CENTURYAHEAD
TWOVIEWSOFFARMINGA
CENTURYAHEAD
The past year may have been difficult but what do the next 100 years hold for UK
agriculture? Robert Sutton considers life on a typical arable farm in 2100…
IT IS the hottest day of summer. A farmer is showing a group of schoolchildren around his typical 21st century arable farm.
Their skin, where it is exposed, gleams white with a thick layer of factor one hundred sunscreen that protects them from the intense ultra-violet light that blazes down from an ozone sky.
One of his charges points to a rusting old carcass half hidden in a patch of nettles. "It was a bus," he informs her. "Kids used to go to school in buses. But Gordon Bicycle Brown started increasing the real cost of road fuel by 5% a year way back in 1997. Since then, diesel had gone up 130 fold. Now it costs k1000/litre (£400/gallon in old money). The government wanted to take traffic off the roads. It worked, too. Thats why you came here on the school stagecoach."
Carrot field
They walk on into a field of GM carrots. A rain gun works gradually towards them from the far end. The roots take little notice of the intruders, and continue busily weeding themselves with tough, dextrous tendrils genetically engineered for the purpose.
A tall, bolshy-looking one spots the farmer, places his tendrils on his hips and shouts. "Oi, you! Cm ere!" "Oh dear," sighs the farmer, "its the shop steward. The vegetables have formed a union. Now theyre complaining about the irrigation."
He walks over to the carrot, which loses no time in berating him. The children hear only snippets: "…Waters perishing cold, mate… death of pneumonia… at least 18 degrees… no more weeding until legitimate demands met!"
Agreement
After a few minutes, man and vegetable come to an agreement. The farmer returns to face questions from the children. He points out that unions are the least of the industrys problems. The UN, he tells them, recently received a delegation of Brussels sprouts demanding vegetable liberation.
Now that the technology is available, they insist, humans must be genetically-altered to photosynthesise for themselves. Not another vegetable must die. Top secret experiments had been set up to test GM humans with chloroplasts in their skin. Tragically, several had been raised and the subjects torn to bits by gangs of maize plants wearing balaclavas.
The group moves on to where the farmers wife sits at the roadside weaving baskets. Children walk barefoot, pretending to feed electronic chickens, poultry and goats out of buckets. Synthetic filth lies everywhere except on the pristine, black Tarmac strip that passes through the village carrying a stream of plush, solar powered limousines. Strategically placed lasers read barcodes on the car doors, transferring a steady flow of revenue from the drivers accounts into the bank of Rustic Experience Corporation plc, the leisure mega-business that owns the village and all the surrounding countryside.
A plump woman in a passing BMW watches the farmers wife work in the blistering heat. "It must be wonderful to live in such harmony with nature," she enthuses, eating an ice cream as she watches the woman toil, pausing only to wipe the sweat from her brow or lash out at the flies that hover around her in a cloud. "Yes," agrees her husband as he opens a beer and turns the air-conditioning up to full. "Idyllic."
Further along the children see a family picnicking in a grassy meadow. Brilliant displays of flowers surround them. Their children run and play without fear of dirtying their Sunday best clothes. There are no cowpats because during the 50 years since the government passed the Vegan Act, there have been no cows. In a countryside bereft of animals, Rustic Experience Corporation plc has found that there is nothing to control the rampant growth of real plant life so the grass and flowers in the meadow are artificial, as is all vegetation on REC-owned property.
As they walk past this scene one of the youngsters points inquiringly toward a distant area of woodland enclosed by a tall, electrified razor-wire fence. Green rectangular leaves rustle and dance in the breeze. He demands an explanation from the farmer. "Oh, that?" smiles the farmer, "Its a special crop on contract to the Royal Mint. Didnt your mother ever tell you that money grows on trees?"
…while Stephen Carr
peers into the future of
livestock farming
CONTARY to expectations, the 21st century draws to a close with the British livestock industry booming. The history books tell us that 100 years earlier, at the turn of the millennium, all had seemed lost. A handful of supermarkets dominated food retailing and were squeezing producer margins beyond breaking point.
All the main livestock commodities were in surplus, as consumer demand for red meat, eggs and fresh milk seemed to be in relentless long-term decline.
However, in 2030 Wal-Mart, having already bought ASDA, purchased all the other British supermarkets. Initially it seemed that this would make matters still worse for farmers but it proved to be a turning point in their favour. Wal-Mart set about building stores so large that shoppers became disorientated.
TV news started to report harrowing searches for people who had disappeared within stores. It became commonplace for distraught relatives to be interviewed outside a Wal-Mart store saying: "But Dad only nipped down here for a few euros worth of chops. He was last seen asking for the way out of the frozen veg section three days ago."
Such bad publicity proved to be the end of the supermarket as a major force. Enterprising livestock farmers have since seized the opportunity and, using the latest internet technology, have set about creating their own websites which provide live 24-hour pictures of their working farms.
Micro-cameras have been installed in all the tractors, livestock sheds, milking parlours and even selected rooms within the farmhouse.
Viewers can now select what part of the farm they wish to see and can place an order on-line for a particularly succulent-looking lamb, chicken, bullock or pig by clicking the cursor on the computer screen on the animal of their choice.
The animal is then slaughtered at the farm slaughterhouse (viewing optional). By 2100 all farms have their own slaughter facilities as legislation passed by the European parliament in 2090 banned transport of an animal more than 5km for the purposes of slaughter.
The revenue for a lamb, which 100 years earlier would have been sold by the farmer for 66p/kg/lw and retailed by a supermarket for £15/kg, now all goes to the farmer.
Family farms dominate the industry more than ever before. Through much of the 21st century only those who were prepared to work a lifetime for peanuts remained in the industry. Natural-ly, it was only family labour that was stupid enough to do this. That once great threat to the family farm – the farming companies – are only a memory.
Like the meat sector, dairy farming is also in rude health. Despite talk of milk quota being abolished in the latest CAP Agenda 2100 reforms, a decision has been postponed until 2106. Demand for milk is rising steeply as scientists have developed a complete cure for heart disease.
Now creamy milk is seen as a valuable source of calcium for adults, helping them to maintain bone structure in old age (the average life expectancy for men is now 106, for women 124). Jersey cows are rapidly replacing the out-of- fashion Holstein Friesians. Gold top has been re-introduced and now outsells semi-skimmed milk by a factor of 10 to one.
Demand for meat has been enhanced still further since organic vegetables are now banned from sale to the public (they give you cancer, a report has indicated, although anti-organic activists in dawn raids have wrecked further trials). Only GM crops are now considered to be absolutely safe by the public.
In short, as a new century begins, the future for Britains livestock farmers has never looked brighter. Why were we all so pessimistic 100 years ago? *