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Farmers?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
What do you think about them? Is it right for them to recieve lots of money to help them keep their industry how it has always been. Or should they adapt like every other industry has had to?
sorry, its breif but im intrested to learn stuff too, as a freind and I discussed it briefly today
sorry, its breif but im intrested to learn stuff too, as a freind and I discussed it briefly today
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Yeah I beleive they should have help, most other industries get lots of help so why not them. Especially when they had such a bad time and lots of them almost lost their farms.
We need to keep british farming going, we dont want to have to import everything.
The WTO talks in Cancun are relevant to this. Western Governments subsidising its own agriculture yet developing countries are not allowed to or can't afford to subsidise their own. This leads to unfair trade, poverty and civil unrest.
british beef ...safer than sex.
Cos in some cases, having the subsidies actually makes things worse rather than better.
Found this article if you're interested
It would be a lot more logical to "industrialize" farming more to make it more efficient and porfitable by removing most of the financial support and let the "strongest farmers" survive. Or at least I feel that way. Here sheep farmers are killing each other because there is more meat produced than the market can handle, which leads to all of them getting paid nowt and them being one of the poorest people in Iceland. And it seems that the government funding is one of the few reasons so many are still doing this. The situation isn't much better in other kind of farming. If they had to finance this on their own then the market would take care of those problems on it's own.
But what does make me back out of those views is the fact that "industrialization of farming" would probably mean less quality of life for the animals because the farms would be run like a factory, where low cost, efficiency and profit overrules actual care for the animals. And it might also make it more desireable to pump the animals with drugs to increase growth rate and such. Those are living beings, and it would be a real shame if they would be treated like a piece of machinery.
I'm however not saying that it would get that bad, but it is my belief that it would increase the probabilities of that happening. At least here in Iceland, chicken farms are resembling factories more and more with hundreds of animals kept in the same room where they get no privacy or a real place to rest, nor a moment's silence. I cannot imagine anything being able to grow up soundly in an environment like that.
I'd like to see farmers abiding to the laws of the market, but if the cost is the animals' welfare then I would rather have the government support those who are more likely in it for something else than just money.
You mean plant shitty GM fields with no concern to what the long term effects othe environment could be? If this is progression... urgh.
Goods would be cheaper WITHOUT subsidies!!
Free trade must be fully accepted by the West (that means no hypocritical nonsense from Dubya Bush).
is it right that foods should sell for less than it cost to produce? I think not.
In my limited view I would see subsidies being more that just dishing out money so we can enjoy cheap food (at the expense of someone else. Why shouldn't we pay a proper price for the things we need.
I read a book once called the empty harvest - very interesting. all about the link between food, immunity and the planet - I would recommend it.
The agricultural and farmers bodies need to educate the British public more on the benefits over imported produce. I can't see that removing the constraints would be a good move, I for one am happy to pay more for a higher quality of food, but then this is because I have grown aware of the benefits.
Current farmers are restricted on the amount which they can produce. How does this help us?
Secondly, farmers arent strickly restricted as to how much they can produce, well not arables anyway. They are limited by the land size, there is a difference.
Thirdly, if you want to learn more about farming, check out both the Curry Commision Report and the DEFRA website.
MoK the constraints I refer to are to do with food hygiene and production standards including animal rearing not production quotas.
It does help to avoid the "butter mountains" and lakes of wine (can't remember what the actual phrase was) that caused so many problems in the past.
It's a really difficult issue to resolve. I don't know what the best course of action is.
That is as much about these same restrictions as anything. The build up of these "mountains" was because the farmers weren't allowed to distribute it, instead having to destroy it.
If we restrict the amount of production then we restrict the supply. Do that and prices rise.
I also think it's a disgusting way of keeping the Third World in poverty, these people are farmers and could provide us with a lot of food, we in the West would get cheap food, they would get a decent income and everyone's happy. I also don't think it would adversely affect EU farmers, they couldn't compete on price obviously but there is a large amount of national loyalty to farmers (despite BSE, Salmonella, etc) and it would provide a good incentive for farmers to compete on quality so I think EU farmers would be organic and treat their animals better because it would distinguish them from their Third World counterparts.
So I can't see any drawbacks apart from a few French farmers getting stroppy and I very much hope the WTO outlaws this unfair practice.
our goods are not cheap,as i read in some report when i was younger, we pay for our good 3 times over, in taxes to subsidise them, then we pay the apparantly'cheap' prices for the food, then we pay for the clean up when the effort for cheap production/transportation leads to foot&mouth etc
My personal belief is that they shouldnt get subsidies. If i remember rightly (which i probably dont) i read something in the guardian which said something about them recieving £32,000 a year?
Anyway, other industries have had to adapt. The UK is producing more crops and food than it is needing anyway. This wouldnt be a bad thing if it could be given away to any poor countries that needed them, but of course the farmers and that wont give it away for free
(probably isnt making much sense)
I admit hands up to not knowing enough about this issue.
Why exactly were they prevented from distributing these goods?
Say we stop all support and allow total free trade, do you think the quality of our food will increase? No, do you think the condictions under which it is produced will improve? No, quite the opposite.
Free trade should only be allowed if other countries follow enviromental and health and safety regualtion we have here. Other wise it isnt free trade at all.
Plus there is the serious issue of what to do with the farm land if we dont want farmers, let it just run wild? Turn it into parks? Well something needs to be done with it and that costs.
Who knows the land, whos already there with a vested interest in it? Oh right, its the farmers.
I'm not saying we should just keep paying them in the way we do now, but as the government is already doing we should swap support from Pillar I to II. This means from direct production subsidies towards projects such as the Farm Woodland Scheme, and the Arable Areas Payment Scheme. These pay farmers for looking after the land rather than actualy producing anything.
This is approved by the WTO as not distorting trade, its better for the enviroment and will help us get healthier better food.
Ah, if only things were that simple....
You know, I can't actually remember. But it was an EU wide issue, and is related to worldwide trade agreements
I believe that we were producing more than we could consume, therefore we could afford to dump it cheap on the world market. Naturally this didn't please our trading partners...
At least that's what I can remember, but I'm sure that tere is more to it than that - I suspect that the CAP is in there somewhere and (knowing the EU laws) I wouldn't be surprised if the agreement was in the interestd of the French Farmers!
http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/dl/Qeu-farm-cap-history.RfDV_DuQ.html
It was over-production rather than being forced not to distribute.
I can understand now why Poland's farmers are so worried about joining the EU.
*coughs*
This is the limiting on production I was talking about.
Trouble with this was that the CAP depended on a target price for arable goods. With all this extra supply if it had been allowed to be sold the price would have collapsed way below the target price so they only thing the EU could do to stop the farmers selling their produce was to buy it and store it.
Storing these goods meant that the supply to the open market was reduced and so the price was forced up to the target price and of course the EU had to pay the target price to buy these goods or farmers would just sell it on the open market for capitalise on the shortage of supply.
Hence it was a catch 22 situation for the EU, they couldn't pay the farmers less than the target price because then supply would increase and the target price would fall. So the EU was buying vast quantities of the stuff and this led to the wine lakes and butter mountains we came to know.
This was seen as a waste of produce as it would just be put in warehouses and would go off, so in 1992 there were new reforms enacted to stop the waste of produce.
The 1992 reforms were based on the principle of achieving the target price, the EU said that for the free market to achieve the target price farmers would have to cut production by 15%, so what they did was pay farmers the equivalent of the target price to leave their land alone or as it was called "environmentally conserve" the land. This meant that farmers were being paid to do nothing! Those farmers with large enough sites (ie; the rich ones) used this opportunity to build a golf course or confererence centre on the newly available land and lease out the land so they also gain from being paid rent for the land they aren't using.
So there you have the ludicrous story of the CAP and this sheer waste is why I think it should be abolished.
Nonsense.
Non tariff barriers are simply protectionist methods in another name. If African grown oranges aren't harmful to people in Africa, logically they shouldn't be harmful to people in Europe or the UK.
Frankly, I couldn't care where my fruit/vegetables came from. If the prices for these goods are low, then that is all that concerns me.
that would be fair trade
There is also the issue of 'food miles' if we open up trade futher, its not exactly the greatest thing for the enviroment to have all our food flying in.