Lie of the Land

the hunter

for those of you that missed it last time . the lie of the land programme is on more 4 on tuesday at 10 o clock .....

stevoman

whats it about?

Kramer

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055088251&referrerid=&highlight=

Highly recommend watching but beware there is footage of calves being slaughtered/skinned etc., so may not suit everyone.

The ratting was good .

the hunter

i didnt catch it all last time . definately watch it all this time ...

thelurcher

Well worth watching - very depressing though.
However I don't think farming has gone to that state in this country yet.

stevoman

seems good. does anyone hear read the countrymans weekly?

the hunter

stevoman wrote:

seems good. does anyone hear read the countrymans weekly?

???????

fits

I heard it was a very good programme from another forum (an equestrian one). Wish I had a tv sometimes...

Double Barrel

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/timeshift/land.shtml

The lie of the land
John Vidal charts the march of intensive farming
John Vidal
Saturday May 17, 2003
Guardian

William Cobbett, radical chronicler of rural England at the start of the late 18th century agricultural revolution, saw the Vale of Pewsey in Wiltshire as the "promised land". Viewing the farms full of people, orchards heavy with fruit and crops ripening in the small fields, he declared that it was "impossible to find a more beautiful country than this or to imagine any life more easy and happy than men might lead here - if they were not tormented by an accursed system that takes the food from those that raise it and gives it to those who do nothing."
He would barely recognise the vale today. The orchards and hedgerows have been mostly grubbed up, there are few farms smaller than 300 acres, and there are more racehorses to be seen on the land than people. The village shops are full of processed foods and on the downs above the vale, one man may plough 400 acres a day in a giant satellite-controlled tractor. An estate owner, who employs just six people to farm 4,000 acres, earns perhaps £500,000 a year in wheat subsidies alone.
It has taken only 60 years to achieve this radical transformation of the land. Before the war, there were about 500,000 farms in Britain, the vast majority of which were small and mixed, raising both crops and livestock. Few bought feed or pesticides from agrochemical companies, employing traditional husbandry and land management methods instead. Then Britain was cut off by Hitler's U-boats and everything had to change. The emergency measures to boost yields did not disappear after hostilities ceased. In fact, they were formalised with the passing of the 1947 Agriculture Act, which gave farmers guaranteed prices and guaranteed markets. The Attlee government's aim was to make sure Britain never suffered a food shortage again. Subsidies, first from the UK government then from the common market, were increasingly linked to the quantity of food produced, whether it was needed or not. As specialisation became the norm, the mixed farming system was replaced by monoculture, heavily reliant on pesticides and new technology. And it is only now that the consquences are becoming clear. British farming has become ruthlessly efficient and successful, but while the land may never have produced more, it may never have been so lifeless.
In just 50 years, say Essex University researchers, wheat yields have increased from 2.6 to 8 tonnes per hectare, barley from 2.6 to 5.8 tonnes a hectare and each cow produces twice as much milk. But "successes" like this come with a social and environmental price that is passed on to everyone else via taxes and subsidies, which give the lie to the food industry's claim that we enjoy cheap food. The Essex university report tried to put a price tag on modern agricultural practices. Cleaning up the chemical pollution, repairing the habitats and coping with human sickness caused by industrial farming costs up to £2.3bn a year - not far off the total income of farmers - concluded Professor Jules Pretty of the Centre for Environment and Society, the lead author of the report. According to industry figures, it now costs water companies about £135m-£200m a year to remove pesticides and nitrates from drinking water - costs paid for by consumers, not by the polluters. The report reckoned the health costs of BSE, pathogens and antibiotic overuse was between £1bn-£2bn a year.
Quantifying the cost of erosion and soil loss was hard but the academics estimated that intensive farming practices have increased the risk of floods by 14%, adding £115m a year to insurance company bills. It's a problem that is likely to increase as the weather becomes more extreme and farmers try to squeeze more from every acre. Silt-laden water running off arable fields is now a common sight, especially after heavy rain. Wind erosion, too, is a growing hazard, especially in the eastern parts of the country where prairie-type conditions have been created by the removal of hedges and woods.
Pretty's team estimated that air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from farming cost more than £1.1bn. About 10% of UK greenhouse gas emissions come from the methane from livestock digestion and manures and nitrous oxide from fertilised land. Meanwhile, government agency English Nature calculates that it costs about £25m a year to restore the habitats of endangered species and wildlife damaged by agriculture. Most noticeable, but impossible to put a price on, was the loss of birdlife and mammals. In the past 60 years, it is believed that farmers have grubbed up 190,000 miles of hedges, destroyed 97% of flower-rich meadows, and 60% of ancient woodlands, and farmland birds have suffered a catastrophic decline. Organophosphate pesticides almost killed off the otter and many birds of prey, since they were introduced in the 1950s.
Birds that depend on agricultural fields have fallen in numbers by as much as 50% since 1970 as a direct result of the intensification and specialisation of farming. Corn bunting numbers are down by 85% and tree sparrows by 87%. Countryside birds that were once common, like as the skylark, the linnet, the yellowhammer, the grey partridge, the turtle dove and the song thrush, are now considered rare enough to appear on official lists of endangered species.
But the greatest success of this kind of agriculture has been to drive people off the land. Heavy on technology and inputs, it needs ever fewer people to farm ever more acres. Since 1945, Britain has lost 65% of its farmers, and now needs only 1.2% of the population to work on the land. From the mid-80s to the mid-90s alone, the industry shed 200,000 jobs. The cost, says the New Economics Foundation, is seen in the social devastation of once-prospering villages, with fewer shops, post offices and bus services.
The same phenomenon is now taking place around the world, as developing countries are forced to compete in the world market to sell agricultural produce. India, with more than 700,000 small farmers, expects to lose half within 20 years if present trends continue, China even more. Countries like Poland, waiting to join the European Union will - like Britain - inevitably lose hundreds of thousands of small farmers as agriculture switches to the British/American model to survive.
Pretty and others urge a wholesale switch to more sustainable agriculture, which needs lower inputs, fewer pesticides and more people. In fact, the need for change is now broadly acknowledged by most farmers and by the government. But failure to reform the common agricultural policy remains a problem, as does the inexorable drive to make farmers compete on a global scale. Only the largest British farmers may survive.
Farming can have environmental benefits, Pretty argues. It can absorb carbon in soils and trees to provide new carbon sinks, thus helping to mitigate climate change. It can hold water in wetlands to provide flood control. It can produce the farmland birds we all feel are part of our heritage and landscapes people enjoy, he says. Only by rethinking farming completely will life be brought back to the land.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/focus/story/0,,956618,00.html

fits

Very good article... the globalisation of agriculture is scary and short-sighted in the extreme....

thelurcher

Worst thing I've seen around my area is that they've started putting streams underground - diverting them through huge pipes and burying the valley with fill from construction sites :mad: the whole landscape is changing - God only knows how they get planning for it

stevoman

the large construction companys and estate agets and their very much legal contibutions they can make to political parties hold a lot of sway unfortunatly

stevoman

the large construction companys and estate agets and their very much legal contibutions they can make to political parties hold a lot of sway unfortunatly

stevoman

the large construction companys and estate agets and their very much legal contibutions they can make to political parties hold a lot of sway unfortunatly

jaycee

Triple tap...

stevoman

dam servers are slow!!!!!!!!