Plight of Farmers.

I have been doing a bit of recent research into farming. Arable farmers are vulnerable to oil price fluctuations (OK, we know about red diesel), mostly in regard to fertilisers and pesticides. Oil prices also impact livestock farmers for transportation and feed costs.
It's getting to be more of a struggle, as the UK is now not capable of producing all it's own food. By necessity , we import. As farmers leave the industry , they are now typically selling land to developers for housing, meaning even less land to produce food for our increasing population. The boom years for famers have long gone, and you typically find some of the small farms, the farmers, or their spouses, have additional employment to make ends meet.
 
Farmers insist on prancing around London in there expensive shiny new tractors making a mockery of their argument that they work hard and are cash strapped, labour have to double the IHT to the same as everyone else. They have proven the case against them. What a daft lot.
 
beak said:
Farmers insist on prancing around London in there expensive shiny new tractors making a mockery of their argument that they work hard and are cash strapped, labour have to double the IHT to the same as everyone else. They have proven the case against them. What a daft lot.
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You could say that about any group that protest. The majority of eco protestors are white middle class females.

How dare hard working teachers and NHS staff protest surely they can't afford to take a day off work, if they can they must be rich......
 
beak said:
Farmers insist on prancing around London in there expensive shiny new tractors making a mockery of their argument that they work hard and are cash strapped, labour have to double the IHT to the same as everyone else. They have proven the case against them. What a daft lot.
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Generally bought on finance or the farm overdraft.......
 
beak said:
Farmers insist on prancing around London in there expensive shiny new tractors making a mockery of their argument that they work hard and are cash strapped, labour have to double the IHT to the same as everyone else. They have proven the case against them. What a daft lot.
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?

They literally put the food on people's plates and you're on here slagging them off.
 
I live amongst a lot of farmers. It's not the life i would choose. Very difficult to take holidays for any length of time, and quite isolated work in general. If that's their thing in life, then let them have it, and be grateful for them. It really is a shlt job for a lot of them, with little time off.
Seeing how that Kaleb Cooper (Jeremy Clarksons farming sidekick) is now a millionaire, is only due to his high-profile TV and events, books, DVD's and nothing to do with actual farming income.

KC reckons he wants to buy a farm. That would be madness, and a lot of hard work for very little income. .
Just my opinion,. I can't back it up with any financial data on earnings. Take it from me . farming is a really shlt job
 
And they are great at ruining the countryside whilst claiming they are custodians of it all. The River Wye is utterly f***ed, thanks to farmers and farming.

It wasn't lost on me in Clarkesons Farm when he tried the cross variety farming, eg planting nitrogen fixing crops amongst other crops to cut the fertiliser use, to see that within a couple of months Charlie, the farming 'expert', was stunned to find worms back into the soil!......which they'd obviously killed off with their constant ploughing and fertilising for decades. All that shite being produced is environmentally damaging, and the run off into the water courses is also damaging.

I don't doubt that they care or have a tough job, but the path they follow is pretty destructive.

There, said it in blissful ignorance (PS I was brought up in rural Gloucestershire, not unfamiliar with a "trahterrrr", I'm not city raised)
 
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Living where I do and where I have in several phases of my life I come into contact with farmers and have known a couple as good friends.

They don’t seem to regard farming as a job, but as a way of life. One I knew well made a fortune out of dairying, passed all his farms to his son yet still lived in a mansion as a multi millionaire. Another inherited from his Dad after years of actually running the farms. Yet another has no children, no wife and is still working at nearly 80 because he loves his animals.

So I don’t think there is a one size fits all solution and what the government has done seems a reasonable attempt at fairness to me. Family farms can be protected with forward planning and tax collected from those who do very well, just as in other industries.
 
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