It's not wumming, it's a blind belief in market forces. No consideration for all the farmers and everyone around losing their income because of those super farms. There's something to be said against upholding obselete sections of the economy, of course, but farming isn't quite the same as cashiers or people lighting street lights. Plus this sort of change of scale would change the look of the English countryside forever.
Brexited | the worst threads live the longest
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Viehzuchtsraum
Yeah, just what the environment needs. A bunch of super farms with cows grazing and chuffing methane freely.
The english guy who lives in my hometown and had a british flag with "brexit" written on it just closed his store. Apparently the extra taxes and custom charges he has to pay are too much to make it worthwhile.
That's a win for you surely?
How so?
It is right we ask these kind of questions and do a cost benefit analysis of the value of subsidizing these agri-businesses over investing in other businesses. I am not opposed to subsidizing as long as you can show a real economic benefit long term or some hope of eventual competitiveness. What is the point in handing over £30000 pounds to subsidies a hill farmer who spends all year farming to earn £17000 a year.
Hill farms are criticized by environment groups as they create a monoculture which isn't a natural landscape anyway.
I know the EU loves a farm subsidy but exploring the rational of defending farming at all costs is the smart move.
That is not to say we will do a good job with the trade offs as we are quite capable of messing them up.
My post clearly stated "If not then they would need to diversify and use their resources more efficiently."
However to clarify the price of meat in Australia compared with the UK would suggest UK farmers will be able to compete just fine. Add in transport costs and UK farmers have an inherent advantage
However if (and that's a big if) UK farmers can't compete then I don't understand how it's controversial to say that consumers should have the choice to save money and buy a safe product made elsewhere?
Across the EU for example many nations have an inherent advantage over the UK due to wages, location, expertise, economies of scale, historic subsidies, resources etc.
Should we put tarrifs on everything we import simply because the country we're importing from often has an inate advantage over us? If so then the EU must have been our worst nightmare given that without harmonisation of land, wages, expertise, labour, natural resources etc every country had an advantage over us in some area.
Why are farmers such a special case?
I don't disagree. My general view though goes in favour of free trade even if there's a slight detriment to one group but society in general benefits from cheaper costs.
If we start to look at protectionism to put a protective and inefficient blanket over one industry such as farming; why shouldn't we then do the same with for example car manufacturing by putting tarrifs on German car companies to protect UK car manufacturers; or any number of other countries who have advantages in terms of wages, natural resources etc.
We don't because the UK population end up with a worse, more expensive product/service at a higher cost and the benefit of one small group of society isn't worth everyone else suffering.
There is an argument for protectionism in very specific circumstances, such as China's state subsidies giving their steel manufacturers a market distorting short term advantage. Or in very sensitive areas of national security, but certainly not a bit of beef.
Given the devastation that the CAP caused to large swathes of Africa I'm stunned this is a controversial opinion.
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It's not just the tariff free access that will kill the farming industry , if the UK import hormone injected meat from the Australia or eventually the USA then their export market to the EU, their major customer market will die off. Who you going to sell to?
Fishing tick, farming tick....
Fishing tick, farming tick....
Economies of scale don't apply to farming. The cost of raring one cow for slaughter is the same regardless of whether you have one, one hundred or one hundred thousand cows. There is no reduction in the cost of the land, in the feed, in the time it takes to get the cow to slaughter, nothing. What makes Australian beef cheap is supply and demand. They produce more than their market can consume and the price for the surplus goes down.
It's the corn laws all over again innit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws#:~:text=The Corn Laws were tariffs,Kingdom between 1815 and 1846.&text=They were designed to keep,producers, and represented British mercantilism.
I know it stands the world on it's head but @finneh might actually be backing the poorer people of Britain against wealthy British landowners here, how intentionally I don't know.
Hill farmers would still need to be subsidised, but their sheep are worth feck-all in sales terms anyway, it's more of a social policy. The better land used for cattle would be converted for crops if prices changed, which is a more efficient way of producing food requirements anyway, as everyone knows. Britain might even end up producing more of the food it needs in the end, it would just be different food.
Best admit I don't know a right lot about the corn laws or farming really, but I suspect I'm not the only one
I know it stands the world on it's head but @finneh might actually be backing the poorer people of Britain against wealthy British landowners here, how intentionally I don't know.
Hill farmers would still need to be subsidised, but their sheep are worth feck-all in sales terms anyway, it's more of a social policy. The better land used for cattle would be converted for crops if prices changed, which is a more efficient way of producing food requirements anyway, as everyone knows. Britain might even end up producing more of the food it needs in the end, it would just be different food.
Best admit I don't know a right lot about the corn laws or farming really, but I suspect I'm not the only one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws#:~:text=The Corn Laws were tariffs,Kingdom between 1815 and 1846.&text=They were designed to keep,producers, and represented British mercantilism.
I know it stands the world on it's head but @finneh might actually be backing the poorer people of Britain against wealthy British landowners here, how intentionally I don't know.
Hill farmers would still need to be subsidised, but their sheep are worth feck-all in sales terms anyway, it's more of a social policy. The better land used for cattle would be converted for crops if prices changed, which is a more efficient way of producing food requirements anyway, as everyone knows. Britain might even end up producing more of the food it needs in the end, it would just be different food.
Best admit I don't know a right lot about the corn laws or farming really, but I suspect I'm not the only one
You've unlocked the truth - Brexiters don't want British people to eat fish, meat or dairy products. You're all going to be vegans, they did know what they were voting for after all.
You've kneejerked straght in, 'it's because of brexit so it must be bad', and for many 'the tories are doing it so it's definitely bad'. I'm of the opinion that both those things are true more often than not, but when it's every single time on every single issue then it starts to smell of what the remainers said, project fear. Unfortunately that's what lost the referendum in the first place.
Just read what you said again, imported meat and dairy would be cheaper, so people would eat less of it? Doesn't make sense does it? I remember the food arguments from the 70s, it was the self-sufficient EU would give us food security versus food is cheaper on the world markets. Neither point was wrong, we just had to make a choice. I'll swear people were more honest in their arguments then though, maybe more willing to concede a point or two where valid, it's a very rare day you come across that nowadays.
I was joking but they are going to destroy the fishing and farming industry. If that's what they want and import everything fair enough but the Brexiter arguments if you remember were about making the farming and fishing industry better.
I didn't say it would be cheaper, it will be more expensive. Fresh food would be from the EU not shipped halfway across the world.
There is no project fear. What lost the referendum is people believing complete tosh, full stop. And they still do.
Very intentionally. My views in general though tend to be borne out from looking from this angle; albeit that the solution(s) I believe would help the poorest (or more accurately far more intelligent people than I believe would help the poorest) are the complete antithesis of general leftist dogma.
For example my opinions on trade unions, effectively that (usually middle class) unionised workers are paid a higher salary at the expense of poorer non-unionised workers and also the wider population who pay higher costs. Likewise rent control being wholly counterproductive for the poorest. Likewise well intentioned but poorly thought out social programs that trap the poorest in poverty. Likewise minimum wage laws (Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition).
Likewise I'm a business owner that would advocate reducing legislation that protects business owners from being responsible for their debts if their business folds. Why should the wealthy be protected from paying their debts simply because they've encapsulated them into a separate corporate entity, whilst the poor end up homeless/penniless for failing to pay debts they've had to take on personally? I'm especially against government intervening to prevent failing businesses from folding (socialism for the wealthy); usually only a matter of years after enriching themselves and their shareholders rather than safeguarding the businesses future. Finally to bring us full circle: protectionism that enriches the wealthy at the expense of the poorest in society who can ill-afford to pay more for their basic necessities.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws#:~:text=The Corn Laws were tariffs,Kingdom between 1815 and 1846.&text=They were designed to keep,producers, and represented British mercantilism.
I know it stands the world on it's head but @finneh might actually be backing the poorer people of Britain against wealthy British landowners here, how intentionally I don't know.
Hill farmers would still need to be subsidised, but their sheep are worth feck-all in sales terms anyway, it's more of a social policy. The better land used for cattle would be converted for crops if prices changed, which is a more efficient way of producing food requirements anyway, as everyone knows. Britain might even end up producing more of the food it needs in the end, it would just be different food.
Best admit I don't know a right lot about the corn laws or farming really, but I suspect I'm not the only one
The Corn Laws issue was part of the battle between the rising industrial towns and the old landowning class that first blew up around the Reform Act. It did make food cheaper but that was a more relevant topic 200 years ago when a bad harvest could tip families into outright penury or even starvation. In 2021, I don’t see the opportunity to have slightly cheaper beef from Australia as a compelling reason to tear up the fabric of the British countryside and I certainly don‘t see clowns like Johnson and Raab as heirs to statesmen like Grey and Peel.
Since you're essentially dismissing the welfare state as useless here: the italicized bit is simply not true. Plenty of economists are calling for higher minimum wages in fact (a liveable wage). For the rest, you're talking about poorly executed versions of unionization, social housing, and other social programs. That doesn't means that any social programming is bad. In short, you seem like a libertarian the way you're talking, and I have never seen that being supported by serious economists.
There's massive monuments to Peel all over the north west. To be honest I'm not sure it's the same one. I take your point about the corn laws mind, I was just noting there was history to the subject, no more.
Nah, you won't get anywhere arguing against minimum wage with me. It's not quite pensions or the NHS but it's in the next tier. Strengthen the laws on it I say.
It is the same Peel (and I grew up not far from the one in Holcombe if you know that). But the basic difference is that Peel put a bomb under the Tory party and destroyed his own career over the repeal of the Corn Laws because he thought it was the right thing to do to alleviate poverty. If anyone believes that current government policy is driven by similar considerations (given Truss, Raab and Patel co-authored “Britannia Unchained“ which, only paraphrasing slightly, described British workers as workshy scum), then I can recommend a good fox to take care of the chickens.
I doubt many do believe that, I was just noting a link to history, which I thought may have been missed.
As for your Peel Tower, yes, Holcombe moor, Bull Hill, Wet Moss, know it very well, love it especially in winter when there's no fecker up there for miles, in the mud, rain, and wind, all in sight of millions of people (through the mist).
Brittish superfarms...
Just a quick google. The biggest cattle farm in the world that is....Australian is 24,000 square kilometres (6 million acres), 1/3 of scotland.
The cattle farmland of the biggest in UK is 40 square kilometers. Like 600 times smaller
The whole surface dedicated to UK is 93,000 square kilometres. less than 4 times the biggest cattle farm in australia.
56% of australia is used for cattle grazing. 4.3 million square kilometers roughly 20 times the size of the whole UK and 40 times the cattle surface in UK
Can you even comprehend what the economies of scale means and what are the conditions that needs to be developed?
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You're entitled to your opinion of course; however I'm merely echoing arguments made by some of the most intelligent (some winning the nobel prize for contributions to economics), economists of the last century. So to say they aren't supported by "serious economists" is clearly wrong.
I respect your view and have no designs on changing your mind!
@4bars I addressed your points with my reply to Jippy
British superfarms to compete with Australia? It's so obvious, why has no-one thought of it before?
No. you are not
Why is this a debate? British farmers can't compete Australia.
The other thing is the precedent this sets. If we offer Australia zero tariffs in food products, you can bet every quid you have that the US will demand the same.
The other thing is the precedent this sets. If we offer Australia zero tariffs in food products, you can bet every quid you have that the US will demand the same.
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Well, if they can't compete because they can't organize themselves as a superfarm, feck them, is their fault because they are lazy mofos that don't want to be competitive and have certain standards
“Things should be as cheap as possible”
‘People should diversify if their jobs no longer exist’
These are truly stupid ideas that you constantly sell as solutions.
Your idea of free markets would only work if the State controlled everything else. You’re pretending that corporations succeeding, helps people. That’s never been in the same realm as reality.
But sure. Keep tubthumping.
Also : Don’t ever mention poor people like that. You don’t give a Fcuk. ‘We need free trade with Australia so poor people can buy cheaper meat’. You’re a ghoul. Or a cult member that actually believes this sh1te.
Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on "Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition."
I wonder what are the transports costs of meats from Australia to the UK and the share that it represents from the final price.
Very good question. I forgot about that point when I said British farmers can't compete.
Indeed, I imagine its not negligible to the price at all, though probably doesn't fit in with doomsday scenario of British supermarkets full of only Australian beef. I think there's also a general move for people to prefer eating 'locally' grown or reared produce.
The thing that really bothers me which someone else has already pointed out is that if you offer tariff free access for agriculture to Australia, there's no way the USA is going to really accept anything less. Now I'm not sure the libertarian wing of the Tory party will really care, their ideology is free trade above all else. I'm not quite so enamoured though....
Quite high, even more so given the current transport/shipping cost climate.
A lot of dunning-krugers in here
The landed product will still be cheaper for a given quality. Aussie meat and wine producers will cash in big time. British goods will be cheaper in Australia but I don't know if there are any areas that will hugely expand due to the terrific free environment. If there are let me know and I'll start an import business.
A lot of dunning-krugers in here
Boris is hoping I'm one.
Although he probably doesn't care as his aims are political and not economic.
The cost/quality element isn't the be all & end all on the discussion, even for supermarkets. I don't see a tidal wave opening up on it though. The last 12 months has taught many FMCG industries, including the one I work in, the reliance on supply chains shipping goods from the furthest east points of the globe is a concern.
The idea is so ingenious that it is really hard to come up with it.British superfarms to compete with Australia? It's so obvious, why has no-one thought of it before?