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Farmers have been told to go green or face the financial consequences - Times Online

English farmers have been given a last chance to adopt greener practices that benefit wildlife and help to combat climate change or face deductions from their state hand-outs of cash.

The Government has set a tough new target which requires that the area of arable fields covered by environmental schemes should double within three years.

Every farmer has also been told that he or she should fund some environmental improvements on their land without any financial support from payments made under the Common Agriculture Policy.

In addition, Hilary Benn, the Rural Affairs Secretary, has made clear that he expects farmers to keep some land fallow to help to provide habitats for birds and small mammals such as voles and field mice.

by Fran (fran at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Nov 5th, 2009 at 09:44:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
English farmers ???

If they want to promote biodiversity then they should encourage organic farming, reduce weedkillers, reduce fertilizer. But that'd piss off Monsanto, so they're just being two-faced instead.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Nov 5th, 2009 at 05:11:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Or we could stop subsidise farming. Just saying.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 02:30:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The positive effect of which would be?
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 04:13:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Lower taxes, cheaper food, stronger economies in developing countries who are shut out of the EU and US markets.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 04:15:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, Argerntinean and Brasilian agrobusiness would certainly be strengthened. African subsistence farmers? Nah.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 04:22:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Africa has a huge agri export potential. Subsistence farming really sucks anyway. Anyone who has a chance to do something else will take it.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 12:40:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Repeat: you are suggesting we be dependent on unsustainable plantation-type industrial agriculture in other parts of the world, and I'll add: you are suggesting former peasant farmers work for a pittance to keep your food "cheap".
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 12:46:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
you are suggesting former peasant farmers work for a pittance

Or, more precisely with the South American exmple: a few of them would continue to work for a pittrance, while the rest would end up without land and job and move to urban slums.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 02:09:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I do nothing of the kind. First of all, I haven't mentioned plantations. Second, plantations can very well be sustainable. Thirdly, I have said nothing about low wages. The lower costs would come from the reduced import duties and the increased efficiency created by such a move. Further, high wages in the agricultural sector (and in other sectors as well) are only possible, for obvious reasons, with a high degree of mechanisation (higher output, fewer need to share the agri-income). Even further, wages cannot become lower than they already are, as everyone who has those jobs moves as fast as they can, even if the alternative is a sweatshop factory job with very low wage.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 03:06:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
In other words, we would import our food massively from unsustainable plantation-type industrial agriculture elsewhere in the world.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 04:27:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]
"The Great Heretic, The Story of Raul Prebisch, Implacable Foe for First World Power" by VIJAY PRASHAD

From 1921, Prebisch began to use the metaphor of core and periphery to describe the geography of international trade, with the core being Europe and the U.S. and the periphery being the rest of the planet (what Marx called the "peasant nations").

A brief stay in London, negotiating with the English over a new trade treaty, showed Prebisch real power: Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, who answered neither to the political parties nor to the monarch. Prebisch wanted such a post in Argentina, one that would allow him to put his insights over monetary policy and international trade to work without the vacillation of electoral politics. He did get a sinecure at the Central Bank of Argentina after his plan (the Economy Recovery Plan of 1933) allowed his country to tread a middle ground between protectionism and "free trade". As Dosman puts it, "Prebisch certainly cared less about textbooks than evolving a new balance between industry and agriculture in the uncharted waters of the Great Depression."

From his perch as the Director of the Central Bank, Prebisch spent the next decade developing a monetary policy for the periphery, which was largely based on pragmatism rather than on any established theory. For this he earned few friends and many enemies, notably among the permanent bureaucracy in the U.S. Prebisch's ferocious nationalism prevented him from allowing Argentina's economy to bend its knee before either London or Washington, and this bothered the latter so greatly that Prebisch was barred from attending the Bretton Woods conference to set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

re: The Life and Times of Raul Prebisch, 1901-1986 by Edgar Dosman

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 07:55:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Don't you think a domestic food production capacity is strategic?

That said, lakes of milk and wine and mountains of butter are not strategic.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 04:21:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]
But think of the voles.
by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 08:46:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]
No. If you want "strategic" you also need to have all the crucial support industries domestically. Fertilizer, pesticides, farming machinery, oil&gas... No use.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 12:39:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Eating is the one thing you need to do no matter what.

And, in Scandinavia, heating yourself.

The rest of out way of life is negotiable :)

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 12:50:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Europe doesn't have support industries? The other regions of the world where you want to see plantations set up to provide you with cheap food already have support industries?
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 12:53:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Who said anything about Europe? If you want domestic security of supply, you're talking about just your own country. Then a much better idea is to prestore a few years supply of freeze-dried food which one can live off until domestic farming is recreated. That's much cheaper than constant agribusiness subsidies.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 03:08:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I do believe you've passed into self-parody here, on several levels.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 04:14:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
How so? We did have those amounts of freeze-dried food stored in caves during the cold war. Which, given a bit of thought, is something of a parody. But then so are all worries over food security of supply.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 04:45:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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