Subsidies: Should be seen as, and re-labelled as 'investment' . Which means forget armies of consultants, marketing and IT, and invest where the cash will return most yield.
Supply chains. Shorter as BB says. And more honest. This daft EU idea of 'labelled with member state of last provenance', exposed as the sham(bles) it is with the Irish pork fiasco, must go.
Labour. We have a third generation of people who have never worked at all in this country. Grandfathers, whose offspring have now produced kids of their own - none of them done a days' work at all. And have no intention of so doing. Cheap eastern European labour is not so cheap, if the benefits paid to such families are added to their wages. This country is paying twice over and it cannot go on.
Wildlife. Respected and valued. But not reverred to the anthropomorphic lengths it is now. And an absolute no-no to reintroducing elk, bear, beaver and lord knows what else into the UK. (Although I understand wild boar are a bit partial to baby badgers.....)
Red tape. / Farm inspections. Can't afford. Never could. If we are compete on a world stage, then non-jobs which clutter the balance sheet, adding cost but little value have to go. Products will stand or fall on their own merit, with market prices to reflect quality..
Defra. No comment. Animal Health returned to (experienced, non-political ) veterinary hands, and out of minority lobby groups' influence.
Energy costs. We are heading for power shortages in the next couple of years because of politicians shilly shallying around with renewables, (EU regs)while fast approaching the day when our own aged power stations face decommissioning. To rely on France and Russia for power, is not a happy or secure position to be in.
GM. A stunning technology - still developing a need. Which will not 'feed the world'.
Animal Rights. Some have too many, meaning there are not enough left for the rest of us. Ecology is a delicate balance - a point some vociforous lobby groups have yet to appreciate.. Welfare is improved if that balance is maintained.
Global markets. Fast becoming short of main commodities. The driver being population growth v. water supply, combined with pressure from bio fuels. and emerging diseases. BTV has decimated the herds and flocks of Europe, not killing too many, but economically making them unviable. The ravages of TB, running unchecked in this country and Ireland, takes not only reactor cattle, but the calves they are carrying + at least one lactation in a dairy animal, and the potential for several more. Blue ear in China's pigs and FMD in S. America are other problems on a big scale.
The following snip is from a financial paper (MoneyWeek) today looking at supplies of milk/meat/corn in a global marketplace:
Dairy farmers are a dying breed. Of the 28,000 dairy farmers in Britain in 1995, more than half have quit the business, which has been on a knife-edge ever since the BSE outbreak. The doubling of feed costs over the past year is the last thing farmers needed. As one beef farmer at the Royal Show told The Sunday Times recently: "We must be mental cases to carry on, but we just keep smiling and holding the gun to our heads".
It's the same story in America. More than 80% of US beef is corn fed. If you own a cattle feed lot, and feed costs are rocketing, you only have two ways to go. You can feed up fewer cattle and slaughter the others, or feed less to each cow and get a lower price for it (because it will weigh less). Either way, you’ve got less meat hitting the market.
Throw into the mix the fact that there is now good money to be made from growing crops, either for food or ethanol. This has seen many farmers switch from raising livestock.
Recession or not, China must have more pork. Pork is so woven into the fabric of China that the government even has a central reserve of it. Since 1980, per-capita pork consumption in China has nearly tripled. The price of pork has jumped more than 50% in one year, yet the butcher shops remain packed.
The Chinese eat more pork than the rest of the world combined. The country consumes seven times as much as the number two consumer, the United States.
And yet the country has endured months of skyrocketing pork prices following the blue ear virus – which decimated the country's pig population in 2007. Domestic pork prices have almost doubled since last summer because of rising costs and shrinking supplies. To get the meat it needs, China will need to import more than ever before in 2009.
- The ‘recession meat’ that’s set to boom. Poultry farming is far less energy intensive than beef and cattle farming, so farmers don't face the same intense pressures to lift prices as pork or beef farmers. Heading into a recession, that gives chicken producers a serious advantage. The last time there was such a dramatic surge in grain prices, back in the early 1970s, sales of chicken soared at the supermarket as pork and beef became too expensive for the average household.
China goes through 24 billion chickens a year, compared with 600 million pigs. Morgan Stanley says this will have to rise from 35% of current meat consumption to 57%. That's a huge shift and suggests that poultry prices will rise, along with beef and pork prices.
- A chronic shortage of ‘good dirt’. Livestock needs grain. But fertile soil in which to grow it is fast becoming scarcer by the year. In fact ‘good dirt’ is now more important to land values than oil or minerals in the ground.
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“Taking the long view, we are running out of dirt.”
David R. Montgomery, geologist | |
Before World War II, only Europe imported grain. South America, as recently as the 1930s, produced twice as much grain as North America. Today, only three major grain exporters remain: North America, Australia and New Zealand. That’s why faith in the global meat supply is at generational lows.
I'm not sure I'd agree that battery chooks are less intensive than UK grass fed beef, but hey - the paper predicts profits returning to meat / corn production.
...................... and that's good for a Happy New Year.