Should the UK be more self-sufficient?

Of course there should - we are importing milk for heavens sake whilst many dairy farmers have sold their herds and are now selling their land for homes and roads. once gone we may be sorry.

We are, at this moment, still part of the EU single market. It makes no sense to say we should be able to go it alone, when as a whole entity we are pretty well sufficient.
Of course, once T May has had her way, your question will be very relevant.

The UK is a net exporter of milk.

The UK consumes 14,149,000,000 litres of milk a year, of which 213,000,000 litres is imported.

We import more butter and cheese from Ireland than any other country.

We have imported butter from New Zealand for as long as I can remember (certainly pre-EU).

During the last war, when our supply ships were cut off, rationing came in, and all were encouraged to turn even small gardens into all veg gardens.
We don't need to be so extreme now, but we could grow more, and we could start producing more goods, quality goods, that would always find a market.
However, the population is now so large here, that we will always need to import a lot of things, and I don't see that changing ( or being a problem) for the future.
All countries want to sell their produce, there is no doom scenario approaching where we could never buy the things we need.

I guess if the UK goes it alone, we won't have to worry if our bananas are bendy or straight, because we don't have the weather to grow them.

Yes, I am a UK manufacturer.

I, for one, would not like to turn the clock back on the wonderful diversity of food stuffs we now have available in our shops.

I wasn't born until the war was over, but my memory of 1950s and 1960s food is not positive. No, thank you!

The shopper has the power in their hands to change things. If you buy imported butter, lamb or other goods maybe its time you changed your shopping habits.

So Ddill am I just imagining that farmers are selling their herds?

One of the biggest problems manufacturers in the UK have is competing with cheaper imported goods. Whilst I am not saying any of these are wrong manufacturers in this country have to jump through a million legislative hoops before the goods actually "hit the shelves" . Imagine a widget. In order to make that widget the manufacturer has to pay wages of at least the minimum rates set by government , employers NI, employers liability insurances, workplace pension , sick pay, maternity pay, paternity pay etc. corporation tax, rates, rent (or mortgage),electricity,gas, water, buildings insurance, fire insurance etc. he/she is subject to strict H&S laws and various random inspections.

I could go on and bore you to tears with another hundred things a manufacturer has to consider in order to make that widget. Which is partly why a lot of manufacturing has gradually moved away from the UK.

That "widget" could easily be a box of cereal or a pat of butter.

It would be good if we could do this, but with the constant growth in population and the demand for better housing the land can only provide us with so much. Home grown is so much nicer, and more people seem to be growing their own, as we did during the war. I rather feel we need better land management, where areas of what appear to be suitable for building are left to wilderness, and other places which look good enough for growing are used for building. Better use of disused buildings for houses, or at least accommodation would ease the housing problem, but all we seem able to do is gobble up the green spaces. We know that farmers are suffering and perhaps more of us should look at what we buy and where it comes from, and decide for ourselves who we want to support. It is not easy, is it, so much of our food is now imported even the basic vegetables, and we have grown use to the more exotic delicacies.

No, you're not imagining it Pamela. Start a campaign to get British supermarkets and consumers to pay more for their milk. However, most of the milk consumed in the UK is British.

The WI did start a campaign, about ten years ago, to support our dairy farmers, and pursuade supermarkets to pay a tiny amount more to them.
The WI gets lots of things done!

Most of the basic vegetables I buy are grown relatively locally. However, I defy even the hardiest of British farmers to grow salad crops in Winter, except in polytunnels.

British farming is unproductive compared with some other countries and relies heavily on subsidies. Economically,it makes more sense to import from countries where food can be produced more cheaply and use our resources to do what we're good at.

This is the 1846 Corn Law repeal all over again. The only people who gain from domestic production are the owners.

As for buying British manufactured goods, that's fine for those who can afford them. Try persuading somebody with a very low wage to buy British.

References to the war remind us that, even with a much smaller population, we struggled to feed ourselves. It would be well nigh impossible now.

DD I'm not suggesting we do away with imports but that, should push come to shove, we ought to be able to grow enough at least to support our population.

As far as housing grows ....are we going to end up completely paved over to feed an ever increasing population of one-person households?

People in his Country do not like paying high prices for food. But the day will come when we leave the EU and will have to pay. Food producers need a decent price for their goods and this should be, in all fairness, be passed on to the consumer.

During the last war, when our supply ships were cut off, rationing came in, and all were encouraged to turn even small gardens into all veg gardens.

And a very boring and limited diet it was too from what I have been told - or were you around and remember it roses? Claiming the war as a wonderful time seems very odd to me unless you think our backs will be as 'against the wall' upon leaving the EU as they were then.

Where does roses say the war was a wonderful time?

I think there is more to be said for greater diversity in energy Anya but I have thought that for many years. Towns and villages could be encouraged to be as self sufficient as possible.

We may change how we help our farmers when we can decide but I am not sure what we would be trying to do. Certainly science is helping - hydroponics comes to mind - with growing things we couldn't once grow. Food-wise I am more worried that we will end up agreeing to take food imports from America that would currently not pass our regulations.

Merlotgran you and others must have realised by now, there are a few posters
On GN who make it their mission in life to constantly find fault with my posts, no matter how mild, innocuous, relevant my posts are.This, from GGM2 is more of the same ,
Incorrect and ridiculous!

Yes, yes, yes.

It dismays me that people seem to have so little disregard for farmers in this country - and some supermarkets treat them with disdain. We waste a lot of perfectly good food, of course, before it even gets to the market - remember Hugh's War on Waste and the vegetables etc being discarded because they were 'the wrong size or shape'.

However, I don't think we import butter from New Zealand, daphnedill, Anchor butter has been produced in Wiltshire for a long time if that is one brand you're thinking of.

Of course, some British farmers have relocated to Spain and produce our out-of-season salads etc.
We would still need - want - to import food such as bananas and citrus etc and the argument is there that air freighting fruit and vegetables across the world helps people in under-developed countries.

I do try to buy home-produced vegetables wherever possible - it is possible to get a good variety all year round (not just root vegetables! ) but do guy courgettes from Spain as a stirfry is not the same without; however we didn't panic when they were temporarily unavailable!

British produced coffee anyone? Some things just have to be imported!

I think self-sufficiency is over-rated, especially in the modern world. This does not mean that I don't think some farming practices could be improved both here and elsewhere.

Rosesarered, there are copies of war posters still available - DIG FOR VICTORY. These were to encourage people to grow their veg .

Why the sarcasm GGMKII ? I don't understand. It was a perfectly reasonable comment that rosesarered made

Some people on here may well remember the war (not saying that roses can ) and many of us certainly can remember rationing. DH tells me that his widowed mother was the only one in the road not to keep chickens during the war. My mum told me how the next door neighbour came and dug over our front garden so that she could plant potatoes (my father was away). The back garden was full of veg and my DB kept rabbits (for the pot).

No, we don't want to go back to those days but we should support our own farmers more before they give in, sell up or, worse, commit suicide.

It was heartening to see the young people on Kate Humble's recent programme trying to make a go of farming (more in the niche markets) and bringing new ideas to the world of farming.