We don't need our farmers and fishermen

Maybe English farmers and fishermen could find a new job....maybe knitting tea cozies! I cannot imagine an England without its farmers and fishermen. Stand up and support them.

If we are to judge everything on a narrowly right wing economic, ie monetary, basis. I would imagine that Parliament itself is dispensible,

The building it is based in needs about £5 billion of repairs. Why not just demolish it and build a hotel for all the tourists who would be delighted if the site included a more convenient and highly profitable branch of Bicester Village?

Get rid of those unnecessary and costly MPs, Ministers, Civil Servants etc. and have a Libertarian free for all instead.

Why hasn't Cummings hired you, MOnica? ??

Buying British is a complete irrelevance to what we are discussing. It's been pointed out many times that UK farmers aren't able to produce enough to feed the UK population. Haven't been able to for at least 100 years.
Buying British won't boost farmers' incomes particularly, either, they sell mostly supermarkets or food processors, who pay as little as possible for their produce.

...mostly to supermarkets...

Buying British, oh For God's Sake. There is a market garden minutes from me. Can I buy the produce? No.

So let me get this straight - it’s not the job of Govt to shout loudly in support of the farmers and fishermen who feed this country and contribute to the export market M0nica? No, the job of Govt is to dismiss their importance - it’s actually up to the consumer to support them by only buying British?

And just how will we do that if the Tories make it harder for us to access high quality (ie EU standard quality) homegrown produce?

MaizieD I think it was me condemning the wasteland of discarded plastic and the way the African workers were treated and I am a remain voter. Voting remain doesn't mean that I approve of all that the EU does nor that I believe other countries follow the regulations and carry out best practice. Sitting on the fence for a while before voting gave me a view of both sides.

Yes, I buy British produce wherever possible quizqueen.

Apologies M0nica, it was quizqueen who talked about buying British

I think many people buy British grown produce wherever possible QQ. It's much easier now to identify where produce is from; the Red Tractor symbol on meat and poultry has helped shoppers to make a conscious choice. And even supermarket pre packed vegetables have their country of origin clearly marked on them. The only difficulty will be, post Brexit, who will be there to pick them?

No, it wasn't you, Callistomen.

British farmers could produce far more of our food if there was a change - and not an enormous one in our eating habits.

I am absolutely not a vegan, but if we changed our diet so that we ate less meat and dairy and more vegetables and all the animals we do rear were reared in a environmentally sustainable way www.pastureforlife.org/ This would reduce the amount of land used to grow animal food and free it to grow crops for human consumption

Interesting - but not surprising - that this spad didn’t focus on increasing production, isn’t it.

But would farmers make any more money if they did that? Seeing that they're mostly in thrall to supermarket buyers and food processors.

After all, I 'think' this thread is as much about farmers' livelihoods as it is about how much food they can produce for us.

Aren't there dangers in increasing production, too, SirChenjin. There was a big push for it after WWII I recall, as the government was worried about our food security and vulnerability during the war. Resulted in prairie fields and polluted streams and rivers from fertilizer runoff, damaged environment. We have to think about unintended consequences, too.

It seems to be a problem in other countries too.

Could it be part of the negotiating plans - that farmers will be sacrificed on the altar of trade deals?

It is not just here, Australian farmers are fearful of what will happen as their government disregards them and the production of home-grown food in the rush to negotiate overseas deals.

Politicians and economists do not care.
I don't think George Eustice, pleasant though he may be, will stand up and fight for farmers.
Anyone who does could be sacked anyway.

Absolutely agree Maizie - I would have expected any Govt who wanted to go down the route that M0nica suggested to have looked at more sustainable methods of increasing production rather than simply claiming we don’t need it. Importing our food would bring about similar unintended consequences.

Tim Leuwig is part of a long-term plan of which we know very little.

I don't just buy British in preference to foreign imports - I grow it! I have a miniscule garden (some people don't even have that), but I grow most of the veggies I need in summer. However, I live on my own and I don't have a full-time job and I can't grow what I need during the winter months.

Let's get something absolutely clear! The UK has not been self-sufficient in food for hundreds of years. Remember learning about the Corn Laws at school? We weren't anything like self-sufficient even during WW2 and would have starved if convoys hadn't brought us food from the rest of the world. Even though, British production did increase, the choice was extremely limited.

UK food self-sufficiency would require a revolution in farming practices.

However, that's not what's being proposed. It's been on the agenda for some time to turn post-Brexit UK into Singapore-on-Thames. Free marketeers want to stop all subsidies going to agriculture and only businesses which make a profit would survive. The most profitable businesses in the UK are services. There is no thought about what would happen to other businesses, such as agriculture, which at the moment isn't profitable. From an economic point of view, food production contributes little to GDP and there aren't that many people employed in food production, although there are many more employed in processing.

It's not difficult to see how the theoretical economists' minds are working. This is nothing to do with "Buying British", the environment, land use or the workers. It's to do with profit.

MOnica I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that the UK imports most of its animal foodstuffs. Globally, it might be a good idea, but I don't think it would affect land use in the UK.

Chewbacca raises an important point about who would pick fruit and vegetables, if foreign workers are restricted. It seems that there are two options:
a) The country returns to pre-Industrial Revolution social structures, with a high proportion of people living off the land.
b) We forget about producing our own food and import it from other countries.
Both options would have devastating effects on prices, employment, land use, etc.

Change on this scale needs joined-up thinking. Why wasn't it thrashed out transparently before the referendum and in the years since the referendum? It all smacks of a hidden agenda, which those keen to push Brexit don't want to be honest about.

Quizqueen I buy local as much as humanly possible .I would think twice about buying anything that doesn't have a Saltire on the label.IF I buy in a supermarket.Otherwise my Lamb comes from my friends farm the other side of the valley,milk delivered from a farm I can see from my window and my eggs make a longer journey from over the hill about 12 miles,meat from the farm shop veg from the market stall thats says "YES WE HAVE NO BANANAS" because they only sell stuff grown in Scotland .Including fruit in season,our berries are the best you can buy ,plums,usually Victoria which you rarely see in shops .Fish is bought from the fishmonger who gets his from Scottish boats .It IS possible ,may cost more and we are lucky we can afford it .I do admit to English butter because its made in the county my GD's other granny lives and she wont eat any other butter and I do buy Bananas ,fairtrade ones and my secret vice cyprus potatoes.
Everyone should be able to buy food thats good quality and a reasonable price ,sadly thats not the case and in Brexit land it will be even harder .I cant understand why anyone would have voted for chicken that had to be chlorine washed to kill disease and some of the other horrible food practices from across the Atlantic

The Corn Laws
That is probably when my mind started to wander off into pleasant daydreams.

theoretical economists
Yes, detached from the reality of most people's lives and how they live or prefer to live.
They may have a role in advising governments but their advice should be taken with a huge pinch of salt (preferably Maldon or Cornish) on how this would affect the lives of everyone in the country, not just farmers. Of course, supermarkets may be happy to accept more imported food as long as it is cheaper and people will buy it because their profits will increase.

But the fact is that the UK imports approximately half of the food it eats. Some people might be fortunate enough to be able to buy local and afford it (what happens if you live in a city?), but we can't just suddenly decide to produce such a huge quantity of food overnight.

The UK needs to change its farming methods and uses more pesticides and hormones and uses more land for intensive farming.

Are people really happy for that to happen?

However, this isn't what this announcement is about. It's about saying that farming in its current form isn't profitable and shouldn't be subsidised by central government. Most small and medium-sized farms will be sold to agri-businesses, who will only produce what is profitable. Many of them are owned by overseas investors, so the profits won't even be returned to the country.