On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 07:53:16 +0000 (GMT),
("David G. Bell") wrote:

On Saturday, in article

"Torsten Brinch" wrote:
However, looking at DEFRA data in the Agenda 2000 papers it is
difficult to get them to fit that CIA figure, 1.7% of GDP for 1999.
The DEFRA data series would indicate a figure close to 1 % for 1998,
and there is not a single data point above 1.5 % since 1987.

I don't know where the CIA gets its data from -- does it just use
official figures for friendly powers?

But it seems to me to be quite
possible that the CIA shifts some of the food-processing element of GDP
into agriculture, so as to create consistent categorization.

Fascinating. You are so close, and yet you don't see it.
The categories: [Agriculture,Industry,Services] = 100%

From which can be concluded, dear Dr Watson, that 'Agriculture'
is CIA's secret code name for [agriculture+forestry+fisheries]

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 07:30:24 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:
"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
OK, and, as I said, UK employs 2 % of its workforce producing just
0.8 per cent of the GDP in agricultural products. Subsidy money would
seem better spent getting rid of a bunch of old farmers who have
gotten used to be fed by society, than to continue supporting this
kind of imbalance.

Just counting the farm gate price as the farmers contribtuion to GDP is a
bit misleading.

That's not how it is done. The 0.8 % would include both the income
made from selling products at farm gate prices, and the direct
subsidies to the farmers. In UK, in absolute numbers that would be
about £4 billion, and £2.5 billion respectively -- to the sum total of
£6.5 billion ~ 0.8 % of the GDP.

There are also those that sell to him and those that process
what he raises.

Certainly, but we can't count the contribution to GDP from those
activities as contributions to GDP done by agriculture.

On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:58:42 +0000, Tim Lamb
wrote:

In article , Torsten Brinch
writes
Well it is undoubtedly a spike.

Please. You must be able to see the '90 data point is almost certainly
not a spike. I must assume you have by now checked that you didn't
simply make a transcription error from John Nix. So, what is John
Nix's source of the data?

No. I have checked again. Not my transcription error. Remember, these
are small acreages.

How do you know without knowing the source, is there a column showing
the acreages traded?

Source not given but elsewhere he uses *Estates Gazette and Farmers
Weekly*

On Saturday, in article

"Torsten Brinch" wrote:

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 07:53:16 +0000 (GMT),
("David G. Bell") wrote:

On Saturday, in article

"Torsten Brinch" wrote:
However, looking at DEFRA data in the Agenda 2000 papers it is
difficult to get them to fit that CIA figure, 1.7% of GDP for 1999.
The DEFRA data series would indicate a figure close to 1 % for 1998,
and there is not a single data point above 1.5 % since 1987.

I don't know where the CIA gets its data from -- does it just use
official figures for friendly powers?

But it seems to me to be quite
possible that the CIA shifts some of the food-processing element of GDP
into agriculture, so as to create consistent categorization.

Fascinating. You are so close, and yet you don't see it.
The categories: [Agriculture,Industry,Services] = 100%

From which can be concluded, dear Dr Watson, that 'Agriculture'
is CIA's secret code name for [agriculture+forestry+fisheries]

You are a bloody-minded little toad, aren't you. One minute you're
saying that "it is difficult to get them to fit that CIA figure", and
then you call your critic a fool for suggested that the category might
be differently defined, when you damn well knew it was when you posted
your little lies.




--
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.

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 06:49:52 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

.. Agriculture is the largest
single business in the US when you take is as a whole

Get real. Taken as a whole, agriculture contributes less than 1 % of
the US GDP, and there are very many businesses in US that contribute
just as much than that or more. Telephone and telegraph alone
contributes more than 2% of the US GDP, just to name one.

In 2001 farm production contributed just 0.8 % of the US GDP,
incidentally same as for UK.

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"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 06:49:52 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

.. Agriculture is the largest
single business in the US when you take is as a whole

Get real. Taken as a whole, agriculture contributes less than 1 % of
the US GDP, and there are very many businesses in US that contribute
just as much than that or more. Telephone and telegraph alone
contributes more than 2% of the US GDP, just to name one.

In 2001 farm production contributed just 0.8 % of the US GDP,
incidentally same as for UK.


Torsten,

Before we go any further with this - do you believe there are any countries
where farming actually is important and should continue? I have this
terrible fear that you might be right and the world would be economically
much stronger if the world's farmers only produced about 30% of the food
that is actually needed - i.e. enough to feed everyone in the west, and no
more. The only problem that then remains is what to produce, where, and
how it gets distributed without some crazy Robin Hood type trying to give
it to the poor.

Michael Saunby

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Torsten Brinch wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:58:42 +0000, Tim Lamb
wrote:

In article , Torsten
Brinch
writes
Well it is undoubtedly a spike.

Please. You must be able to see the '90 data point is almost
certainly
not a spike. I must assume you have by now checked that you didn't
simply make a transcription error from John Nix. So, what is John
Nix's source of the data?

No. I have checked again. Not my transcription error. Remember, these
are small acreages.

How do you know without knowing the source, is there a column showing
the acreages traded?

no, but every year there are only small acreages traded, and of this
small amount, only a proportion is sold publically so that the price is
known.
From memory didn't the Inland Revenue at one time publish figures on
the amount of land sold?

--
Jim Webster

"The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind"

'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami'

In article , Torsten Brinch
writes
No. I have checked again. Not my transcription error. Remember, these
are small acreages.

How do you know without knowing the source, is there a column showing
the acreages traded?

I think you will find my original post mentions that these are *bare
land* prices, over 2ha. Large areas are not usually sold away from the
farmhouse (my opinion:-).

The pocket book is modestly priced:-) ISBN 0-9541201-0-8 (2001 edition)

regards

--
Tim Lamb

In article ,
says...
On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 21:37:07 -0000, David P
wrote:

In article ,
says...
The land value increases are relevant to this thread only to the
extent they have affected farm profitability, e.g. to which extent
land value increases may have increased the cost of renting land in
the farmers accounts, and thereby contributed to the low UK farm
profitability up to 2002.


I don't have rental figures

Income from let land, % on capital value
(Source IPD Let land index July 2002)
Putting the two together..

1993 3,791 5.4 204.71
1994 4,229 4.7 198.76
1995 4,788 5.2 248.98
1996 6,058 4.2 254.36
1997 6,448 3.9 251.47
1998 6,134 3.9 239.26
1999 6,655 3.9 259.55
2000 7,103 4.1 291.22
2001 7,357 3.9 286.92

Something is clearly wrong there. I guess the yields that you are
quoting are yields on values subject to tenancy whereas I have quoted VP
[no tenancy] values.

"The income return from let land has remained relatively stable at
between 3 and 5% for the past decade. As rents on farms let under
traditional (Agricultural Holdings Act) tenancies started to fall in
the late 1990s due to the slump in farm incomes, their replacement
with higher Farm Business Tenancy rents and income from diversified
activities on farms and estates has helped maintain and even increase
income. Residential rents have increased and land owners have
diversified into commercial lettings of redundant farm buildings.
It is rent from these ‘non-core’ assets that has maintained the
long-term modest growth in overall income."

OK, so the figures you quoted were not purely related to agricultural
rents. They make more sense in that respect.

Rents are certainly *not* in excess of £100/acre
under AHA's. Rents under FBT's do have a tendency to hover around that
level but those rents are not related to the productive capacity of the
land.

There is only a small number of FBTs in the IPD sample, they
reported average rents of £79 per acre, while rents on traditional
leases were £62 per acre. Seasonal grazing rents averaged £57 per acre
in 2001.

IME FBT's were much higher than £79/acre. AHA's tended to be slightly
lower than the £62 you quote - but not significantly.

Umm - are we actually going anywhere with this or have we simply
digressed into an interesting exchange of figures?

Dunno. It seems selfevident to me, that high price of farmland must be
adverse to farm profitability,

I need to be slightly more careful than usual here. It may be said that
the rent under an AHA is a more accurate representation of the
agricultural value of the land. The rent has to have regard to the
productive capacity of the land and its related earning capacity.

In this respect I would suggest that it may be the best guide to where
the value of purely agricultural land should lie. In the UK though there
are many external factors affecting the land values and it is therefore
rare to come across a purely agricultural value. Indeed, I am not sure I
have *ever* seen a pure ag. value.

--
David
Visit http://www.farm-direct.co.uk for your local farmgate food supplies.
FAQ's, Glossary, Farming Year and more!

In article ,
says...

Torsten Brinch wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:58:42 +0000, Tim Lamb
wrote:

In article , Torsten
Brinch
writes
Well it is undoubtedly a spike.

Please. You must be able to see the '90 data point is almost
certainly
not a spike. I must assume you have by now checked that you didn't
simply make a transcription error from John Nix. So, what is John
Nix's source of the data?

No. I have checked again. Not my transcription error. Remember, these
are small acreages.

How do you know without knowing the source, is there a column showing
the acreages traded?

no, but every year there are only small acreages traded, and of this
small amount, only a proportion is sold publically so that the price is
known.
From memory didn't the Inland Revenue at one time publish figures on
the amount of land sold?

Yes. They still do by way of a report compiled from sales notified to
the Valuation Office.
--
David
Visit http://www.farm-direct.co.uk for your local farmgate food supplies.
FAQ's, Glossary, Farming Year and more!

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 19:07:53 +0000, Tim Lamb
wrote:

In article , Torsten Brinch
writes
No. I have checked again. Not my transcription error. Remember, these
are small acreages.

How do you know without knowing the source, is there a column showing
the acreages traded?

I think you will find my original post mentions that these are *bare
land* prices, over 2ha. Large areas are not usually sold away from the
farmhouse (my opinion:-).

You may assume telling me something once is enough. What you are
suggesting is that the peculiar '90 data point is representative of a
few grossly atypically priced sales likely of a relatively small
acreage in the year in question. But this cannot be inferred from the
nature of the data as being bare land prices. Nothing in the data
set indicates that it has been subject to variation of the size
brought in by the odd data point itself. Compared to other data sets
on bare land prices we get no indication that the data point is part
of a time series which has measured bare land prices with a high
degree of inter annual imprecision.

The pocket book is modestly priced:-) ISBN 0-9541201-0-8 (2001 edition)

But you said the data was taken from John Nix 2002?

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 20:12:39 -0000, David P
wrote:

In article ,
says...
On Fri, 27 Dec 2002 21:37:07 -0000, David P
wrote:
Rents are certainly *not* in excess of £100/acre
under AHA's. Rents under FBT's do have a tendency to hover around that
level but those rents are not related to the productive capacity of the
land.

There is only a small number of FBTs in the IPD sample, they
reported average rents of £79 per acre, while rents on traditional
leases were £62 per acre. Seasonal grazing rents averaged £57 per acre
in 2001.

IME FBT's were much higher than £79/acre. AHA's tended to be slightly
lower than the £62 you quote - but not significantly.

OK. I take it that you consider the level you give, ~£100/acre as
currently a more realistic estimate than the $79 given by the IPD.
To be fair, the authors do make clear reservations as regards the
representativeness of their FBT sample.

Umm - are we actually going anywhere with this or have we simply
digressed into an interesting exchange of figures?

Dunno. It seems selfevident to me, that high price of farmland must be
adverse to farm profitability,

I need to be slightly more careful than usual here. It may be said that
the rent under an AHA is a more accurate representation of the
agricultural value of the land. The rent has to have regard to the
productive capacity of the land and its related earning capacity.

In this respect I would suggest that it may be the best guide to where
the value of purely agricultural land should lie. In the UK though there
are many external factors affecting the land values and it is therefore
rare to come across a purely agricultural value. Indeed, I am not sure I
have *ever* seen a pure ag. value.

Yet, if I understand you, the concept of the agricultural value of the
and is not really foreign, e.g. as that which the AHA rent must have
regard to, and as that which you consider AHA rents to be relatively
accurately representing.

The agricultural value of land would then seem to have been about the
same now as it was in 1996, with a minor peak about 1999, judging from
FPDSavills Estate Benchmark survey AHA rent settlements time series:
(£/acre, cvt. read from graph)
1996: 47
1997: 52
1998: 65
1999: 68
2000: 65
2001: 62
2002: 58

Such indication of a relatively constant agricultural value of land
is a surprising result, when other indicators indicate that farm
profitability has dropped like a rock in the same period.

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 17:13:46 -0000, "Michael Saunby"
wrote:

the world would be economically
much stronger if the world's farmers only produced about 30% of the food
that is actually needed - i.e. enough to feed everyone in the west, and no
more. The only problem that then remains is what to produce, where, and
how it gets distributed without some crazy Robin Hood type trying to give
it to the poor.

There is no need to reduce farm production, if we just waste more
food. This will for obvious reasons inflate demand relative to supply.
just as good as reducing production.Now, this means less farm subsidy
will be needed, because the farmer is able to sell more of his
product. Farm subsidy comes from your taxes, so this means your taxes
will be less. The farmers will attempt to produce more to satisfy the
artificially inflated demand. By increasing the production, the
farmers will get lower relative overhead per unit of production. The
lower production costs will reduce the cost of food. The lower food
prices will then allow the poor to afford more food with the same
money. Therefore, wasting food feeds the poor and lowers your taxes.

On Sun, 29 Dec 2002 00:35:44 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:


"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 06:49:52 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

.. Agriculture is the largest
single business in the US when you take is as a whole

Get real. Taken as a whole, agriculture contributes less than 1 % of
the US GDP, and there are very many businesses in US that contribute
just as much than that or more. Telephone and telegraph alone
contributes more than 2% of the US GDP, just to name one.

In 2001 farm production contributed just 0.8 % of the US GDP,
incidentally same as for UK.

Inclued food processing, storage, hauling, meat packing, wholesale and
reatil groceriers and the fuel, macherery, fertilzer and chemical
industries. I think the number get a very great deal bigger. Aslo the
fabric and clothing indurtries that use cotton, wool and flax.

And we all must eat, so farm production can in some fuzzy way be
linked to almost 100% of the GDP. Whatever, Gordon. The fact remains,
that farm production contributes only 0.8 % of the US GDP.

snip denigration of the service industry
snip denigration of clerks

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 14:09:25 +0000 (GMT),
("David G. Bell") wrote:

On Saturday, in article

"Torsten Brinch" wrote:

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 07:53:16 +0000 (GMT),
("David G. Bell") wrote:

On Saturday, in article

"Torsten Brinch" wrote:
However, looking at DEFRA data in the Agenda 2000 papers it is
difficult to get them to fit that CIA figure, 1.7% of GDP for 1999.
The DEFRA data series would indicate a figure close to 1 % for 1998,
and there is not a single data point above 1.5 % since 1987.

I don't know where the CIA gets its data from -- does it just use
official figures for friendly powers?

But it seems to me to be quite
possible that the CIA shifts some of the food-processing element of GDP
into agriculture, so as to create consistent categorization.

Fascinating. You are so close, and yet you don't see it.
The categories: [Agriculture,Industry,Services] = 100%

From which can be concluded, dear Dr Watson, that 'Agriculture'
is CIA's secret code name for [agriculture+forestry+fisheries]

You are a bloody-minded little toad, aren't you. One minute you're
saying that "it is difficult to get them to fit that CIA figure", and
then you call your critic a fool for suggested that the category might
be differently defined, when you damn well knew it was when you posted
your little lies.

HOLMES: Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you deduce.

WATSON: I see millions of stars, and if there are millions of stars,
and if even a few of those have planets, it is quite likely there are
some planets like earth, and if there are a few planets like earth out
there might also be life.

HOLMES: Watson, you idiot! Don't you see it? Somebody stole our tent!

WATSON: You are a bloody-minded little toad, aren't you, Mr Holmes.
One minute you're asking me to "look up at the stars", and then you
call me an idiot for not noticing the tent is gone, when you damn well
knew it, when you woke me up to tell me your little lies.