“Where are the men of vision these days? They all seem to follow each other, afraid to rock the boat.”
This question is posed by Richard Bruce, a former farm manager. He continues:
If only politicians would wake up and realise that small farms could be the best option for the future and for global warming.
With the large farms, prairie-like fields and massive oil guzzling machines controlled by satellites, it is harder to get the skilled operators they need to work long hours.
The various soil types within the fields can’t be farmed optimally and under larger-scale, so-called industrial farming, there is no way to stop the depletion of the soil, its structure and its fertility.
The bigger the farm the less secure it is against anomalies of weather and disease and without the earlier system of base prices for the goods farms produce. Before the UK entered the European Union, there were guaranteed prices for most farm products and deficiency payments which made up the difference between the guaranteed price and the market price, paid by the exchequer and set annually by negotiation between the government (MAFF) and the National Farmers Union (UK/EU Agricultural Policy History).
This was destroyed when Common Market subsidies replaced those designed for British conditions before membership and the whole system has become a commodities gamble with large sums of money at stake.
In addition, supermarket control of supply and prices is making the whole supply chain very unstable.
Asset stripping small farms, buying them up and converting the buildings leaves a trail of disaster in his wake. There are now three new big barns built in the fields that I managed as the original 7 smaller barns are now dwellings which just lead to more flooding and sewage pollution – already the council has had to spend a small fortune altering the drains to reduce the floods.
Flooded land cannot absorb any water and so it runs downstream to flood. With global warming there will soon be serious mosquito problems – which is why the land was drained in the first place!
One thing is certain: we can’t eat trees, or houses, or roads, or railways and golf courses and with all the millions of acres of farmland used for industry and energy producing crops we are becoming over-dependent on imported food, which may not always be available.
All this as our population rises out of control. The future does not look good.#
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Food concerns 
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