On Wednesday, in article
"Jim Webster" wrote:

Dave Roberts wrote in message
...
It is not impossible to get out of agriculture if you are unhappy
with
it though is it?

actually for some people it is. Thank god I am not in that particular
boat but I know a lot of tenants who cannot get out because the sale of
their assets might not cover their liabilities, and even if it did they
would not be left with enough to put down the deposit on a house.
Indeed some have run into the problem that they are volunterily homeless
and therefore will not be put on the waiting list for council housing. A
lot of these people are clinging on, hoping that things will pick up
(farming moves in cycles and in ten or so years things will inevitably
look different,).
We saw with fmd that a lot of dairy farmers did get out, because the
people restocking were buying cattle and suddenly cattle had a value
again.

I couldn't say what proportion of farmers are in this particular bind,
perhaps 10%, perhaps more, but to be honest it is guessing.

I think the FMD compensation will have had a big effect. It turned some
farmers from being cash-poor to being cash-rich, and that gave them a
chance to change. If they stayed in farming they could avoid some of
the usual complications of changing direction (as you were experiencing)
and the cash went to other farmers.

Other EU countries set up schemes to help farmers retire, but the
British government did not. I wonder if FMD had some of the same
effect.



--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.

"Let me get this straight. You're the KGB's core AI, but you're afraid
of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?"
From "Lobsters" by Charles Stross.