We don't need our farmers and fishermen

The problem with abandoning a basic industry like agriculture, is that your foreign suppliers have you over a barrel on price and condirions of supply.

There was an illustration of this on the news this morning.

India is the main world producer of generic medicines. The ones most of us take on a regular basis and includes pain killers like paracetamol. Today India announced that it is restricting the export of these items as with a Covid-90 pandemic imminent, it is keeping these products in India for its own inhabitants. India's population is 1.4 billion.

Maybe you did . I find them fascinating (I know -sad). Repealing the Corn Laws changed the balance between town and country in the UK for ever. The Industrial Revolution meant that the urban population was growing. They couldn't grow their own food, so depended on the price of British grain for their bread. Repealing the Corn Laws meant that the UK imported US grain with low tariffs and meant the price of bread remained relatively stable and low. It also meant that farmers lost some of their traditional power as gentry.

I think I must have learnt something about the Corn Laws in the end growstuff as I got a good result in my GCE History, or perhaps I avoided that question.

The merchant navy sustained a higher casualty rate during WW2 than almost any other branch of the armed services, which is often forgotten.

The merchant navy brought much more than grain. They brought millions of tons of tinned goods, arms, farm machinery and fuel. The country couldn't have survived without the imports.

People sometimes have the idea that the UK was totally isolated from the rest of the world during the war. It wasn't, although sea travel was obviously very dangerous.

Churchill was worried about the war in the Atlantic and was concerned that if the German U-boats had damaged any more shipping, the war could have been lost. Until 1942, the UK was still importing quantities of goods from Australia and New Zealand. We also exported to the Soviet Union via a very dangerous route.

growstuff - I've changed my POV about what you said about UK being selfsupporting during WW2 and now partly agree with you .
I know about the war in the Atlantic, my Dad was in a RN ship trying to protect the brave Merchant Navy ships from Nazi bombers and Uboats.
Probably, as Maizie wrote, they were bringing mainly grain from Canada and the US, which we're still dependent on for our daily bread. Our country is too small to provide enough grain for our needs.
I also know about the food shortages in those days of rationing, but on the bright side few cases of obesity!
I'm not so worried about meat, but we still need fresh fruit and veg. to kep us healthy.
Our local Tesco has most of their veg. from british growers.
Then as others have said -who is going to pick them?
As a sideline, french farmers also have serious problems, in spite of the subsidies from the EU.

Should have written "repeal" of the Corn Laws.

Callistemon The Corn Laws were hugely important in the nineteenth century. They meant importing more grain from the US, cheaper food for the masses (increasing numbers of city/town dwellers) and less profit for landowners/farmers.

They were responsible for the growing importance of cities such as Manchester, which in the early 19th century wasn't represented in Parliament.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

No, it wasn't you, Callistomen.

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?

Apologies M0nica, it was quizqueen who talked about buying British

Yes, I buy British produce wherever possible quizqueen.