Yesterday's farm..what if it comes back?

mardatha

thats very interesting and very relevant to me, ty . I live very high and
cold and want a pear tree !:D

choille

RAS - where do you get all your knowledge from?

I am near the sea loch, but have been nearer it in the past & had growing successful fruit trees.
I will have to try & source some young trees.
Morello cherries that's amazing - although speaking to our neighbours, who worked on the local estate - there used to be apricots & peaches growing at the big hoose = albeit in a walled garden.
You've really got me excited RAS - I think I could get into growing some Scottish Apples, I keep & breed rare breed Scottish hens & marginal & rare breed Scottish sheep - why not apples & pears too?
This is very heartening - thank you so much.

ceridwen

choille wrote: »

I hadn't heard of this Holzer - the article is really fascinating. Unfortunately the speakers on my computer are jiggered, so I can't hear the utube thing, but I'll see if I can dig anything else up on this guy as he sounds like he knows what he's doing.

Yes please...:D

rhiwfield

George Monbiot in the Guardian wrote this a few days ago:
"But nothing the whistle-blowers said has scared me as much as the conversation I had last week with a Pembrokeshire farmer. Wyn Evans, who runs a mixed farm of 170 acres, has been trying to reduce his dependency on fossil fuels since 1977. He has installed an anaerobic digester, a wind turbine, solar panels and a ground-sourced heat pump. He has sought wherever possible to replace diesel with his own electricity. Instead of using his tractor to spread slurry, he pumps it from the digester on to nearby fields. He's replaced his tractor-driven irrigation system with an electric one, and set up a new system for drying hay indoors, which means he has to turn it in the field only once. Whatever else he does is likely to produce smaller savings. But these innovations have reduced his use of diesel by only around 25%."


Wasnt that long ago that oil peaked at over $140 and fertilisers went thru the roof. As it is oil is now just under $80 a barrel and fertiliser prices have stabilised at well above 2007 levels after the 2008 spike, all that before demand kicks in as the recession ends. These input costs have fed thru to food costs and the combination of low incomes/higher food costs (especially basic foods) have resulted in higher levels of food insecurity, even in the US where some 50m were affected last year.

So if farmers are unable to wean themselves off oil, and input prices rise, as I would expect, then we can expect food prices to rise above inflation and food to increase as a share of household budgets. No real problem for the well off, but of real concern to low income families and many millions of pensioners

choille

I remember farmers gathering sea weed & putting that on the fields in Fife when I was a kiddie. Wonder if they'll go back to that......

Animal feed has rocketed in price. It's a problem for me, but this year managed to go in with someone else for hay, so that reduced the price, but I will have to look at growing some feed if I'm to continue with sheep. I do grow a very small amount, but will have to increase that in the future.

As to the George Monbiot quote - It is a thing where all that investment, which must have been huge, has only reduced his oil use by 25%.

Some of the size of fields have 'encouraged' disease in crops. There has been much tinkering about with seeds & pestisides. Everything is geared to yield with little thought of long term environmental factors. Big farmers are much more able to survive any recession. Small farmers across Europe are being squeezed out & their farms goobled up - some by companies that are in actuality banks.
There are movements on the go in some regions where farmers are becoming more collective - banding together in machine share, buying etc. That is quite hopeful. But it is all a bit David & Goliath.

lostinrates

choille wrote: »

Animal feed has rocketed in price. It's a problem for me, but this year managed to go in with someone else for hay, so that reduced the price, but I will have to look at growing some feed if I'm to continue with sheep. I do grow a very small amount, but will have to increase that in the future..

Hay is not so bad for us this year, and haylage the same as last year. Our farmer is a dream and will swap any puntured bales. I hate using haylage (green concerns of wraping) and using it only where I have no viable alternative, so thats only about 20 large bales a year: still: my hope s soon to be off it. Straights and made animal feeds on the other hand...:eek:. I have two very old mares who are very poor doers, and boy does my wallet feel it.

Incidently, the recession has also caused a hortage in tripe for dogs, and a hefty price rise.

We're looking for a farm ATM. Deressing that I can only really do this with my DH's city income.

choille

I don't use wrapped bales & we had to use friend's van to get it as the haulage charges are huge here - last year we paid more for the haulage than the actual hay - was really stung. This year we found a different small supplier & the hay is really sweet - too good for sheep in a way - equine quality & it's cost a lot less - so really pleased with that, but necessitated building a hay shed as bought enough for the whole Winter & didn't have enough storage capacity.
We even took some friend's sheep into Abbatoir on the way - so saved transport costs.
Every journey requires planning & phone around to try & get stuff done in a oner.
Still feels as if we are barely keeping our heads above water.

Tripe - that's interesting - Folks are now using chepaer cuts of meat for theirselves I suppose. When people are hard up there is less waste.

Funny looking about here as undergrowth dies down - have been pondering on how everything would have been grown, before the road was put in - everyone would have had to grow enough for their selves and their stock - well they'd maybe buy in a sack of oatmeal to suppliment their meagre diets & possibly some flour - although we have traces of a vertical mill on our croft (sure that's what it was ) - so possibly they were a heck of a lot more self sustaining than we have a hope of being.

Generations of a family building it up from scratch & then of course the clearances & everything going to ruin. It's quite something to try & scratch it back into some semblance of order. It'll take us years.
Wish you luck with getting a farm.

rhiwfield

I did say that I didnt want to talk about geo-political issues BUT I was surprised, while googling food security, to read about the various corporate land grabs under way in most developing countries. It does seem immoral for countries and their corporate fronts to acquire vast tracts of farmland in other countries to safeguard their own food supply (and for corporates/hedge funds etc to make profit from it).

I wonder if this has happened in the UK?

Lostinrates, you're not a hedge fund manager are you?

choille

A lot of companies are land banking - not just in developing countries. I know that banks are taking over small farms in Portugal & Spain.

Part of the new proposed Crofter's Act is that loans will be available at commercial rates, but basically the banks will aquire the tenancies - as opposed to crofter's getting grants as in the past. And the way things are at the moment - these loans may have every possibility of being foreclosed on. In the past it was up to local crofters to approve who took over these teneancies, but those same securities may be wiped away.
There are also moves afoot to wrest control from the crofter's re common grazings - well that is how I interperet some of the proposed legislation. When I was at a conferance a few months back it was thought by some that this may be to get things such as wind farms/housing developments etc approved more readily & also to wrest some of those profits away from the crofters - who knows at the moment.
With big boys such as Donald Trump being able to get his golf course despite all the objections - one does wonder.
I also know that many years back Monsanto aquired a huge amount of farms in India. I think alot of jiggery pockery is going on & it isn't just because of food safety. But then again I'm a cynic!

RAS

choille wrote: »

A lot of companies are land banking - not just in developing countries.

Part of the new proposed Crofter's Act is that loans will be available at commercial rates, but basically the banks will aquire the tenancies - as opposed to crofter's getting grants as in the past. And the way things are at the moment - these loans may have every possibility of being foreclosed on. In the past it was up to local crofters to approve who took over these teneancies, but those same securities may be wiped away.
There are also moves afoot to wrest control from the crofter's re common grazings - well that is how I interperet some of the proposed legislation. When I was at a conferance a few months back it was thought by some that this may be to get things such as wind farms/housing developments etc approved more readily & also to wrest some of those profits away from the crofters - who knows at the moment.

Ouch

I am rather out of touch with changes in crofting law. I know that the issue round local crofter approval have caused some grief in the past; old scores being settled and land being barely worked because there were hopes that a family member would take it over in the future, but that was 10 years ago before the Commission had a sort out.

The idea of crofters losing rights over grazing land sounds horridly like the Enclosure Acts down here which made fortunes for some rich folk and devastated the smaller folk. More buy-outS? Might be the only way.