Friday 8 August 2014
Today might have been no food day.
How did you cope food wise yesterday? Note anything different? I thought not but the seventh of August is as far as home grown food would last us. From now until the end of the year we are totally dependant on imports while only a few short years ago we could have been self-sufficient right into October. Just another piece of National Farmers Union Red Tractor propaganda some will say. Perhaps they are right. The debate about self-sufficiency (protectionism?) versus free trade might have been going on since the Corn Laws but for global capital the argument was won a long time ago and it makes perfect sense for basic commodities to be continually criss-crossing the world. Maybe my nagging doubts about food security are all down to a failure to understand the dynamics of global trade but Putin has placed restrictions on Russian food imports from countries critical of his foreign policy and this is bound to impact on EU farming. Again, why would a self proclaimed internationalist like myself care about the UK farming industry? What's more, is all of this in some way connected to "patriotism" or as I prefer to think of it, "love of place"? It probably is.
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My mate, a brickie by trade, gave up the trowel and sunk his savings into a field in which he grows good quality strawberries, and other fruit. Dirty capitalist running dog. His field is behind Tescoes who purchase their strawberries from Spain.
He should have copied the farmer from whom I rent several acres - with access to another 30 acres and a couple of miles of river, for a few quid a week. I don't use the river but it is possible to sail your boat down to the sea 12 miles away. I use the land for my dogs. The farmer does not grow anything, no longer has cattle because he disagrees with sending them hundreds of miles away for halal slaughter (racist), and cannot be bothered to lease his fields to rich kids with horses because Defra will insist on adequate facilities. Instead he grows nothing, does not cut his hedges because he is paid to protect the lives of rare insects, is as green as can be and is doing well out of the tax-payers and EU. Next to him is a larger farm which does cater for horse riders, but ceased to harvest hay because Roma's have twice burned down his barn and the cops have warned him that they have a zero tolerance policy against racism, so he keeps his gob shut and tells me that apart from his land he has in savings over £90million which will see him and the missus OK for the rest of their lives. Lovely land, which I have almost exclusive rights to along with pheasant, deer and rabbits which are too lazy to eat the grass and no one can be arsed to hunt. We are not talking about Etonian toffs, just average farmers. And this particular farmer sticks a massive Lib Dem poster up each election. And they say austerity will lead to revolution.
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