Sacha wrote:
On 2011-06-02 22:11:03 +0100, "Ian B" said:

Bill Grey wrote:
"Ian B" wrote in message
...
Roger Tonkin wrote:
In article ,
says...

Why why WHY do the farmers ALWAYS bleat hard times time and time
again?

Have you ever seen a poor farmer?




There are plenty of them around here, where hill farming of sheep
is the only possibility. Also we know that dairy farmers get less
per lire for their milk than it takes to produce (unless you run
a super farm!).

Then why are they producing it? Something economically wrong there,
isn't there?

at
Ian
Supermarkets provide a ready market for them but dictate the amount
they are going to pay for their produce. One very good reason why
farmers are sometimes desperate.

You can't sell goods for less than your production costs. If farmer
A can't produce milk for price X, and farmer B can, then all that
can happen is farmer A leaves the milk production market. That's how
economic growth occurs, with the better supplier knocking the
inferior supplier out of the market. Which is often unpleasant for
the individuals concerned, but ultimately good for everyone.

The thing is, nobody can "dictate" a price. I can say I'll only pay
£100 for a Ferrari, but I can't make Ferrari sell me one for that
price. Likewise if the supermarkets demand milk at a cheaper price
than it can be produced, they will get no milk, because there won't
be any producers at that price. Any farmer foolish enough to sell milk at
below cost must be
cross-subsidising it from some profitable enterprise, e.g. crops or
sheep or something. He needs to get out of the cow juice business.
He's destroying value in the economy, and in his own bank account.


Ian

'Leaving a market" means the farmer has to sell his cows or have them
put down. For many/most, this is a heart breaking decision so they
soldier on, hoping things will improve. If they do get out and turn
to e.g. beef farming, all that does is widen the door for the big
buyers who dictate the prices to bring in milk from abroad. When it's
our only source of supply as all domestic sources have gone, do you
think it will still be cheap? This applies, of course, to all our food
producers. If you want to be in the hands of giant chains and foreign
producers, this is the right way to go about it.

Sacha, any business failure is heartbreaking. Back in the 70s, my dad was
stupid enough to try to run a (taxi) business under a Labour government. It
failed. So did my parents' marriage. Our home was taken by the bank. I ended
up in a borassically skint one parent family.

You can't keep propping up businesses on emotive arguments about doe-eyed
cows and sad farmers. Every business faces the possibility of ruin. I myself
in my cartoon business face competitors who are abroad, who are far, far
cheaper than I am, which is why I have to specialise in something they can't
do (high quality writing which is in ghastly short supply in the "adult"
business believe me, mainly). I get emails from foreign climes offering me
artwork at the equivalent of £15.00 a page. I can't even start a page for
that.

But they are cheap and I am expensive for all kinds of reasons. The UK is a
ridiculously expensive country to live in. Our housing is absurdly
expensive, our food is expensive, we are over-regulated, we pay high taxes.
There is a shedload more to poor competitiveness than anyone wants to
address; they prefer to borrow the American Left's obsessions with "the Big
Corporations". Hey, let's all hate supermarkets! That's easy!

I wonder how many of the ruralists complaining about all this have actively
campaigned to prevent housebuilding in their local area, or at least
sympathise with those campaigners. Well, those who have are actively working
to keep British housing at an extortionate price; which means our wages must
be higher, which measn everything costs more, which means we can't compete.
How many support high fuel taxes? How many demand "animal welfare"
regulations?

There's a lot more to it than supermarkets. Really there is.


Ian