We don't plough the fields and scatter the good seed...
How dairy herds yield the milk of human blindness | Melanie Reid - Times Online
Why did no one see this coming? We spend billions keeping Trident as a domestic insurance policy against global war, but we do nothing to protect a primary food source against the risk of global shortage. When that shortage comes, we will be defenceless. The farms are gone, sold largely to the monied classes as places to play at being squire. In 1995, the UK was 87 per cent self-sufficient in products that could be grown here. Now the figure is heading fast towards 60 per cent.
Scotsman.com News - Scotland - Q) Which costs more, a litre of petrol or milk? Clue: Food prices are rocketing
James Withers, deputy chief executive of the National Farmers' Union, said:"Farm-gate prices need to rise, or we will see the same shortage for milk on beef, lamb and pork. We have a concern that the shelf price will be hiked without a share coming to farmers. There is enough money in the shelf price for farmers to be paid a fair price."
He added: "We will lose our processing infrastructure. Supply and demand doesn't work in food as it does in other industries. It is not a tap you can turn on or off. It takes generations to build up pedigrees in animals. If we lose them, supermarkets won't be able to turn the tap back on.
"It is a crisis. We are facing potential meltdown in the pigs and poultry sector. This is going to have a knock-on effect for the lamb and beef sectors,
I suppose you are going to want me to break out the plough from the back of the shed and actually start growing some food again aren't you?
Scrapping set-aside 'threatens farmland birds' - Telegraph
The recovery of England's farmland birds could be reversed if the Government scraps its set-aside scheme, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, was warned by his advisers yesterday.
Natural England fears that there will be "major environmental impacts" if set-aside is reduced from eight per cent of all cropped land to zero, as European agriculture ministers intend this autumn because of a succession of poor harvests and rising demand for grain.
Phew, saved - I can leave the land fallow, it's for the birds (tm)...
