The farmers’ protest had one effect three days after the event*: are others in the pipeline?

Photograph sent by FFA’s William Taylor who was present at the huge protest. He stated that the protest’s main aims were to highlight dishonest food labelling, to call on Government to act to block sub-standard food imports and to take action to address fears over national food security.”

*On Monday after the protest, the government announced that the amount of farmland in England that can be taken out of food production under the post-Brexit farming subsidy scheme will now be limited, following concerns that the new policy would erode domestic food security. Farmers applying to the Sustainable Farming Incentive, one of the new subsidies, will be able to use only a quarter of their land for six different environmental measures that take land out of direct food production.

The Independent reports the words of demonstrator Liz Webster, a Wiltshire beef and arable farmer and the Save British Farming founder

She said the situation risked food security and the nation’s health and farmers had been “totally betrayed” by the Government. The new English agricultural policy of paying farmers for environmental measures such as habitat creation was taking land out of food production.

Trade deals with New Zealand, Australia, and another deal with 11 countries including Canada, Japan and Mexico, along with a lack of import checks, were allowing lower standard foods into the country.

British producers had also lost the level playing field with EU farmers and within the UK, she added, saying European farmers were still receiving subsidies, had freedom of movement for labour and had continued to have access to British markets, enabling them to undercut UK farmers.

Passing the Cenotaph in central London on Friday

Journalist Gordon Rayner was struck by farmer Andrew Gibson’s clear expression of Government policy:

They want us to become low-carbon producers to meet their green targets, but they are doing it by offshoring carbon production to other countries. It’s just unreal.

Carbon dioxide emissions are currently judged to occur at the point of production, not use. So if I eat beans grown in Kenya, the associated emissions go to Kenya.

Thus, Britain will achieve net zero in the way the farmer described: the planet will still suffer emissions, but not, according to these rules, from the UK.

Instead of supporting British farmers, the Government allows cheap imports, produced using chemicals and methods that are banned here. They want us to become low-carbon producers to meet their green targets but they are doing it by offshoring carbon production to other countries. It’s just unreal.

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COMMENT

And former farm-manager, Richard Bruce, writes:

It is one almighty mess isn’t it? Energy use creates heat and governments encourage ever greater use of energy which inevitably increases the warming of the planet. Global warming is a symptom, as is the ever-decreasing diversity of species.

Farmers and farmland are being sacrificed by the multi-nationals to allow continuing denial of the climate warming activities of industry.

Locally we have farms mostly growing crops to feed biodigesters and not people and ever-increasing areas of good fertile farmland are being sacrificed to solar panels.

No one ever mentions the carbon footprint of the military, of rockets into space, of the constant bombardment of the Earth of radio and microwaves from arrays of satellites, from computer systems and the likes of Bitcoin, or even the Large Hadron Collider which reportedly uses more energy than some countries.

Even the heating of rivers and oceans by water cooled nuclear reactors is ignored, despite the known danger of methane release and ice-melt, as the oceans warm.

The whole carbon capture idea is just one massive con to enable things to continue unchanged ((see EnergyGov, Reuters and the IISD).

There is no way that planting trees here will reverse global warming when the Amazon forests and other key drivers of climate are rapidly being destroyed.

To blame cows for releasing methane when wars rage, holiday flights are encouraged, methane is burned in rockets and carbon dioxide is produced for industry and entertainment  is madness.

Bovines have walked this Earth for millennia and are a part of the natural carbon and nitrogen cycles. Moreover they built up the fertility of the soil which are now exploited for profit.

Farmers know that farms have a limit of stock numbers beyond which the land cannot support the livestock on it. Exceed that stocking rate and life becomes unsustainable without importing food. It is the same for countries and eventually the Earth.

Perhaps farmers are being sacrificed by those who have no understanding of their importance?

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