I do wonder- is this what the Brexiters wanted?

Callistemon

I can recommend the Herefordshire asparagus!

I'm good for tonight with Cornish thanks.

Alegrias I don’t think it’s really the same thing as the women’s wages argument. It’s not that itinerants took locals jobs at lower wages. They wouldn’t have wanted them anyway. The whole essence is that you work away and return home.

It was the availability of cheap itinerant workers and its economic benefit to shareholders that caused the face of farming to change and the work not to be viable as a means of permanent employment.

No I didn’t think it was worth throwing the whole country into disarray. I voted remain. But then I wasn’t unemployed and homeless. I was doing ok with the status quo. I wanted support for those who were having to deal with massive life changes. But it wasn’t forthcoming -from anywhere..

Was it worth making people unemployed and homeless so that other people could have easy access to holiday homes and visiting relatives abroad? Honestly that’s pretty much what the moans and cries of anger sounded like on here.

Two nations? Or maybe a continent divided

up, not u

This isn't the Pursuit of Love thread

GrannyGravy13

Alegrias1

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/supermarkets-face-post-brexit-fruit-24118354

The obvious.

If I wasn’t on Granny duty I would pop out and photograph one of our many farm shops or supermarkets, no empty shelves, could be a region problem?

Have just had a quick browse in my fridge, Asparagus, potatoes, cauliflower, cabbages, brussel sprouts, strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, onions, just a few U.K. grown products.

There is a Scottish Fish site saying that they have exported my salmon in the last three months than a long time.

One minute the media is accused of being sensationalist, next totally believable?

I'm alright Jack.

Is it this one?

thefishsite.com/articles/scots-salmon-producers-report-record-exports-to-europe-despite-brexit

The one that says volumes are u but value is down?

I can recommend the Herefordshire asparagus!

Ah the poor EU really isn’t having a good decade and we’re not even 18 months in.

At least they didn’t lose their second biggest economy or anything.

I feel like I’m giving an agricultural lecture

You can say whatever you like Peasblossom but others will always know far more than you about it even if never having owned or worked on a farm.

*my - *more

Alegrias1

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/supermarkets-face-post-brexit-fruit-24118354

The obvious.

If I wasn’t on Granny duty I would pop out and photograph one of our many farm shops or supermarkets, no empty shelves, could be a region problem?

Have just had a quick browse in my fridge, Asparagus, potatoes, cauliflower, cabbages, brussel sprouts, strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, onions, just a few U.K. grown products.

There is a Scottish Fish site saying that they have exported my salmon in the last three months than a long time.

One minute the media is accused of being sensationalist, next totally believable?

drivel not develop. ?

I feel like I’m giving an agricultural lecture ? but it is interesting how much understanding I take for understood.

Of course crops are seasonal and specific to our climate unless you provide artificial means. But a variety of crops would be grown that provided a job year round. But that meant paying a wage year round. It’s much more profitable to grow one or two specialised crops that only require labour for a few weeks and some that you can hire a machine for for a few days. No employment obligations either.

This method of farming became widely possible with the availability of itinerant workers. If they’re not available the farming method will have to change to be economically viable.

I could develop on here about the alternatives but I’m sure I’m drifting towards my thread about being boring?

Rented farm cottages have been sold off, mostly to weekenders, as they were no longer needed for a permanent workforce. I guess there’ll be a raft of planning applications on farms now. You need your stockman on site!

Here's some more:

www.fruitnet.com/fpj/article/185221/scottish-berry-growers-fear-picker-shortage

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/business/farming/farming-news/2224051/mps-say-british-producers-at-bottom-of-governments-priorities-list-as-fruit-farms-warn-crops-could-be-left-unpicked/

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/supermarkets-face-post-brexit-fruit-24118354

The obvious.

Well sorry to point out the obvious but there is an abundance of U.K. fruit and vegetables on the shelves so someone/something is picking and packing them.

Peasblossom

It’ll be a bit difficult to tell for a few years won’t it, whether people in these regions feel their lives have improved.

And untangling from the effects of Covid isn’t easy but in the immediate term.

The unavailability of cheap itinerant work gangs means that farmers (especially conglomerates for whom shareholder profit is the driving force) are moving from one of crops to all year round farming, meaning that more permanent agricultural jobs are beginning to become available.

Pressure on housing, medical services and social services has eased somewhat as families have moved back into Europe. There was a disproportionate influx that Councils found difficult because the East has always been a low income/high unemployment area with lower central support.

More holiday trade jobs are available to local people, which traditionally removed people from unemployment temporarily. As in agricultural work, cheap intinerant kabour was employed in these as they would accept low wages with board and lodging as a component. They were employed in preference to local Labour that needed a wage that would enable them to pay rent and feed a family.

I don’t know how to explain this to make you understand how desperate and despairing many, many people had become.

The taunt of ‘are they queuing up for the agricultural jobs” shows a lack of understanding of how the system worked. A job for ten or twelve weeks, that includes a bunk in a caravan and food is no good to someone who pays rent on a house throughout the year and needs to feed children as well as themselves.

But surely seasonal crops are just that. Seasonal. Hasn’t it always been the same. A local veggie shop to us always sold Spalding produce and it was seasonal. That’s the nature of farming isn’t it? And I can’t see people going to Spalding for a holiday. And that’s seasonal too. I do agree that the rural poor have always been ignored and emphasis is always in the urban poor but that’s the responsibility of the government. And from what I’ve seen of poorer areas, both rural and urban, most initiatives to improve the lot of the people there seem to have had EU funding.

Alegrias1

Kali2 et al - I thought you would have known that faux outrage is the worst crime anyone on GN could be accused of.

Concern for other people? Pah! And we're the ones who are accused of saying "I'm alright Jack"

You couldn't make it up.

Nah! It's the Union Jacks who think they're alright and have stuck two fingers up at those posh southerners.

It is not just the Hall Marks no longer being recognised I read an article last week that many U.K. qualifications are no longer being recognised in the EU - this presumably will put U.K. qualified engineers etc at a disadvantage obtaining jobs in EU companies. I have no idea how that might affect people already working in the EU.
It is having an impact on young British people who have lived in and been educated in the EU now requiring permits to continue their lives - some finding themselves in a Catch 22 situation with needing residency rights to work and needing a job to obtain residency rights. There are also various problems with youngsters going to University and fees to be paid etc. This appears to be problematic for some - which fees are applicable and grants/loans available.

Interesting what Peasblossom has been saying about the agricultural workers. Did they stop giving agricultural workers tied cottages etc for their families? In the 60s I had relatives who lived in a tied cottage in Lancashire on a mixed farm. Farming methods have changed so much over the last half century I wonder how much it would still have altered for these workers even without going into the EU.

Peasblossom I do appreciate you taking the time to post at 11:46, really. But I remain unconvinced. The local farming conglomerates are changing their business models because their former workforces are no longer available to them, understood.

But the whole section about people accepting lower wages and preventing "locals" from getting a fair wage do not convince. That's what they used to say about working women; all those men with families to support. Remember?

And even if all you say was true; is it worth throwing the entire country into economic and societal disarray? If the Government had made it impossible for the conglomerates to exploit the workers in agriculture then the EU wouldn't have come into it.

BTW, where I live strawberries are rotting where they grow because there is no-one to pick them. Farmers facing financial ruin. But maybe that's just a first world problem. Let them eat apples. (Oh wait - who will pick them.....?)

Concern for others is an admirable trait.
Using it just as a wind up merchant ... not so much.

Kali2 et al - I thought you would have known that faux outrage is the worst crime anyone on GN could be accused of.

Concern for other people? Pah! And we're the ones who are accused of saying "I'm alright Jack"

You couldn't make it up.

Oh Kali2 change the record please. You’ve been tub thumping for years! Usually on behalf of others just ‘showing empathy’. Hmm. Stirring things up more like that don’t even affect you!

I know, the matter of travel to one's holiday home is such a very first world problem, isn't it... I shall continue to complain, though...

Why are none of us surprised MaizieD!
?

Actually I don’t think travelling to a holiday home is a problem. I’m not anticipating any such bureaucracy when we travel to ours in Spain in 6 weeks’ time.

I thought the extra tariffs we’re only if family or friends planned to stay at your gaff. Am I wrong?

Whatever you thought of Brexit- the reality is that the losses are now clear, and massive and even beyond the worst expectations. Combined with Covid - it is a disaster.

Even for those who are happy to wave the nationalistic flag and play Ye Olde Colonial trumpets. FACT.

Careful, growstuff, you're using words of more than one syllable. A bit much for our self confessed bear of little brain to take in...

Goady stuff MaizieD. Unnecessary.
I thought better of you.
?

Gannygangan Yes of course but we're talking about the UK and not those who were affected by austerity measures in their own countries.