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UK farm profitability to jun 2002
Gordon Couger wrote in message ... "Jim Webster" wrote in message ... Gordon Couger wrote in message ... If they don't feel they need farmers why are they subsiding them? here you confuse the EU and UK. Whenever there is a voluntary scheme, the UK does not pay out on it, if the EU allow an extra top up if a national government deems it necessary, the UK government doesn't deem it necessary. Love them or loathe them, If it wasn't for the EU there probably would not be organised agriculture in the UK any more, a handful of really big cereal operations and a lot of part time "ranching" of cattle and sheep at no input stocking rates. I am confusing the two. So the UK doesn't contribute any to the farmer? the thing about the Common Agricultural Policy is that it is common and the EU lays down regulations to ensure that it is stuck to. An example is the "green currency". Basically pre euro, and for those countries not in the euro zone, farm subsidies were/are paid in ecu/euro. As your currency strengthens against the euro the amount of subsidy you farmers get falls, as your currency weakens against the euro the amount farmers get increases. To stop countries running a weak currency and siphoning money off europe into their agriculture the EU set up a system to ensure that at regular intervals, or if currencies fluctuated outside certain limits, the "green" currency was revalued meaning farmers got the same Euros as they would have if their currency had remained static against the Euro. Hence when the Pound crashed out of the ERM on black wednesday we did OK, because we got more euros. Just briefly until the falling £ hit another band and the green £ was revalued. When the £ goes up and is strong against the Euro then the member state can pay money to make up the difference so their farmers don't miss out. The rules for weak currencies are statutory, countries have no choice. The EU knows its member states and tries to put in rules to stop them unfairly favouring their own nationals. The rules for strong currencies aren't compulsory because the EU couldn't believe that a member state would knowingly crucify it's own industries. Needless to say the UK government has paid only a proportion of the money necessary to compensate for the strong currency, and calculations show (you can get the figures of the statistics sections of the defra website) that over a billion £ sterling are being sucked out of UK agriculture every year. It is probable that already not paying this money to UK agriculture has already covered the costs of BSE. Half the beef in the US is rasied by the guy with a job in town and few head at home. It is a real concern how to get him the better genetics that he needs to move in the right direction. we have smallholders and I don't think that there is any government outreach to them. They can get drawn into the net of paperwork and form filling but will probably not get much in the way of support payments. No till has the potential to put farming in the same boat. I look at that and think I could buy a old tractor and a planter and farm a couple of quarters of cotton with a good scout and spray plane and make money at it particularly if I put in a center pivot and drilled enough wells to get water for it. Now that we have the boll weevil under control and BT cotton lets us spray for insects with out having to continue to spray once a week to keep the boll worm out if we kill the beneficial insects. It makes cotton a new deal. I could probably even hire the planting done. But that gets a bit dicey. You gamble on someone being free when you need them and that is far from a sure thing. I made a lot of nice money running tractors round the clock so I could have some extra time to hire out to others at critical times. round here we have a lot of contractors, more small farmers, farmers sons or similar who have a tractor, slurry tanker, round baler and wrapper, etc. Some will do mowing, ploughing etc. There are outfits who can put a couple of silage teams into the field (self propelled harvester, three tractors and trailers, a rake, two mowers and a loading shovel for the pit) but these are the minority. -- Jim Webster "The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind" 'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami' |
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