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Brexit and the UK food industry.
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Howburn Digger
Howburn Digger
986 posts

Re: Brexit and the UK food industry.
Jul 27, 2017, 17:42
thesweetcheat wrote:
2014 figures for milk, butter and cheese:


Butter ('000 TONNES)
Production 141
Imports 95
Exports 51
Domestic Use 185

Cheese ('000 TONNES)
Production 416
Imports 469
Exports 134
Domestic Use 751


So we import more than half the butter we use.

And we import more than half the cheese we use.

Captain Starlet wrote:
Well talking to all the independent farmers around the country who say otherwise I'll take their viewpoint on it as they're the ones who'll lose out!


I don't think you have been "talking to ALL the independent farmers round the country" at all. Whether they said wise or otherwise.
I am not having any kind of dig at hard working small independent farmers, they have seldom had anything except minimum wage (actually much less) from the "single farm payment" subsidy anyway. All that has happened is that it has made small farmers raising crops and livestock have a hard time and fat wealthy land-owning tax avoiders have an easy life scooping benefits and subsidies for not farming but "guarding the land".

I see miles and miles of empty fields growing nothing but a few sheep and hay for horse fodder sales. There are mega-estates in Southern Scotland owned by the ultra-wealthy. You can drive for miles and miles and see no productive farming at all. I do not think EU "single farm payment" subsidies should be going to pay "farmers" who do nothing but sell a couple of pony rides and let kids feed two white goats at a "petting farm" for a fiver a head. Nor should "single farm payment" subsidies be going to "farms" who provide nothing but livery, grazing and stabling for horses rich people cannot keep in their suburban gardens. Something seems to be subsidised there and I know it is not hard working farmers who are growing livestock and crops. Nor should we be paying the already hideously wealthy IDS and his wife £1.5 Million in subsidies for the estate they inherited - whether they do anything productive with the estate or not... they get the money... from us.
The rotten system of Single Farm Payments should go and be replaced with something which is designed to cater for hard working small independent farmers - not the mega rich estates of the already mega wealthy and tax-dodging overseas investment portfolios of non-resident non-producers. It has taken the EU decades of careful planning and work to get the Single Farm Paynment fiasco and independent farming to this sorry state.
Sorry if I didn't make myself clear before.
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