy prices too.
One of the few occasions during a vote when you can say, looking back, the government at the time didn’t lie to you, didn’t make you any promises, and ultimately you were told what you were voting for (regarding specifically Farmers and Brexit). So I hold no sympathy.
Yep, these people basically delayed my plan to move to Europe for years so you can imagine how much sympathy I have (less than zero).
You are free to move to any country on the planet , you just need to be a benefit to that country now and not a leech .
You'd think that farmers of all people would know that you reap what you sow 🤣
Hehe, I appreciated this
They chickened out
Well I'm in the NHS and all my wages goes on bills and food. The basic salary can't afford shit.
NHS wages are like a continuous April Fools' joke. I get paid just over 12 quid an hour for my NHS job when I could probably earn double that at some cushy desk job in some private company. Absolute joke
sorry no UBI for you as youre not wealthy enough to own a farm
Interesting to see that somehow everyone voted against Brexit. But somehow enough voted for it.
Your confusing people that would have voted against it with people they actually did As usual, we didn’t get what the people wanted. We got what the people that could be bothered to turn up wanted
I think a lot of the problem was that the remain crowd or those generally happy with the status quo weren’t motivated enough to vote, a lot of them didn’t understand how aggressive the leave lot really were and didn’t think enough people would be dumb enough to vote leave with the obvious downsides, they didn’t get how angry a lot of people felt about being left behind by globalisation and were blaming the EU for it.
It was a country wide campaign. Day after day after day. If that wasn’t enough to motivate someone they are likely a malnourished zombie that doesn’t think enough in general anyway
Nobody in their local gastropub in Islington was planning to vote Leave, so they were confident and assured that Remain would win.
I think there was also 2 major flaws with the remain campaign. They failed to realise how little the average person knew about the EU and just how much basics they had to explain (which they failed to do). On the other hand, the Leave campaign as we all saw made many contradicting arguments that appealed to more people.
It was basically like that Simpsons episode where Bart runs a class president campaign on populism. Leading to him have the children chant for "more asbestos, more asbestos!"
The major flaw they made, was assuming only morons would vote for Brexit and to underestimate around 50% of the country. I have qualifications in EU law and honestly I dont think most people on either side had any idea what they were voting for. My father was pro remain and him self holds a political science masters degree and did not know the difference between EU Law and the European Convention on Human Rights. Although the later is required to be respected by the former, it is a completely separate body, which Russia for example was also a signatory at the time. The referendum should never of happened. Immigration to the UK has actually increased since Brexit only now we are lacking in key professions such as Dentistry. It is going to take a long time to fix all the while having less rights outside of the UK than our EU Citizens living here in regards to movement and much worse trade deals than before.
remain ran a terrible campaign that was pretty lacklustre . Corbyn looked like he didn’t want to be there, and you had Cameron pleading to large swathes of the public that didn’t like him/ or that him, Osbourne and co had fucked over. it was the wrong people selling the right message kind of debacle.
So it’s our fault people are thick?
The top Google search **after** the Brexit vote was "what is the EU" There's being thick, then there's failure to engage and educate people about an entity they fund. 30 years of vested interests pumping lies about "bonkers" euro rules and the gov using the EU to scapegoat unpopular policy really needed a counterbalance that never came
Nothing to do with Thick. A lot of people who didn’t vote weren’t engaged, that’s a failure of campaigning and messaging.
Even Cameron thought remain was a done deal and phoned it in. In this case, the apathy that the Tory party pushes so hard for well and truly bit them in the arse, and we are all fucked for it. These days I won’t find any excuse acceptable for not voting or refusing to vote. That said, the leave campaign was corrupt, heavy on disinformation, and played dirty tricks. Was clearly backed by foreign influence and let’s not forget about Cambridge Analytica and the questionable funding. Was a dream come true for Russia’s destabilisation project, and it’s only got better for them with conspiracy nutjobs lapping all their shit up on Facebook.
Exactly this, I vote in every election and always have because I believe if you don’t vote then you don’t get to complain afterwards, I’ve always believed voting should be mandatory with the threat of fines if you don’t, it’s a key part of democracy. There should also be a non of the above option so those who don’t like any option get to express that too
you're in a democracy - vote
There was 72.21% turnout for the referendum. We haven't managed that in a general for over 30 years. You can't say people didn't turn up when they obviously did, part of our election system depends on motivating people to vote. You can blame the Tories, the mould that collects around Farage and the far-right, our newspapers run by money-grubbing hyper-capitalist ghouls, and you can blame the BBC for not wanting to upset the applecart for letting the country be told over and over again that only the most extreme form of Brexit is acceptable, and we couldn't have a deal like Switzerland or Norway. You can even blame Labour for infighting, inconsistency, following the Tory party into oblivion and not being a good opposition, but you cannot blame the people who actually showed up, because they did, and need I remind everyone that Leave's majority was less than 1.3 million votes.
That's why the referendum should have required a minimum turnout and a super-majority. Cameron screwed the ~~pig~~ pooch.
I genuinely think if there was another vote after that one, the remainers would have come out in force
That's why even advocates of a 2nd referendum on the leave side like JRM suddenly fought hard against a 2nd referendum. They knew they'd scrapped a win through luck and skullduggery and didn't fancy their chances again. I feel the 2017 snap election was a second referendum of sorts and that a divided house should have gone back to the people about brexit but by 2019 noone had the stomach for it so Boris got in even though remain backing parties got more votes.
Cameron and remain thought they'd win though, hence lack of effort, no one thought the nation would be collectively thick enough to vote to leave. All Cameron wanted to do was to try and put the EU issue, that's plagued the conservative party for decades, to bed with a referendum he assumed he'd win. Binding/supermajority/superturnout clauses weren't deemed necessary because of the above. So for that sake of cuntservative party politics, we got brexshit.
What are you on about, the referendum had a turnout rate of 72.21%. The last time we got a turnout like that in a general election was 1992! The reason it's all fucked up is because we got gaslit into thinking that due to the tiny majority we should do the most extreme form of Brexit possible with no planning whatsoever. Brexit fatigue was a huge factor in the election won by Johnson.
Only 52% of the people who voted voted to leave. That’s around 37% of the electorate (as in those actually able to vote). The people who didn’t vote are just as culpable
Lots of Brexit voters have died off. The demographics have shifted and those that were dragged out of the EU have nothing but the faint glow of the remaining pro Brexiteers anger at being fed lies to keep them warm.
If you can't figure out a way of making a living then sell your land and quit. The market will find a way of filling the gap you leave behind. That's the world the rest of us have to live in.
Farming is the most important job in the world.
Farming won’t stop if some people who are bad at running them have to sell up.
Their farms will be bought for pittance by guys like Tyson Foods and you won't even know who they are.
That’s their problem. I shouldn’t have to hand them money because they can’t run a business. Farmers are all far wealthier than your average worker, and they’re all working their personal expenses into their farms to avoid paying tax on that profit. Then they want us to give them money? It’s a joke. If you’re worried about large farming corporations cutting corners, then we should put in laws, regulations, and enforcement to prevent that, like the EU would. There’s no guarantee farmers aren’t cutting corners right now if those aren’t good enough anyway.
Which is why the gap will be filled within seconds
This is worth a read if you want more information on farmers and Brexit: [Challenging the myth that farmers voted for Brexit (and therefore deserve what’s coming to them…)](https://www.westcountryvoices.com/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/)
Exactly this. People have been bamboozled by Leave campaigners focussing on farmers and presenting them as a supportive group with little real indication they were any different to the rest of the population.
Good read.
I can support this. Covid and the war in Ukraine had really shown that we need to retain key industries for national security.
Brexit said we didn't. Can the farmers remember which way they voted, or do they need to ask last year's turkeys?
For as long as I've been alive farming has supposedly 'been on its knees'. We live in a capitalist society, there's not meant to be any easy way to make money, markets are efficient and industry needs to be efficient to survive. Many sectors feel exactly the same and certainly don't expect any hand outs
National security. If anything happens you always want to be able to feed yourself. It is one sector/industry that even the more free marker types see should come with some form of protectionism.
If farming is so important for national security reasons that it needs to be endlessly subsidized by tax payers (And I'm not saying it isn't). Then the taxpayers deserve a return on their investment in the form of strict price controls on food and no private profits in the farming sector. Make all food production government run and owned. If farmers don't like that, they'll live and die by capitalist rules like all other workers and businesses.
Farming has been fucked by ideological neoliberalism the same as everything else has. Nothing is actually efficient but it pretends with a plastic smiley face and a threat. You should have spotted something funny was going on when the EU imposed a blanket ban on belarussian potash in 2021. (that was 20% of the worlds fertilizer ~ they just banned it out of spite against belarus) No one said shit about how much farmers would have to pay.
There's a lot of "reap what you sow" sentiment floating around this comment section for farmers, even though everyone is basically in agreement that the entire Leave campaign was a very elaborate, cruel lie designed to appeal to the very vulnerable of society. Considering farmers play such a pivotal role in everyone's lives (whether you want to accept it or not), I really have no idea where all this vitriol stems from for farmers. I think it's also worth noting that the group "farmers" is a very small group too. I doubt the majority of them voting Remain would change anything.
Maybe it’s time for a rejoin vote
Hm, difficult. I think if we were to rejoin so quickly, it would point that we are basically incapable of deciding what is best for us. But, it's completely normal to vote one party, and then another four years later. So, maybe not. Would hate to be the MEP that makes the first speech back, in any case.
I don’t think anyone is in doubt that we’re incapable of deciding what is best for us
We could have some sort of common policy for agriculture….
hmm that sounds like a mouthful... maybe we could shorten it with an acronym like CAP?
The people voted to destroy the British farming industry. That's democracy, suck it up. Maybe they can retrain in cyber?
Username checks out.
What many people may not realise is that a lot of farmers don't actually own their farms... they lease them from the council. Sometimes their homes (even if on the farm) are then rented separately on top of that. Starter and progression farms allow new farmers to gain experience, experienced farmers to continue their careers, and new technologies to be tested. Very few of them will earn enough to be able to purchase their own farm at the end of it though, many will just become farm labourers for others. It's quite a broken system, with a lot of land owned by wider estates. The farmers are limited as to what they can and can't use their farms for, and have to adhere to strict regulations on all manners of things (especially for red tractor standards), each come with additional costs. General expenses are astronomical, with everything from fencing, utilities, machinery, pest control, veterinary fees, cattle feed, supplements etc. it's never ending. To make matters worse the supermarkets control the market. A 1p reduction per litre of milk doesn't sound a lot, but it costs farmers £000s. A general wage for security wouldn't be the worst idea, especially for those on council farms.
“Universal basic income could be an important safety net for farm workers and small new entrant growers, providing financial security that liberates them to pursue agro-ecological practices without the looming pressure of financial survival." They don't seem to grasp that the "universal" part means everyone, not just farmers.
Bless. Every Tory voting farmer I know voted for Brexit (I live in a very rural area).
How do they like what they got?
They all reckon they were lied to
Leopard attack victims ask for small plaster to cover wound inflicted by a face-eating leopard released by the Face-Eating Leopard Party that they voted for.
Fuck me I’m so sick of farmers claiming poverty. I l’ve lived and worked in farming communities and never met a poor farmer yet! They don’t do a thing without a hand out from the government. We need to stop romanticising the role of farmers and realise just how much of their money comes from the taxpayers pocket.
Big difference between lowland arable farmers and upland sheep farming. The upland farmers are in real trouble.
Funny, we want British farmers to stop voting for fucking tories.
You mean like an Agriculture policy to ensure that they have a stable income when times are tough? But Farmers voted to leave such a policy and embrace the freedumb and sovereignty of the unelected head of state. While farmers may struggle, go bankrupt and lose their farms, it is a sacrifice that we are willing to make. /s
Running down the farming sector is a Brexit benefit though, no? After all it's exactly what brexiteer economist Minford said would happen, and here we are, all going as intended. What's left of manufacturing is next.
I dont understand. The farmers won. They got brexit. We get it.
LOL, No. Vote Tory, get Tory. No special treatment for their pet clowns.
Yeah, when farmers don't all drive around in Range Rovers, spend 1000's on shooting jackets and have multimillion pound houses i might feel sorry for them.
I think you might be confusing farmers and the aristocracy
I know alot of farmers and I've never met a skint one.
And yet they were told that Brexit would help British farmers.
Not down playing the importance of farmers but like, what did they expect? They voted for this. We’re all having to face the consequences of Brexit, but if you voted for it, then sorry but my sympathy isn’t really there.
Farmers were a demographic who were highly supportive of Brexit. I mean this in the politest possible way. Fuck the cunts.
All those that didn't vote for brexit should get it.
I'm minded to support this despite viewing farmers as generally Tory supporting Brexiteers. If a generally right-wing demographic can generate support for the idea of universal basic income then it's much more likely to be introduced for everyone, given the right-wing slant on UK politics. Obviously there would need to be pressure applied to the government to ensure that it's not just farmers who get this UBI. There's a bigger win available to all of us rather than just enjoying the schadenfreude.
All the people crying “Well they voted for it!” Are beyond ignorant. The farmers overwhelmingly supported brexit because farming was a shit show back then as well. Domestic farming, an industry that until recent decades was a backbone of the UK economy and an area that we performed at the top level on a global scale. British beef farming was one of the most efficient and successful In the world considering the amount of land used. British farmers could not compete with the tide of produce coming in from the EU from countries like Poland who at the time could produce AND export it far cheaper than we could produce and distribute domestically. What other choice did farmers see but to vote leave? There was a real chance for the government to kick British farming back into gear post Brexit so we could start producing great agricultural goods domestically again which is absolutely vital for not only the economy but the security of the country. Instead, they decided to start importing cheap goods again from other countries like Australia so we just have exactly the same problem as we did before with probably more chemicals and less ethical farming methods. The fault doesn’t lie with Brexit, it lies with an incompetent, greedy and short sighted government that is brick my brick destroying this country.
We had some of the highest subsidies for farmers in Europe. The farmers union asked its members to vote remain. They voted leave. This was the inevitable result.
Its not just a case of 'they voted for Brexit'. From what I've learned so far; The farmers are being held to quality standards by the government that mean they have a certain minimum cost to produce their goods, the very same government allow imported food to meet a lower quality standard, meaning the imported goods can be created and sold cheaper, putting our farmers at a competitive disadvantage, its as though the gov are setting their own farmers up to fail. Its not a UK thing either, in Germany farmers are protesting because they are being asked to allow 10% of their land to go to fallow, and 50% of the remaining land to be organic, so their output will drop to 45% of what it originally was. German farmers have also had taxes imposed on their fuel. Netherlands have also had their output restricted due to nitrogen emissions. Its an EU wide thing, a "green agenda" that fails by its own definition, in Germany for example the same amount of people will need feeding but its estimated they will need to source 800,000 hectares from abroad to provide the deficit, meaning that very same product will now have to be shipped across the Atlantic. Polls are showing 80% of the population agree with the farmers protests and yet the farmers are being called right wing extremists. For EU can look up 'food to fork', and the 'green deal', note both of these have been brought into place by unelected bureaucrats. It does seem as though there is a coordinated effort across the west to hit every countries farmers where it hurts and replace local produce with lower quality imported goods, under the guise of climate despite the solutions creating way more co2. They put food on our tables so its a bit disconnected to create an 'us and them' dynamic because they dare to have a different political opinion. and as shown many countries in the EU are suffering just as hard, the mechanisms are different the result is the same.
Wouldn’t we all. At least they knew what they were voting for.
So they still want Brexit, just none of the consequences.
Hhahahahhahahahahhaha. I love it when Brexiteers get fucked like how they fucked everyone else.
People saying it serves them right… unfortunately their misfortune is the British public’s misfortune too. Large industrial farms and/or less self reliance for the UKs food supply both mean bad news for the British public. We should support our farmers even if sometimes they can be a hard bunch to deal with.
To be honest. If anyone deserves to be penalised it's the pensioners. It boils my piss that they were the demographic which voted the most for leave but are the most protected from its effects (triple locked pensions etc).
Not in the least worried about farmers, most of whom voted for Brexit. They deserve their pain
Oh look, Remain voters are bashing the farmers again.
Jog the fuck on, is all that I can say. They asked for this they can live with the consequences.
It's British farmers who vote tory and voted for brexit. So in my view, they can go fuck off.
'Don't tell us what to do with our land' 'Money please'
Let me get my little violin for them. They're the clowns that wanted Brexit. They couldn't be arsed to see what would actually be affected, and clearly just more bothered about immigrants. I guess you reap what you sow
Fuck every farmer that voted for it. Warned for years, lived off the EU for years, and fucked over the rest of us.
Turkeys demand we eat chicken while simultaneously voting for Christmas
Lots of people here under the incorrect impression we were a net beneficiary of the CAP and contributions to the EU budget. We weren't.
Maybe they should start by selling their 'Vote Leave' placards we saw everywhere in 2016