They own land! Give them money!

From the BBC:

Farmers and landowners in England could be paid to turn large areas of land into nature reserves, or to restore floodplains, under new government agriculture subsidies.

When the UK was part of the EU, farmers were given grants based on how much land they farmed. Following Brexit, the government has pledged to pay based on how farmers care for the environment.

But environmental groups say the new plans lack detail and may not deliver. In what the government describes as "radical plans", landowners and farmers will be allowed to bid for funding to turn vast areas of land - between 500 and 5,000 hectares - over to wildlife restoration, carbon sequestration, or flood prevention projects.

The underlying insanity is that the government is in charge and decides what people can or cannot do. There is no need to pay people to obey the law, that's how it works. If they want to have more woodlands, discourage farming within XX yards of a waterway, particularly steep slopes or flood plains or wherever the environmental benefits outweigh the value of food which can be grown, they can just pass a law saying "Thou shalt not...".

I don't think that policing this is particularly difficult. They can fly helicopters over it and take pictures. If anything looks suspect, go and have a look on the ground.

The most insane idea is having a cut-off of 500 hectares (1,200 acres), which is considerably larger than the average UK farm, i.e. only the top fraction of a per cent of UK landowners can qualify. As far as rewilding goes, every acre counts. Wildlife in the UK is hefted and each animal's 'territory' is usually quite small. They're not like elephants or buffaloes which travel hundreds of miles depending on the season.

The Daily Mash says it best:

"Environment secretary George Eustice said: “The agricultural role of the British government is to funnel money to landowners, and I promise you that will not change.”

You win some, you lose some.

From The Barents Observer:

Russia’s Arctic and Far North regions could become arable in as soon as 20 to 30 years as climate change accelerates permafrost melt, opening up vast swathes of land to agriculture, the country’s environment minister said Tuesday.

From The Guardian:

A third of global food production will be at risk by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their current rate, new research suggests. Many of the world’s most important food-growing areas will see temperatures increase and rainfall patterns alter drastically if temperatures rise by about 3.7C, the forecast increase if emissions stay high.

Firm conclusions based on total guesswork

From The Guardian:

The climate crisis is already eating into the output of the world’s agricultural systems, with productivity much lower than it would have been if humans hadn’t rapidly heated the planet, new research has found.

Advances in technology, fertilizer use and global trade have allowed food production to keep pace with a booming global population since the 1960s, albeit with gross inequities that still leave millions of people suffering from malnutrition.

But rising temperatures in this time have acted as a handbrake to farming productivity of crops and livestock, according to the new research, published in Nature Climate Change. Productivity has actually slumped by 21% since 1961, compared to if the world hadn’t been subjected to human-induced heating.

And from Nature.com itself:

Abstract

Agricultural research has fostered productivity growth, but the historical influence of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) on that growth has not been quantified.

We develop a robust econometric model of weather effects on global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) and combine this model with counterfactual climate scenarios to evaluate impacts of past climate trends on TFP. Our baseline model indicates that ACC has reduced global agricultural TFP by about 21% since 1961, a slowdown that is equivalent to losing the last 7 years of productivity growth.

The effect is substantially more severe (a reduction of ~26–34%) in warmer regions such as Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. We also find that global agriculture has grown more vulnerable to ongoing climate change.

Is there any part of this whatsoever that doesn't scream 'total guesswork'? You can't just add up inputs and assume a linear rise in outputs. Your factors are land, water and sunshine, seeds, labour, machinery, other capital and fertiliser, it's all trade-offs. How on earth do you ascribe one set of relative values? Machinery will be used if it is cheaper than using labour, so you use more tractors in high-wage countries and more labour in low wage countries.

Using 'enough' fertiliser will get you an optimum result; there is no point using more than that because the extra yield does not justify the extra cost. And the extra yield depends on how much you can sell your produce for. All plants require a minimum amount of land to grow, although you can enhance that by building greenhouses and polytunnels etc.

Billions of farmers worldwide have been making these calculations since farming was invented and they seem to have got it right most of the time. Somehow or other, food production has always kept pace with population growth (by definition) and there's no reason to assume that this won't continue for the foreseeable future.

There used to be famines all the time, but there haven't been many in the past couple of decades apart from those imposed by governments (North Korea) or warfare. Sure, there are droughts, floods and outbreaks of pests now and then, here and there, always have been and always will, but you don't read about hundreds of thousands or millions of people starving to death like you did for most of the 20th century.

So sorry, really not bothered.

Tariff Doublethink

From the BBC:

A no-deal Brexit could cost the farming industry £850m a year in lost profits, new research seen by the BBC suggests...

OK, enlighten us.

Farm business consultants Andersons said that without government support increasing significantly, some farms would inevitably struggle to survive. The government says it will "provide direct support to boost some sectors in the unlikely event this is required".

We own land! Give us money!

Under a no-deal Brexit, farms could have to pay a tariff on goods exported to the EU for the first time. Lamb and live sheep exports could face tariffs of 45-50%, while trade and farming groups say some cuts of beef could see tariffs of more than 90%. If European firms suddenly start having to pay more for UK meat, the fear is they could quickly switch to suppliers in other countries.

Tariffs are bad for the exporter then, OK.

Other so-called "non-tariff barriers", like extra veterinary and customs checks at the border, could also increase costs to farmers.

Non-tariff barriers are also bad, OK.

"It could wipe out the sheep industry in Northern Ireland," farmers Jo and Lindsay Best, from County Antrim, told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme. "A large percentage of our sheep are exported into France and the Republic of Ireland, and the price of feed could go up as well. It could decimate both the sheep and cattle industry here."

Why would the price of feed go up? Not clear.

Farms already receive more than £3.5bn a year in EU subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

We own land! Give us money!

Under a no-deal Brexit, dairy exports would attract higher tariffs and other restrictions which, it is feared, could lead to an oversupply of milk in the UK and falling prices. At the same time, tariffs on imports from outside the EU could be cut substantially, meaning British farmers would face competition from low-cost butter and cheese made overseas.

So tariffs are bad, but low or zero tariffs are just as bad. Make up your minds.

Colin Ferguson, who runs his own herd of 200 dairy cattle on the Machars peninsula in south-west Scotland, said that would be his "biggest concern". "[Produce from overseas] doesn't need to meet the high welfare or production standards that we conform to, therefore our market gets undermined by cheap produce and the consumer quite rightly will buy the cheapest item on the shelf," he added.

So, non-tariff barriers are good?

The research by Andersons shows the impact of a no-deal Brexit will not be felt equally across the industry. Lamb and beef farming are likely to be hardest hit, especially in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Other businesses - like fruit and vegetables, pigs and poultry - could see modest increases in profitability as rivals like Danish bacon attract import tariffs and become more expensive.

So tariffs are good?

Here's a thought, everything will adjust. UK farmers will probably export less, but UK consumers will import less, so it balances out. The UK is only about two-thirds self-sufficient in food, so we can easily consume the entire UK farming industry's output. So lower "food miles" as well, which is surely A Good Thing? And maybe those sheep or dairy farmers can move into fruit and vegetables, pigs and poultry?

Schrodinger's Brexit

From the BBC:-

Currently, British farmers do not face tariffs when selling into Europe, but in the event of a no-deal Brexit the same products would have tariffs of between 40% and 50% applied.

That would make them much more expensive and less attractive to European buyers, leading to fears the market for British lamb on the European mainland would collapse, forcing some British farmers out of business.

From the Telegraph:-

Turkey twizzlers could be back on school dinner menu because of food shortages after a no deal exit from the European Union, following a new Government warning.

We're simultaneously going to have food shortages in this country AND farmers who don't have anyone wanting to buy their food. Right.

Personally, I find the idea of moving lamb, beef or cheese around Europe to be rather odd. Most exports are either about climate (like we can't grow pineapples in England) or specialisation (it's more expensive to build another Ferrari factory than just transport them). It's not really specialised to produce beef or even most cheese. We make brie in Somerset, there's cows grazing all over Normandy.

Which leads me to think that where there's a profit advantage to exporting lamb to Europe, it's probably very small compared to selling it here. The idea that the farmers will be throwing out lambs rather than selling to a supermarket for a smaller profit is ridiculous.

"We could be wiped out like the coal industry"

From the BBC:

Some farmers have said without long-term guarantees about future subsidy levels, farms could disappear from the landscape.

"We could be wiped out like the coal industry," said Roger Hobson, whose 4,500-acre farm near York qualifies for a subsidy worth £100,000 a year.

"What we fear is that in the future the farm industry will have to go to the government and compete for funding alongside the NHS and other public services."

Wow, how did that get past the censors?

At the end of an article at the BBC, which merrily jumbles up organic matter and carbon dioxide under the catch-all heading 'carbon', which in nature only exists as coal, charcoal, graphite or diamonds...

Brexit could give the UK greater flexibility on how to spend public money on farming - enabling much more leeway to reward farmers for capturing carbon in the earth.

No, Gove! Just no!

From the BBC:

Environment Secretary Michael Gove has promised that the government will apply tariffs to food imports in the event of a no-deal Brexit, to provide "specific and robust protections" for farmers.

His remarks come as the government is poised to release details of tariffs (taxes on imports) that would apply to thousands of products coming in from around the world, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.

Many supporters of Brexit argue that tariffs on food and other items should be scrapped in order to lower prices for consumers.

The logic is perverse:

But farmers fear that cheap imports and lower standards would destroy many parts of British agriculture.

"Your concerns have absolutely been heard," Mr Gove told a conference of the National Farmers' Union (NFU). "It will not be the case that we will have zero-rate tariffs on food products. There will be protections for sensitive sections of agriculture and food production." He added that an announcement on a no-deal tariff schedule "should be made later this week".

"If you obliterate the tariff wall… we would be massively undermined by food produced to standards that would be illegal to produce to in this country," NFU president Minette Batters told the BBC. "It would decimate British agriculture - it is quite honestly as simple as that."

Let's follow the logic as far as we can.

1. The UK has a fairly similar climate to other European countries and the same standards, so there is a level playing field [sic] for things like potatoes, wheat, beef, milk etc. So that's no argument for UK tariffs on food from other EU Member States, i.e. no change to current situation.

2. The UK does not have a similar climate to much warmer countries outside the EU, where you can grow bananas, olives, oranges. Quite possibly these countries have lower standards, but there aren't UK banana, olive or orange farmers to be protected, so there is no reason to "protect" them by imposing tariffs on bananas.

3. "But chlorinated chickens!!" shouts the crowd. That's a different topic, if these are proveably unhealthy, the UK government should just ban the import thereof.

Agricultural subsidies

A debate on Twitter has helped me clarify my thoughts on agricultural subsidies:

Dr Sarah Taber @SarahTaber_bww: So ... yeah. Sometimes rural land ownership is just an instrument for rich people to extort bribes from taxpayers. "Pay me or I'll ruin your water." And sometimes you just monetize it on the corn platform.

PNW Policy Wonk @PNWwonk: That's literally not how it works. I administer conservation subsidies for a living. This is all bullshit... We contract to fix existing issues on farms. We don't pay people to not release their manure lagoons into the river. We don't work in prevention. We react to existing pollution.

Me: Same thing. Bad behaviour in past = subsidies in the present. I'm all in favour of looking after environment but we have LAWS for that. We don't pay ordinary people for not dumping rubbish on the street, we FINE then for doing so.

PNW Policy Wonk: Your first sentence makes sense. It does not relate to the second sentence at all.

benjamin @benjit14: The elimination or internalisation of costs allows best market allocation of resources. This is why we have rules, regs. laws etc. Letting others pick up the tab isn't good for society or our economy. IMHO.

Wes @lord_0f_land: If the land isn’t sustainably farmable without the manure lagoons, wouldn’t it be better to just directly ban farming on the land in question instead of subsidizing?

PNW Policy Wonk: So, ban all dairies? Come on, guys. I know you guys care about land policy, but stop talking about farming if you don't know anything about it.

Me: No, don't ban all dairies. I like milk and butter and cheese. So I as a consumer should bear the full costs of production, which might include environmental protection costs paid for directly by the farmer.

PNW Policy Wonk: The reason milk has price supports (an extra layer of govt assistance) is because you can't turn a cow's milk production on or off. But you still need to pay to feed and house them. The entire industry would collapse during gluts without support.

benjamin: Cheese is sort of like stored up milk product. I'm sure they could figure all this out without the subsidy. If there is a risk of gluts, there's a futures market for that i.e. insurance.

At this stage, PNW Policy Wonk appears to have abandoned his defence of the indefensible.

He seems to have three lines of argument:

1. We should reward landowners for not breaking the law, or pay for them to rectify earlier breaches, which is clearly nonsense.
2. Farmers and consumers should not bear the full cost of responsible production methods.

We own a home, there are rules against doing certain things, like having noisy parties every night or rearing pigs in the back garden. Our neighbours benefit if we don't do those things and we benefit if our neighbours don't do those things.

We all bought our houses knowing that those are the rules, and so the rules are to our overall mutual benefit. It's the same with factories, there are rules on how they deal with the noise and waste they generate. If anybody breaks the rules, then (hopefully) the 'state' will step in and stop them.

Why does he make the assumption that - unlike homeowners and factory owners - agricultural landowners are basically allowed to do what they want in perpetuity, and that we have to pay them to behave responsibly? That would be like me having noisy parties every night and instead of the local council stopping me, they pay for my house to be fully sound insulated.

Would food prices go up without subsidies? We have a crazy situation where agricultural land owners/farmers get subsidies, but they also pay income tax (and some National Insurance). The numbers are pretty small either way and they probably net off to nothing. So it would be fiscally neutral to scrap the subsidies and just exempt farm profits and farm wages from income tax and National Insurance* - in which case, no reason to assume that food prices would go up.

* Like forestry in the UK - they get very little in the way of subsidies (compared to arable land) for simply owning a forest, but forestry profits are exempt from income tax and corporation tax (wages are still taxable as normal, go figure).

3. Then he segues effortlessly into 'gluts' and underwriting farm incomes, which is a completely different topic.

I don't know why he thinks there are sudden gluts in milk output, because there aren't. Farmers are getting better and better at breeding cows to produce more milk and getting the milk out of them, but that is a long term trend as a result of which prices are falling long term. An individual dairy farmer's output is pretty steady and predictable.

It's arable goods where farmers can only guess how much they will be able to harvest. It is uncertainty right until the end.

It could be brilliant growing weather all season and then pissing it down, frost or drought in the last few days before the harvest and the whole thing is ruined. Just as bad, the farmer harvests pretty much what he expected, but there is a glut elsewhere so prices fall.

From the point of view of the rest of the country (consumers or government), gluts are a very good thing indeed and nothing to worry about. We should be worrying about sudden shortages, not gluts.

From the point of view of farmers, this is a precarious way to live. But in the long run, it averages out, good years and bad years. And relying on the weather is a mug's game anyway, controlling growing conditions is the way to go i.e. greenhouses, poly-tunnels, hydroponics etc (like in the Netherlands or southern Spain).

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (434)

From Farmers Guardian:

[National Farmers' Union] head of tax Michael Parker said: “We would not support the introduction of a land value tax which included agricultural land as it would simply increase the cost of UK food production with no benefit for shoppers. We would prefer to see the introduction of fiscal measures which encourage economic growth – ensuring farming businesses can be profitable, productive and progressive now and in the future.”

Jolly good, he would say that, wouldn't he. The first sentence is clearly bollocks and his second sentence is just waffle.

But out of interest, how does the NFU calculate its membership fees..?

If you are a farmer, crofter or grower involved in agricultural production then you can join NFU Scotland as a full member. Your subscription will be based on... the area and type of land you farm if you are a farmer...

So basically, a very low-level kind of LVT.

Admittedly that's from the NFU Scotland website, but I'm sure the English NFU does exactly the same.

They own land! Give them money!

From the BBC:

UK farmers are to receive the same level of subsidies they get from the EU for five years after Brexit, the environment secretary is to say. Michael Gove was due to tell farmers a new system prioritising the environment will start in 2024, instead of 2022.

The current subsidies - £3bn a year - are based on the land farmers own. Farmers will have an two extra years to prepare for the new payments, which would reward initiatives such as planting wildflower meadows and woods.

Mad, they get paid for doing nothing? I'm with Monbiot on this - scrap the subsidies and impose a flat £20* (or whatever low-ish figure gets the optimum balance) per acre LVT on them instead. Farmers will happily abandon the most marginal sites with the lowest yields and thus escape the LVT. As it happens, the nicest places to enjoy nature - near settlements, along river banks, on cliff edges and hill tops - are the worst places for farming, and vice versa - flat fields in the middle of East Anglia are the best for farming, but it's not much fun tramping across them.

In case anybody thinks I am anti-farming (which I am not, it's tough work and I love food), we could and should just exempt farming from tax altogether as a quid pro quo - no VAT refunds, no income tax or corporation tax on profits (so no capital allowances either), which we already have with forestry, no Business Rates on farm buildings/greenhouses, no PAYE on farm wages (farm workers can pay voluntary NICs to keep up their pension entitlement if they wish). You can nail this down by continuing to tax farm rental income, meaning a net tax saving for owner-occupier farmers, so we could and should exempt purchases of farm land from SDLT as well.

That'd would be more or less a break even from the government's point of view. If there's a net saving, then by all means spend it on rural broadband or rural public transport etc.

As we know from the allotments vs commercial farms example, this would increase the amount of food grown per acre and rural employment.

Everybody wins!

... Meanwhile, a report warns Brexit trade deals could threaten UK food security.

Well, they would say that wouldn't they?

MPs and peers in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology (AAPG) say ministers must ensure famers [sic] are not undermined by future trade deals which permit imports of food produced with lower welfare or environmental standards.

Aha, so they don't mean "food security" from the consumers' point of view (the important one), they mean "income security" from the landowners' point of view?

Here's the best bit - five minutes in a TV studio with a YPP candidate last year seems to have worked wonders:

Detailing how the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be replaced after Brexit, Mr Gove will say taxpayers' money should be used to boost public access to the countryside, and be spent on infrastructure and supporting rural communities.

He will say the CAP is "unjust, inefficient and drives perverse outcomes".
---------------------
* OTOH asks: "Why should the LVT be flat? Shouldn't land with a higher value pay more land value tax?"

1. As I have pointed out often enough, the total rental value of UK farmland is so low (1% or 2% of rental value of urban land - hardly surprising as farming is 1% or 2% of UK GDP and employs 1% - 2% of all workers) that it's not really worth collecting anyway, such a tax serves a different purpose: to act as a cliff edge to encourage farmers to leave marginal land to be rewilded/for ramblers to enjoy.

2. Scrapping the subsidies (negative land value tax) will be a big enough shock for the big fat rent-seekers.

3. We do not know what farm rents will be once the subsidies are replaced with a blanket tax exemption. Will probably be lower; might be higher, but still negligible compared to urban land.

4. Urban land is all about location and little to do with the physical qualities of the soil or land itself, so it's easy to value, you can get it 90% accurate in a weekend with spreadsheets and HM Land Registry data. Farmland is difficult enough to value anyway, you've got to go and physically inspect it. Identifying the pure location element is even harder.

5. With farmland, the physical qualities of the soil are - to a greater or lesser degree - dictated by how well farmers have looked after it in the past and are looking after it today, which we wouldn't want to discourage with higher taxes, again, it's difficult to split out what's the naturally occurring element (taxable) and what's down to centuries of careful husbandry/wifery.

Death by cattle

Via @The_Sumoking, from The London Economic:

A veteran dairy farmer was killed by his own cattle as he tended to them – something he had done “thousands of times”, an inquest heard. Brian Swales, 67, went to check on his 17 Friesian heifers and one bull like any other day after one was described as “acting lame”.

But mystery remains over what happened as the grandad-of-two was alone and no-one saw how he came to die. North Yorkshire Coroner’s Court heard he suffered broken ribs and lacerations to his lungs resembling crush injuries. Reports at the time claimed he had been was trampled by the bull, but a coroner said it was impossible to tell what happened...

They just finally snapped, is my guess.

Timeless classic

Idiotic attention seeking of the week

From The Evening Standard:

With London’s population set to explode over the next decade, the Evening Standard and agri-science firm Syngenta are investigating the potential impact — and how innovation in farming could help reduce it.

Extra farmland more than one and a half times the size of London will have to be cultivated to grow the food needed for the capital’s booming population by 2031, according to new analysis... On current trends, over the next quarter of a century an area of fields three times the size of Camden will have to be cultivated with wheat. Land the size of Lewisham will be required for the extra potatoes consumed by Londoners, the research reveals.

Gary Mills-Thomas, Syngenta’s UK and Ireland head, said: “We are extremely excited about this unique opportunity to raise awareness on the facts and figures behind food production and the vital role played by modern farming in ensuring the required food supplies in our societies. Also this event is giving us the opportunity to listen and take on board the opinions and concerns of the general public on these matters.

“At Syngenta we believe that an open and constructive relationship with society will strengthen our commitment to continuously invest in research and innovation in order to provide farmers with advanced solutions for a sustainable quality food production.”

The argument was challenged by Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, who said: “What Syngenta fails to mention is that we are required by UK law to cut greenhouse emissions from food and farming by 80 per cent by 2050. Scientists agree that the only way we can achieve this, and feed everyone a healthy diet by 2050, is to adopt agro-ecological farming systems such as organic, review diets, and do without most or all manufactured fertilisers."

Do either of them really expect anybody to take them seriously?

It is people how eat food, and they eat much the same amount of food wherever they live. If more people live in London then there will be fewer people living elsewhere, total amount of food consumed unchanged, it is a complete non-problem.

So Syngenta are just lobbying for permission to peddle their wares, as is the Soil Association, who appear to want to impose a system which will produce less food. Hooray for looking after the environment and so on, but if their way really were more productive, then farmers would be doing it anyway.

"Farmer in his 60s is trampled to death by a bull in an accident in his fields in North Yorkshire"

That's the second one today, from The Daily Mail:

* At around 3.20pm yesterday, police were called to a field south of Hutton Rudby

* Paramedics also attended to try to resuscitate the man, who was in his 60s

* Police Inspector Dave Murray said: 'Police are investigating this tragic incident'

Not sure what the police are going to do - question all the cattle to find the guilty party and then sentence it to death?

As a mark of respect, the Mail do not say what his farmhouse is worth.

Nobody move or the Irish farmers get it!

Emailed in by MBK from The Independent (the Irish one):

On Thursday week we will know if Britain is going to stay or leave the European Union...

No we won't. The referendum outcome is not binding on the government, and precedents tell us the most likely outcome is a fudged renegotiation and another referendum even more rigged than this one. Even if the government respects a Brexit outcome, it will be years before anything changes.

And if Britain decides to go - Irish farming will be the first in the firing line. Britain has 64 million people and is the world's fifth largest economy. They are also hefty net contributors to the EU budget with a contribution of £13m last year. CAP, which still accounts for 37pc of the EU budget, and could take a big hit if Britain leave [sic].

Fair point. Subsidising our own landowners is insane, subsidising land owners in other countries is beyond insane. So that's a modest win for us.

Some 50pc of Irish beef goes to Britain in trade worth €1.1bn per year. Britain buy 60pc of our pigmeat worth €3.3m per year. Ireland also buys heftily from Britain, importing €3.8bn, against exports of €5.1bn. Of course people will argue, with some justification, that Ireland and Britain have always traded, long before any EU.

So why would we stop buying it all of a sudden..? We buy food and drink from all over the world, from EU and non-EU countries alike.

But the real rub here, and it is still not taken properly on board by many people engaged in this debate, is that if Britain leave [sic], our trade arrangements with them will have to be fixed via Brussels and the other member states.

Aha, so the Eurocrats would punish the Irish to teach the UK a lesson. Whose fault would that be? FFS.

Personne ne bouge ou vos éleveurs de bovins l'obtiendront!

Emailed in by MBL from The Daily Mail:

Mr Lamy, a Frenchman who headed the World Trade Organisation between 2005 and 2013, said that the rest of the EU would drive a 'hard bargain' in the event of Brexit...

"My own country will probably be among the hardest to negotiate with. Imagine how eager French farmers will be not to have your beef or lamb on our supermarket shelves. And no one will show any love for the City of London.

"If it fails to get a deal, there is a real risk that the UK would have to fall back on WTO rules. Some in the Leave campaign have said this would not be a bad option. As the former head of the WTO, let me be clear: this would be a terrible replacement for access to the EU single market.

"Though tariffs have fallen, they are still high enough to hurt businesses and therefore jobs: 10 per cent for cars, 12 per cent on clothes, 70 per cent on some beef products.

So, a bit like during the period 1996 - 2006, then? Distressing for British beef farmers (who do a very good job) but hardly a disaster for the economy. We'll just have to eat more of the stuff ourselves and we'll be able to go to McDonalds with the warm glow of having fulfilled our patriotic duty.

Nobody move or the farm animal gets it!!

From The Guardian:

With so many loud voices clamouring to be heard in the Brexit debate, there is a risk we will fail to consider those that cannot speak at all – animals. But voting to leave the European Union could have a profound effect on their welfare. Britain has a reputation as a nation of animal lovers, but over the past decade our lawmakers have lagged behind Europe’s in protecting them from harm.

… we have become increasingly reliant on Brussels for strong regulations to protect farmed animals. We have Europe to thank for Britain getting welfare laws for farmed pigs and chickens, such as banning barren cages for battery hens in 2012 and sow stalls – which kept pigs unable to move for most of their lives – in 2013.

Another factor in this debate is what happens to the annual £2.4bn EU subsidies to British farmers in the event of Brexit, around 53% of their incomes, and what that means for farmed animals. If Britain leaves, that subsidy goes, as does farmers’ easy access to the single market. Farming minister George Eustice said in February that the government would pay a subsidy in the case of Brexit. It is unclear how he can promise this, especially as his boss, the prime minister, is still sticking to the line that he has no contingency plans for leaving the EU.

If farmers did end up getting fewer subsidies post-Brexit, the implications for animal rights are poor. Animal farmers are not monsters, and many farms just want to do the right thing – I was raised on one. But as the author Upton Sinclair once said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

That last sentence says it all, really. These people have no shame.

Very worrying.

From Farmer's Weekly:

A new campaign aims to raise awareness among dog owners of the devastating effects of livestock worrying, which is on the rise according to official figures.

The three-month campaign, led by Police Scotland in association with NFU Scotland, Scottish Land & Estates and other authorities, has been launched to coincide with the spring lambing period, when sheep are most at risk...

Dog attacks on livestock: The worrying facts

• More than 18,500 livestock were killed or injured in dog attacks in 2015.

• The South West has the highest number of livestock-worrying incidents in each of the past three years where attacks rose by almost 60% in 2015...

The simplest solution is to put cows and sheep in the same field. If the dogs go after the sheep, the cows will go after the dogs (or their owners).

Sorted.

Fun Online Polls: SLOPOTY & how to minimise flood damage

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Sports Lack Of Personality Of The Year Award

Andy Murray - 40%
Tyson Fury - 16%
Lewis Hamilton - 10%
Mo Farah - 7%
Greg Rutherford - 6%
Lizzie Armitstead - 6%
Jessica Ennis-Hill - 5%
Chris Froome - 4%
Kevin Sinfield - 4%
Max Whitlock - 4%

Strange.

Andy Murray ticked nearly all the boxes - not having any noticeable personality or having won or done anything notable this year. The only ones he failed on were we've all actually heard of him and know he plays tennis.

Runner-up Tyson Fury on the other hand, ticked none, having a cool name, taking part in an inherently controversial sport, having strong opinions, however repugnant, and actually having won something notable this year and then being promptly stripped of his title for some obscure reason.

Just goes to show.
--------------------------------------
I have no strong opinion on how to minimise flood damage and those who do take an interest have strongly diverging views:

In the green corner, George Monbiot:

Just as remarkable is the collective lack of interest in what happens when rain hits the ground. The government boasts that “we are spending £3.2 billion in flood management and defences over the course of this parliament – half a billion pounds more than in the previous parliament.” Yet almost all the money devoted to freshwater flood relief is being spent at the bottom of river catchments. This means waiting until the wall of water arrives before seeking to contain it; a perfect formula for disappointment.

A rational policy would aim to prevent the flood from gathering in the first place. It would address the problem, literally and metaphorically, upstream. A study in mid-Wales suggests that rainwater’s infiltration rate into the soil is 67 times higher under trees than under sheep pasture. Rain that percolates into the soil is released more slowly than rain that flashes over the surface. But Cumbria’s hills are almost entirely treeless, and taxpayers, through the subsidy regime, pay farmers to keep them that way.

Rivers that have been dredged and canalised to protect farmland rush the water instead into the nearest town. Engineering works of this kind were removed a few years ago from the River Liza in Ennerdale. It was allowed to braid, meander and accumulate logs and stones. When the last great storm hit Cumbria, in 2009, the Liza remained clear and fordable the following day, while other rivers roared into furious spate. The Liza’s obstructions held the water back, filtered it and released it slowly. Had all the rivers of Cumbria been rewilded in this way, there might have been no floods, then or now.

So trees and rewilding good; dredging pointless.

Speaking on behalf of Britian's agricultural landowners (three-quarters of the land by area, one or two percent by value):

Amid all the devastation and recrimination over the floods in Cumbria hardly anybody mentions one factor that may not be the sole cause, but certainly hasn’t helped. That is the almost complete cessation of dredging of our rivers since we were required to accept the European Water Framework Directive (EWF) into UK law in 2000...

It was obvious to people, who depended on the land for their living that failing to keep the rivers clear of sand and gravel would cause them to burst their banks and destroy in a few hours fertility that had taken generations to create, wash away their houses, and drown their livestock… all this changed with the creation of the Environment Agency in 1997 and when we adopted the European Water Framework Directive in 2000. No longer were the authorities charged with a duty to prevent flooding. Instead, the emphasis shifted, in an astonishing reversal of policy, to a primary obligation to achieve ‘good ecological status’ for our national rivers. This is defined as being as close as possible to ‘undisturbed natural conditions.

… they all have the same aim, entirely consonant [sic] with EU policy, to return rivers to their ‘natural healthy’ state, reversing any ‘straightening and modifying’ which was done in ‘a misguided attempt to get water off the land quicker’. They only think it ‘misguided’ because fast flowing water contained within its banks can scour out its bed and maybe wash out some rare crayfish or freshwater mussel, and that conflicts with their (and the EU’s) ideal of a ‘natural’ river.

So dredging good; trees (for which there are no subsidies) and rewilding bad.

The only thing that everybody seems to agree on is that we shouldn't allow building on flood plains, obviously, but that doesn't help people in long established towns.

I know I did a Fun Online Poll on this last year, but let's narrow it down a bit to those two contrasting points of view without an 'other' option.

(I'm always happy to blame the EU when things go wrong, but the EU is also to blame for the subsidies for clearing trees so that's a worst-of-both-worlds as per usual.)

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