Britons forced in to 'modern day slavery' by soaring house prices!!

epz_2

lynzpower wrote: »

I expect the reason is that we simply cannot afford to continue importing food over the long term. There will ocme a point where British farming at long last will have its renaissance. Food prices are currently rising, there is increased demand from the consumer for "locally produced" and reduced food miles.

In time i expect that those salad leaves and mange tout you eat from guatemala/ brazil/ kenya et al will be very much a luxury item and either out of consumer demand to appear "green n ethical" or the lack of ability to export/transfer goods across continent, will mean British seasonal farming will be a neccessity.

My dad works in produce import and has started to see this happening already. it will of course take some time ( and a hell of a lot of EU jiggery-pokery and of course a change of government! ) to get the UK to get anywhere near as self sufficient as in the war years, but I believe strongly it will happen in my lifetime.

food produced in the uk and eu is MASSIVELY subsidised by grants and market protection. its cheaper in terms of labour and less energy intensive to have 3rd world countries to grow our food, it also has the benefit of creating a stable economic base that allows poor countries to develop and pervent the usual starvation/genicide/famine(mostly caused by war) seen on the news.

you can blame the french farmers union for a system where our government collects out money in taxes, sends it to the eu who then send it back to local farmers who then become dependant on the subsidies and mass produce cause labour is such a big component of cost. the whole system is also full of fraud and poor animal welfair. a free food market would have massive benifits world wide.

PosterBoy77

epz wrote: »

food produced in the uk and eu is MASSIVELY subsidised by grants and market protection. its cheaper in terms of labour and less energy intensive to have 3rd world countries to grow our food, it also has the benefit of creating a stable economic base that allows poor countries to develop and pervent the usual starvation/genicide/famine(mostly caused by war) seen on the news.

you can blame the french farmers union for a system where our government collects out money in taxes, sends it to the eu who then send it back to local farmers who then become dependant on the subsidies and mass produce cause labour is such a big component of cost. the whole system is also full of fraud and poor animal welfair. a free food market would have massive benifits world wide.

I cannot see how it is less energy intensive to grow our food on the other side of the world. Yes they may grow food with less use of tractors that need fuel and more manual labour, but each of the human beings that work the land have to be sustained and consume natural resources themselves. Also, once the food is harvested it needs to be shipped around the world to us. The 3rd world should be growing food to feed itself, not the EU sending food to feed their big populations and then us buying food back from the few well-off landowners there.

If the EU stopped producing food, the Third world would need a step change and have to mechanise more than we have here to support us and themselves.

We need to be self-sufficient in food, it makes no sense to say that we should buy our food from those who don't have enough to even feed themselves - what planet are you on?

In the EU we subsidise farmers as it is generally felt that having our own food supplies is a good thing. We have also been lucky in producing surplus food. It may not be 100% efficient, but it is the only way we can run a system, as man is not able to determine the weather and yields of any particular season. A non-subsidised market would result in far fewer surpluses and much greater volatility in food supplies, probably even shortages.

We take our food supplies for granted, but the system we have works very well in providing us with food.

nelly_2

thesaint wrote: »

My best moneysaving tip is:

BUY NOW, PRICES CAN ONLY RISE :money:

Oh the irony.............. you used a picture of martin at the end there it nearly looks like he endorses your comment!

Untill you take a gander at one of his latest threads that is

Click me Im a link

epz_2

you are starting from a flawed premise, water is owned by other countries, fuel and power is supplied by places like russia and middle east. there are very few things in the world we are self suficient in and it doesnt matter.

the self sufficency came after the 2nd world war when we had uboats blowing up freight, not likely these days or in the way distant future.

the reason some things (not all) are better grown abroad is simple, look at argentinean and new zeland, they basicly toss the sheep and cows out on the fields at the start of the year, end of the year round them up when ready and slaughter, freeze and ship them off in i a sodding great boat.

not only cargo ships are very energy efficent(by definition of the scale) but you are compairing the energy used against intensivly reared herds which need injections, regular feed suplements, housing in winter and a whole host of other things that consume energy.

dont get me wrong, i am all for some stuff being local but i would rather eat a steak from a cow that spent its life roaming the hills vs stuck in a small field in summer and shed in winter injected with growth hormones etc.

its a bit like the 80s when the minors said we needed coal and to subsidise it, also the 3rd world would easily have a surplus if they had an economic incentive to make money and 1st world political will to keep them stable rather than in turmoil to exploit them.

Dave117

food? farming? water? I thought we were talking house prices!!!????!?!???

before_hollywood

nelly wrote: »

Oh the irony.............. you used a picture of martin at the end there it nearly looks like he endorses your comment!

Untill you take a gander at one of his latest threads that is

Click me Im a link

brilliant- good find nelly mate

thesaint

nelly wrote: »

Oh the irony.............. you used a picture of martin at the end there it nearly looks like he endorses your comment!

Untill you take a gander at one of his latest threads that is

Click me Im a link

He stole that thread idea from you didn't he? He didn't even acknowledge your original thread, damn right disrespectful of the big man.:mad:

He does differentiate between asking prices and selling prices though.

So my earlier comment stands.

ManAtHome

Dave117 wrote: »

food? farming? water? I thought we were talking house prices!!!????!?!???

LOL - long tradtion of house price threads - we get the boring stuff out of the way first:
They'll BOOM
They'll go up a bit
They'll stay the same
They'll drop a bit
They'll CRASH AND BURN

Then we discuss something interesting... Best one (IMHO) was a discussion about statistics and probability some months back.

mr.broderick

ManAtHome wrote: »

LOL - long tradtion of house price threads - we get the boring stuff out of the way first:
They'll BOOM
They'll go up a bit
They'll stay the same
They'll drop a bit
They'll CRASH AND BURN

Then we discuss something interesting... Best one (IMHO) was a discussion about statistics and probability some months back.

Might be an idea to find that thread and bump it back up. I really enjoyed it..

deary65

Dave117 wrote: »

food? farming? water? I thought we were talking house prices!!!????!?!???

The reason for this is psychological, a home food and water are all essential for living. That is way the matters being discussed are so contentious and emotive.