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Third, I'd ask why British farmers are permitted to do things like raise meat. If there is truly an overriding concern about the population starving due to lack of ability to trade, then one wants to maximize the caloric output of existing British farmland, and one of the most-effective way to do that is to produce grain rather than meat; producing meat requires a lot of wasted potential calories. I remember once reading a statistic that if the US did nothing other than become vegetarian, that the surplus generated alone could feed all of Europe. Similarly, maximizing the ability of British agriculture to feed the British public involves shifting over fully to grain -- and more-generally, plant production. One could obtain meat from abroad, and meat would be a pleasant, but unnecessary luxury that could be readily foregone in the event of our highly-implausible blockade. Now, I guarantee you that British agricultural associations are not going to like that approach at all, because it will make British beef farmers unhappy, but if there truly is the danger that Save British Farming is proposing, then that is a more-effective solution than the one that they are proposing.
But maybe Save British Farming is just grain farmers? Let's look at their website. Ooop, it's complaining about the Australia-UK trade agreement. And looks like they've got pictures of sheep next to their "being flooded by foreign cheap food" bit. And Australia is a huge sheepmeat producer. And it looks like the major concern about that trade agreement was from beef and sheep farmers: "The National Farmers' Union (NFU) has warned that freeing up the UK-Australian trade in meat will lead to hundreds of British cow and sheep breeders going out of business."
The woman complaining is Liz Webster. If we look at her Twitter (well, X) feed, she's complaining about competition for British beef producers: "Wonder why Australian beef is cheaper than British beef? The video on the left is 🇦🇺 govt funded feedlot houses 70,000 animals fed only grain to fatten quicker. Our British cattle on the right graze across acres with plenty of trees for shade. Each has a passport."
She's not worried about British food security. She might be worried about the economic viability of her business, but that's a different matter.
HeartyBeast@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yeh. Didn't help with us with tomatoes etc this spring when tehy and other salad crops were in short supply. Much simpler for Spanish syppliers to sell into the EU
Mr_Blott@feddit.uk 1 year ago
It wasn’t that it was simpler for them, it’s that your average Brit is a tightfisted cunt and won’t pay more for a tomato what they think it’s worth.
Supermarkets knew this so stopped buying certain veg when the price went up, because they knew their average customer is so tight they squeak when they walk
NuPNuA@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Are people tight, or are their wages balanced for a low wage low cost economy that’s suddenly taken some massive shocks putting inflation and wages hugely out of whack.
crispy_kilt@feddit.de 1 year ago
Por que no los dos?
Tweak@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Not quite, it’s a little more complicated than that.
Supermarkets stopped buying veg when the price went up because they knew they could blame it on other factors, rather than people thinking the supermarkets were tight cunts. Customers are generally accepting of prices going up (they have no other option), it’s the supermarkets who want to charge as high a price to customers while paying as little as possible themselves. The supermarkets then use this whole thing as a negotiating tactic to try to bring down their cost prices.
HeartyBeast@kbin.social 1 year ago
I was just pointing out that ‘you can outbid anyone’ doesn’t really work in practice- particularly when many people in the uk are living paycheque to paycheque