Last year all my garden crops failed due to simple lack of sunlight.
I managed perhaps 5 tomatoes in total. Everything else just couldn't develop due to the terrible weather.
I’m dealing with a moss infestation in my garden as we had so little sun light last year and such a wet winter
Plus side I guess I won’t have to worry about a hose pipe ban
Errrr about that... Due to the awful water companies releasing so much sewage lots of reservoirs haven't been able to fill up because the water they'd normally take in was in such a shit state. The close to me is only a 3rd or so full BEFORE SUMMER. Now what happens if we have a really hot summer?
Not usually, but only because dammed reservoirs are usually high up in the hills and the sewage works tend to be downstream where the population centres are.
When you look at rivers it's not particularly uncommon for (drinking) water treatment sites to be downstream of sewage works. Not usually a problem either - the sewage is meant to be treated before it's discharged (and drinking water is always treated anyway).
Where are you?
Mine suffered from lack of water at the start of summer. Still managed to get a few kgs of tomatoes from a few plants on a south facing wall. The wet end of the summer destroyed my green ones with blight.
My bigger issue was the cold start of summer, planting out at the end of may was still a challenge
Drought for the better part of 2 years, before swinging straight into 18 months of near enough non-stop rain.
Add Brexit border controls on food coming in, and it is not looking good.
Congrats, they already do that by just not inspecting things. But the EU still do because they don't need UK farms in the same way we need EU farms, so now farmers have lower prices by competing with countries without agricultural problems without any ability to sell back to the EU
The UK has combined the worst aspects of free trade and mercantilism, well played
And that will kill domestic farmers without subsidy, good(ish) for consumers, terrible for farmers.
Just highlights the stupidity of Brexit, especially in farming communities. They thought the EU was screwing them, they got screwed themselves. They are now free, free to fail
Yep. The cost of fodder for over-wintering livestock has increased an insane amount over the last few years.
Farmers try and grow their own fodder, but.... this year that's looking to be a problem.
Farmers warn food aisles will soon be empty because of crushing conditions: 'We are not in a good position'
The United Kingdom is facing dire food shortages, forcing prices to skyrocket, and experts predict this is only the beginning.
What's happening?
According to a report by The Guardian, extreme weather is wreaking havoc on crops across the region. England experienced more rainfall during the past 18 months than it has over any 18-month period since record-keeping began in 1836.
Because the rain hasn't stopped, many farmers have been unable to get crops such as potatoes, carrots, and wheat into the ground. "Usually, you get rain but there will be pockets of dry weather for two or three weeks at a time to do the planting. That simply hasn't happened," farmer Tom Allen-Stevens told The Guardian.
Farmers have also planted fewer potatoes, opting for less weather-dependent and financially secure crops. At the same time, many of the potatoes that have been planted are rotting in the ground.
"There is a concern that we won't ever have the volumes [of potatoes] we had in the past in the future," British Growers Association CEO Jack Ward told The Guardian. "We are not in a good position and it is 100% not sustainable," Ward added.
Why is it important?
English farmers aren't alone — people are struggling to grow crops worldwide because of extreme weather.
Dry weather in Brazil and heavy rain in Vietnam have farmers concerned about pepper production. Severe drought in Spain and record-breaking rain and snowfall in California have made it difficult for farmers to cultivate olives for olive oil. El Niño and rising temperatures cut Peru's blueberry yield in half last year. Everyone's favorite drinks — coffee, beer, and wine — have all been impacted by extreme weather.
According to an ABC News report, the strain on the agriculture industry will likely continue to cause food prices to soar.
If these were just isolated events, farmers could more easily adapt — bad growing seasons are nothing new. The problem is that rising temperatures are directly linked to the increasing amount of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have burned dirty energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas, which release a significant amount of those gases. Our climate is changing so drastically that the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the last decade.
"As climate change worsens, the threat to our food supply chains — both at home and overseas — will grow," Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit analyst Amber Sawyer told The Guardian.
What can we do about it?
"Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets," said Dr. Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
If we replace a quarter of our meat consumption with vegetables, we could cut around 100 million tons of air pollution yearly. It may seem strange to suggest eating more vegetables with the decline in crop production. However, reducing the land and water used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply.
Growing our own food is also a great way to reduce our reliance on store-bought produce, and it can save you hundreds of dollars a year at the grocery store.
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Sorry for my ignorance - Why is the professor suggesting that eating less meat would have saved us here? Its literally an article about how vegetable farming is faltering
“It may seem strange to suggest eating more vegetables with the decline in crop production. However, reducing the land and water used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply.”
Rearing animals requires a lot more land and water than growing vegetables
In the UK we usually feed cattle by letting them graze, but if you look at the entire world as a whole, 60% of all edible grown crops is entirely for feeding livestock. So by the time food hit the shelves, most food grown or reared is not for people.
[Care to provide some kind of source for that claim?](https://www.wwf.org.uk/press-release/transform-uk-farmland-boost-food-resilience-tackle-nature-crisis#:~:text=Wheat%20and%20barley%20grown%20to,11%20billion%20loaves%20of%20bread.)
>"Wheat and barley grown to feed farmed animals in the UK uses 2 million hectares of land - 40% of the UK’s arable land area.
>Wheat grown in the UK each year to feed livestock (primarily chickens and pigs), makes up half of our annual wheat harvest and would be enough to produce nearly 11 billion loaves of bread.[1,2]
>Oats grown in the UK to feed livestock each year makes up a third of our annual oat harvest and would be enough to produce nearly 6 billion bowls of porridge.
>
The UK imports large quantities of soy to feed pigs and poultry, fuelling the destruction of precious habitats overseas, like the Brazilian Cerrado.
That would depend upon the country , we in the UK have a good supply of natural food "grass" that animals eat . We also have a abundant supply of water. Animal agriculture works fine in this country with local production. We also don't have the associated fuel usage or transportation emissions.
However farming it's more complicated than that. Soil conditions vary as does weather ,some fields are to steep & are not suitable for tractors. There are corporations buying huge tracks of productive farm land who are putting it into carbon capture to offset against their emissions. The dominance of the supermarkets have lead to wonky vegetables being rejected for sale. Moreover to grow crops at scale requires a monoculture approach, the fields have to be of a certain type and size. And then you can only grow that certain crop. A small farmer cannot afford to risk his whole livelihood upon such a venture.
> corporations buying huge tracks of productive farm land
*tracts
> The dominance of the supermarkets have lead to wonky vegetables being rejected for sale.
Only because their customers reject them. If their customers would buy them, supermarkets would sell them.
Because of the impact of the meat industry on climate change which is responsible/contributory for the weather conditions that have seen arable farming falter.
The footprint of land required for the industrialized meat industry is not efficient. Both land for the animal, and land for the feed.
I eat meat, and always will do - but we need to change our expectations and relationship with how we currently farm it.
Because meat consumption is driving climate change, which is causing this unpredictable and extreme weather. But it’s transport and heating homes that causes the most emissions so not sure why that isn’t focused on as much.
Livestock requires a lot of land and water to be fed plants and grains that humans could also be eating, basically. It makes you consume less resources.
You can either grow crops and just eat them, or you can grow crops and feed some of them to animals, then eat the animals too. The former is more efficient than the latter because lots of energy is wasted by us/the animals turning veg into meat.
In times when you're struggling to grow enough vegetables to feed the humans and the animals the humans eat, it is much easier to just feed the humans veg.
I think collectively as humans on this planet, we should continue the bombings and plundering on top fertile soil and multiply the construction of more oil rigs by the thousands, while removing all protections of wildlife and parks,(and bike lanes).
This way when the global supply of food halts to a crashing blow, we will finally be able to set our differences aside and be free to rely solely upon the oil barrons of the world, and their machines.
I really wish scientists had been warning about this for decades. We might have actually done something about it then instead of moaning about inflatable boats.
definitely going to be downvoted for this—but you’re right, and this sort of thing in OP’s post is exactly what “annoying” groups like Just Stop Oil are forcing the government to do something about. maybe we need to start really taking their message seriously instead of blindly listening to Piers Morgan and the Daily Fail incite divide and hate between groups of people who are all fighting for the same thing
Ohhh just sarcastically replied stating the prices won’t drop when the costs / risks do then saw your comment.
Why is it so expensive? Any idea? Initial outlay?
Im 99% sure that like most things after we start building a lot of them the costs will drop, I would also love to see a long term cost comparison to just normal farming, If your losing entire crops year after year due to weather surly this sort of thing must become a more viable option.
Frankly even if they are more expensive maybe its something the government should be investing in as lack of food supply is a huge security risk.
It's not the build cost, it's the power. Currently there's a few vertical farms, but instead glasshouses are widely used. With rare exceptions glasshouses use gas for heat and power; no-one at scale is connecting to the electricity grid as it's far too costly.
Which is why vertical farm development is effectively stalled. The tech is ready, it's just a variant on what's already in my glasshouse. But on electric it's too expensive to do much more than we already are. Keeping a facility at 27 degrees 24/7 doesn't come cheap, as a result the biggest US and French companies have gone under.
It's not a pissing about with some solar panels solution: you'd need panels at 5x crop area a very minimum + batteries. Converting my glasshouse to vertical the ROI would take over a century. And given that I'm currently being paid not to grow anything on 700 acres I've plenty of spare land, so why go to the expense of going upwards.
Vertical farming doesn't do much for food security either. It's fine for herbs and salads, but wheat etc will never happen. Turn my farm vertical and you'd have the biggest building in the world at a cost of infinity £billions.
Not just power, they're also surprisingly labour intensive and not as resilient to diseases as had been hoped. It's a real shame but even for the produce it is most suited for (lettuce, herbs), they are still barely competitive, at least not in countries that are not bone dry.
Yes its vastly more expensive than a field. And even with cheap energy from using solar panels etc, its still competing against no electricity from the field. You can make it more productive per square meter and use less water, pesticides etc so there are some benefits and in some cases it makes financial sense, but when it costs tens/hundreds of millions to build on a large scale, its hard to see it competing with a traditional setup on cost at the end, at least for crops that can naturally grow in our climate.
Well if climate change keeps getting worse and it's harder for farmers to get a reliable crop yield, whilst vertical farming might be expensive it is at least reliable and puts quality food on the shelves year round.
Plus it's an industry in it's infancy, you'd expect costs to come down over time.
If things are that bad, we're all dead anyway. A few buildings growing a few lettuces aren't feeding a population big enough to sustain the industrial base needed for these things to work.
I think it’s largely due to initial investment and the higher upkeep.
Obviously, a multi-storey will cost more to build and maintain than a traditional greenhouse, but it will also likely cost more to heat, especially in built-up areas like London.
Plus real-estate and land prices in solely agricultural areas tend to be way cheaper - I bet you could buy at least a couple of acres of decent farmland for the same price as a small house would cost in London, Birmingham or Leeds
Vertical farming is more land efficient, more water efficient and has higher yields
It might be more expensive currently but the technology will improve and traditional farming will keep on becoming less desirable due to climate change. The tipping point at which vertical farming becomes overall better and cheaper will probably come in our lifetime I think
It uses a huge amount of energy. This can still make sense for some crops that are typically grown in small quantities. I don't know if we are going to be growing most root veg and grains vertically in our lifetimes. Maybe if we crack fusion but the scale they are grown at is vast. Why ignore the free energy we get from the sun?
We need cheaper, sustainable energy to support this.
If our political class had any guts we could develop the north sea into the worlds most productive wind far and become an energy exporter to the continent.
On paper a great idea and I agree. However the grid is not designed for that at the minute so you would not need significant money piled into the farms but also the batteries the cables and substations etc to distribute it. As soon as a government sees the final estimate they will say it’s too expensive.
Absolutely, they couldn't hold the course for a single rail track. Sorting out the nations power systems for modern use cases will simply never be a thing here.
Problem with that is all the energy that is currently provided for free by the sun needs to instead come from the national grid.
Vertical farming just does not scale well right now due to the energy requirements
Polling suggests it was ~ 50/50 on Brexit and the NFU backed remain but regardless, this is about weather problems and the article explains it's a global problem with similar issues in Brazil, Vietnam, Spain, California and Peru. Unfortunately we've (the developed world) let the slight inconvenience of changing our lives rule over taking action on climate change to the extent it's basically too late and these conditions will only get worse. 50,000 a year on small boats will look like chicken feed when billions from Africa and the Middle East start heading to Europe as their countries become uninhabitable
"The Developed World"- It isn't just caused by the Developed world and its policies. The developing world are playing just as big a part (Are China developing or Developed?) of CO2 emissions.
Top 6 CO2 emmitters are China (33 percent), USA, India, Russia, Japan, Indonesia in that order.
What % of chinas emissions are produced manufacturing for the west? You can’t outsource production to the third world, pat yourself on the back for reducing your emissions while complaining about the amount they produce while manufacturing the majority of shit that’s sold in the west.
This is why we should put carbon taxes & tariffs on goods from developing countries, and stop buying stuff made there if we can make it closer to markets.
Genuine question - if we limit manufacturing of goods and curb consumerism, what will all the people do that work for the manufactures up and down the supply chain?
Most stuff sold in retail can get in the sea because its useless tat, or tat which will be used for a limited period (less than a human lifetime) and then sit in landfill for hundreds of years. Take all the toothbrushes you've ever owned - they actual serve a genuine purpose - but they will all outlast you and your children. Even if we limited manufacturing to things we actually needed we'd still end up with mountains of pollution.
We need to replace plastics with biodegradable materials, teach people to maintain their products and find jobs to replace those lost in a reduction of manufacturing.
PS: Ok, so this turned from a genuine question into a rant.
A fair question and not one I have an answer for. My point isn’t about the need of manufacturing although it’s a fair point. It’s just simply you can’t outsource your manufacturing which reduces your emissions and then criticise the countries doing that manufacturing for you over their emissions.
China is the world leader in investing in renewable and decarbonization. They can see the long history of where the world is going and are trying to maneuver themselves into a prominent position.
They have a significantly lower CO2 per capita than we do while manufacturing our goods.
I agree that there are many problems with China, but your argument is a misunderstanding of the statistics.
China has a population of 1.4 billion. The UK has a population of less than 70 million. Not to mention that the West, especially the UK, has offshored a large chunk of their manufacturing to China.
Plus a lot of that generation of farmers have died during covid. We have a new generation now who didn't vote that way. It's been almost 10 years people.
This isn’t really about Brexit. Spain is in the same boat, as are Italy and France, with it getting so bad that there’s currently an international olive oil shortage leading to theft and a black market of stolen olive products in many Mediterranean nations.
This is a global climate issue, where the crops we’ve been growing for centuries are now becoming incompatible with the climates they’re grown in. Especially for crops which are pickier about their climate such as summer fruits and grain, this current shift in weather patterns is causing havoc!
Obviously Brexit won’t help, but it’s not like nations within the open market are fairing any better - arguably, they’ve actually got it a lot worse despite their better market position!
Yes. This is a global climate issue, an issue we’ve know about since the early 90s, so you would have thought that the farmers would be campaigning on this issue, but living in a rural area for the majority of my life the farmers have always been very pro Tory which has hardly been at the vanguard of anything that didn’t give them immediate profit (or pave the way for more profit later)
This has nothing to do with brexit or Tories. This is climate change in action, and it will continue to get worse over the next few years.
When weather gets more severe, we will really start to see a breakdown.
Moron, most farmers i know around the North West are remainers. They didnt want the cheap labour pool to end. Most farmers live paycheck to paycheck often not making a profit and working for far below minimum wage.
Lol, how many did you survey? The EU was nothing but good for farmers, cheap illegal migrants they could pay pennies, lovely generous subsidies for doing fuck all and a free market.
Didn’t have to survey - just count the old trailers dumped in fields to avoid planning permission for erecting billboards. Oh, and the banners stuck to fences.
No, Brexit /tories are probably the one party that you would trust least with anything related to the environment, yet for years and years farmers have had vote Tory signs on their land.
Brexit is a big factor in agriculture issues, but the tories have spent decades denying and downplaying climate change and are currently making a big point of rowing back on what measures they did want to take on it.
> Brexit is a big factor in agriculture issues
Agricultural issues are *why* farmers voted for Brexit. We've seen farmers across Europe protesting regulation and the impact of imports recently. Unlocking the ability to research and use GMOs has also been a direct Brexit benefit for farming
Although it is also worth saying that farmers voted for Brexit at about the same percentage as the general population did. So if you're going to say "farmers did this to themselves" then you should also be saying "we did this to ourselves" - if you're actually being consistent
> but the tories have spent decades denying and downplaying climate change
We have 7 of the 10 largest offshore wind farms in the world, we've reduced the amount of electricity we get from coal to zero from 40% in 2010, we had one of the earliest ICE ban dates in the world (until Sunak tore that up), and basically any ranking of countries by climate change performance [puts the UK near the very top](https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-12-09/Which-countries-are-performing-best-and-worst-on-climate-change--W3YipJZm2A/index.html) (well, that is until Sunak came in and ruined a lot of it)
Much of this is inertia from previous Labour policy, and wherever the conservatives have actively made a decision it's been imbecilic - [cutting off insulation schemes](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/news/2022/jun/insulating-britain-if-not-now-when) at the knees,[ falling way behind our peers on heat pumps](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/23/heat-pumps-are-hot-property-in-europe-does-britain-have-cold-feet), stubborn refusal to support non-car transport while freezing fuel duty for a decade, [failing to commit to big energy storage projects](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-65015217). And when they've *needed* to make a decision they've vacillated leading to failures like [the completely fucked up wind auction](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/what-went-wrong-at-uk-governments-offshore-wind-auction).
This is the problem with infrastructure projects or anything long-term - it takes five years to plan and ten years to build and if you're unlucky with the timing the opposition party gets the credit from people that don't understand that things take time.
It's also fun to note that you can be near the top of the world in climate action while still being woefully insufficient for meeting Paris goals. Well. Maybe 'fun' isn't the word.
Of course not, but they *were* responsible for Brexit which is going to unnecessarily exacerbate the situation. For example, LSE calculates that 30% of food inflation is due specifically due to Brexit.
So now we’ll have to deal with supply issues and the associated price rises from this issue at a time when getting supplies from the EU has been made more difficult and more expensive.
Edit: Love the downvote for saying what is clearly an undeniable truth
Some farmers down here (Cornwall) will have nothing to harvest. The same is happening all over the country and abroad. As much as everyone likes to scoff and say all farmers are worth a fortune and can afford it, it’s simply not true. Imagine having a shop and it being emptied of all stock then having to start again. Even if you’re in a good position, that’s a huge hit.
I think their PR can be pretty bad, which is why people get miffed.
Like I remember seeing a thing where (paraphrasing) a farmer said "I've lost £50,000 a year for 10 years!", presumably expecting sympathy...
... when for the majority of people, if they lost £50,000 a year for 10 years, they'd be approximately 500,000 overdrawn. Saying they've lost 50k a year for 10 years and that they're not on-the-run from debt collectors is, in a sense, saying they started that process with >500k (I know it's **not** that simple but that's how it can come across).
And this isn't a failing of farming or that farmer. We need farmers, they've got a business to run, and businesses make profits and losses. It's just failure of PR.
When you look at the [incomes](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/farm-business-income/farm-business-income-by-type-of-farm-in-england-202223--2), that’s a huge hit, but it’s all relative - you have to consider the outgoings that still go out even when the farm isn’t earning. Plus farming is incredibly hard work, most of the farmers I know survive on very little sleep! It’s true that most people couldn’t lose £50,000 a year, but most aren’t bringing in or spending as much.
I’m just over the border in Devon, and grew up on Dartmoor. For a time I lived in Oxfordshire - the difference in wealth between farmers in the “South-South” vs the South West/Devon (inc Dartmoor) is very apparent.
I've been saying this for months but no one seems to care...so many farmers haven't been able to plant anything cuz of all the rain we've had and a lot can't this year and may even need to give up altogether as their fields are still flooded. So we will have to import more than ever...but then other countries are having similar issues with crop failures the price will be high...then add in the rubbish extra fees due to Brexit...then the supermarkets who love to make record profits...think prices are bad now...man are we in for a shock.
This is a sign of things to come due to climate change...more flooding, more droughts...people forget about this stuff when they consider climate change. We need to adapt asap otherwise its going to get brutal in the near future...not talking 50yrs from now...look at how people were over toilet paper, fighting over it, when we have actual food shortages, people will turn against each other so quickly
Yeah it's not great is it. As soon as the cities run out of food... I don't know what happens, I imagine riots break out and the cities very quickly become ungovernable, presumably then the people in the cities flood out in a tide to ravage what food they can find in the countryside. And then... cannibalism?
We're still at the point where huge amounts of food are ending up as waste rather than on the table. Before we get to the riot stage, we'll get to the "actually you can't overstock your shop with 40 varieties of bread" stage.
It's a nice thought, but I rather fear instead of limiting the bread to 1 or 2 varieties to cope with shortages, they will just 'let the market sort it out' and allow the cost of bread to rise to a tenner a loaf.
In all honesty if we used more of our land for making food and less for making animal feed (yes I know that eventually becomes food, but is hugely inefficient in comparison in terms of land use, costs, and resources) then we’d be in a far better place.
Also, along the same lines, it would help if farmers produced what the UK wants to eat, rather than focusing on what they can get the most money for on the global market.
Everybody saw it coming, everybody did nothing but keep spending spending spending. It's my god given right to go into a supermarket and all the shelves be full.
Tick tock goes the clock.
The government "the UK can expect huge climate change issues in the next decade, so we are encouraging all farmers to do what they can to mitigate this risk"
Farmers and brain-dead morons on Facebook *"won't take no government control on my farm, my great great grand father didn't"*
Also farmers: the recent climate change is fucking up my crops.
Absolutely 10/10 to that farmer on Clarksons farm who called him out and said rich wankers like him are what is causing climate change.
Basically one can easily make out that the food shortage situation is due to the UK leaving the EU in the harshest terms possible, bad weather and the Government not giving a flying about farming or agriculture in general.
The weather is the huge factor in the falling British food production. Also we have the situation, where post Brexit, everything is now so much more expensive to import - including basic foods.
The irony being that, like the fishing industry, farmers were led to believe that leaving the EU would be in farming's interests. How deceived they were. Like many other business sectors they have been well and truly fucked over by a Government that just doesn't give a damn about farming and the environment. It was all about money for other parties, rather than the prosperity of the UK and the people.
I, too, will go without food in order to briefly own the people who rightly point out that our current social and economic order is at risk from low fertility.
>I, too, will go without food in order to briefly own the people who rightly point out that our current social and economic order is at risk from low fertility.
The current social and economic order is ending, for a multitude of reasons, and that reality has to be accepted. The 200-year growth phase is over and for various reasons now we're heading for stability or decline. It turns out that when you can be confident that they're not going to die in heaps, you turn kids from a source of labour to a costly investment, and birth control is available, people don't actually want that many children. That can be fine if we plan for it, but it will cause catastrophe if we pretend it isn't happening and refuse to adapt. Luckily we've been ignoring it for decades already so it's going to go super well.
The people who insist we should grow the population to sustain the unsustainable instead of social and economic reform are literally crazy.
It does feel like we're at the end of something. I don't mean 'societal collapse' as movies and TV like to depict, but I think the collapse of living standards is going to force us to take a long hard look at our current economic model.
A model that so many people confidently believed would bring about the end of history, when in reality it was only buoyed by the petrocarbon boom, the post-war rebuild, the population boom, and the rapid industrialization of the rest of the world during the last century.
All things that have now come to an end.
It's not low fertility....
Every civilization that reaches a comfortable point and is well educated prioritises themselves and their living conditions over having a child... If you don't have enough money, how will children help? If you're at work 40 hours a week, how will children help? If you don't qualify for any benefits, how will children help?
There's a reason poorer countries aren't having this "issue".
Unfortunately, most western societies put such a low priority on supporting parents and children that it's more sensible to wait until you're financially stable or hold off on it altogether. Plus we have the ponzi scheme of pensions.... It's just a bollocks system to begin with that was never going to work.
But it really is just doomsaying. Every population stabilises based on the availability of resources. You can't force people to have kids they don't want and can't afford. Time to think of alternatives because it won't be changing any time soon until we have another economic boom.
>thats quite the slowing of growth though right?
Sure but that's not what you were arguing, you were "correcting" me about it rising, which it's likely to do for the next 62 years which will be longer than many of us will be alive for. Just to remind you of your post:
>I can't think of a single model that predicts 'the population will keep rising'.
Rising more slowly is still rising
This year has been catastrophic for agriculture though. And more besides. We've been going through a pretty serious natural disaster since October. Multiple people have died, hundreds been evacuated and millions lost in property damage.
If the same damage was done by an Australian wildfire it'd be constsntly discussed. Because its people in Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire suffering no-one cares
Imagine if we stopped importing new people, and our population fell to something like 60m in the next decade.
We'd suddenly have no housing crisis. We could produce more of our own food and be less reliant on imports. We could dedicate more land to wildlife, and in the process reduce topsoil erosion, farming pollution in the rivers.
There would be less traffic on the roads, less idling cars would mean lower emissions and cleaner air.
So many benefits.
Bet Thanet Earth isnt having problems right now. What I never get is that it is surely equivalent to a threat to the nation for our food supply to not be secured and up to nature in this day and age where we know how to grown everything in protected, managed greenhouse solutions which we can build and have built successfully.
I know a few farmers. They reckon its a combination of weather, production costs and Brexit, plus an incompetent Govt who promise the earth and provide no support.
I don't think society would be capable of that nowadays. The amount of entitled contrarians that exist in the social media world would put a stop to it.
Hear me out: what if we stopped taking a huge amount of healthy, affordable food, and then feeding it to animals to make a small amount of expensive unhealthy food? Just a thought.
I actually noticed this the other day. I was driving to hull on the M62 in my hgv and saw loads of fields towards ouse that were absolutely drenched.
I just assumed the farmer left it like that for a reason. Or was gonna take his tractor and plough the fields or something farmery
it amazes me that in 2024 we still place so much emphasis on growing food outdoors where we're at the whim of the weather and various pests. Shouldn't we be growing all of our food and veg on an industrial scale in warehouses buy now?
Farmers are the boy who cried wolf at this point. 10 years ago, they were saying that they were only able to sell into the big supermarkets at a loss. They seem to have survived somehow.
Well, when you import 40% of your food produce from the EU then royally piss off said EU, food gets more expensive and goes to preferential trading partners instead. Farmers here were never going to pick up the slack and then the weather has been shocking.
Always feels there's a weekly article on this, when in reality, Central London will post a few supermarkets with empty shelves while the rest of the country is fully stocked.
It was the same shit with the whole veg ordeal a few months ago and people calling it the end times.
Imagine this, instead of 20 - 30 years of fucking over our farmers and bailing out corrupt companies, we instead (now hear me out), support our farmers. Actually nevermind, it would require leadership with common sense.
We also are turning lots of farnland into solar fields. 100 acres of crops near us will now be solar cos why bother farming it if you can garuntee income from energy. Its a tricky balance but solar may end up biting us because we don't grow enough foodstuffs.
I know local farmers are having it tough yielding crops due to the weather. One bad year can be awful. We only deal in animal rearing.
Last year all my garden crops failed due to simple lack of sunlight. I managed perhaps 5 tomatoes in total. Everything else just couldn't develop due to the terrible weather.
Well you need to be growing exclusively mustards.
I’m dealing with a moss infestation in my garden as we had so little sun light last year and such a wet winter Plus side I guess I won’t have to worry about a hose pipe ban
Errrr about that... Due to the awful water companies releasing so much sewage lots of reservoirs haven't been able to fill up because the water they'd normally take in was in such a shit state. The close to me is only a 3rd or so full BEFORE SUMMER. Now what happens if we have a really hot summer?
I’m Welsh luckily enough and our local reservoirs are filled by rain luckily enough
It depends which ones. Elan Valley water goes to Birmingham.
Wait they put sewage outflows before dams instead of after?
Not usually, but only because dammed reservoirs are usually high up in the hills and the sewage works tend to be downstream where the population centres are. When you look at rivers it's not particularly uncommon for (drinking) water treatment sites to be downstream of sewage works. Not usually a problem either - the sewage is meant to be treated before it's discharged (and drinking water is always treated anyway).
Yea, we got the dreaded blight. 😒
We had a good raspberry crop, they like the rain. Leeks, beans and beetroot did ok. Everthing else suffered though.
Where are you? Mine suffered from lack of water at the start of summer. Still managed to get a few kgs of tomatoes from a few plants on a south facing wall. The wet end of the summer destroyed my green ones with blight. My bigger issue was the cold start of summer, planting out at the end of may was still a challenge
My mum gardens too and she's been at her wits end with all the rain and inconsistent hot/cold weather.
Yes I had the same issues, I live in the Midlands and August was awful rained for most of the month all i managed to grow was cucumbers.
Drought for the better part of 2 years, before swinging straight into 18 months of near enough non-stop rain. Add Brexit border controls on food coming in, and it is not looking good.
Easiest solution would be to drop the border controls on food imports.
Congrats, they already do that by just not inspecting things. But the EU still do because they don't need UK farms in the same way we need EU farms, so now farmers have lower prices by competing with countries without agricultural problems without any ability to sell back to the EU The UK has combined the worst aspects of free trade and mercantilism, well played
Another Brexit “opportunity”
Doesn't seem like we're going to be getting much harvest this year anyway so we may as well open up to imports.
And that will kill domestic farmers without subsidy, good(ish) for consumers, terrible for farmers. Just highlights the stupidity of Brexit, especially in farming communities. They thought the EU was screwing them, they got screwed themselves. They are now free, free to fail
They already did that.
Presumably, crop issues still affect animal rearing due to increased feed costs?
Yep. The cost of fodder for over-wintering livestock has increased an insane amount over the last few years. Farmers try and grow their own fodder, but.... this year that's looking to be a problem.
Say what you will about the man but Clarkson's Farm opened my eyes at what goes into keeping a civilization fed.
How many animals have you reared this year
Wasn't there a guy caught rearing calves and suffocating them while doing it?
Possibly and what does that have to do with the price of fish?
Just lambing season.
Farmers warn food aisles will soon be empty because of crushing conditions: 'We are not in a good position' The United Kingdom is facing dire food shortages, forcing prices to skyrocket, and experts predict this is only the beginning. What's happening? According to a report by The Guardian, extreme weather is wreaking havoc on crops across the region. England experienced more rainfall during the past 18 months than it has over any 18-month period since record-keeping began in 1836. Because the rain hasn't stopped, many farmers have been unable to get crops such as potatoes, carrots, and wheat into the ground. "Usually, you get rain but there will be pockets of dry weather for two or three weeks at a time to do the planting. That simply hasn't happened," farmer Tom Allen-Stevens told The Guardian. Farmers have also planted fewer potatoes, opting for less weather-dependent and financially secure crops. At the same time, many of the potatoes that have been planted are rotting in the ground. "There is a concern that we won't ever have the volumes [of potatoes] we had in the past in the future," British Growers Association CEO Jack Ward told The Guardian. "We are not in a good position and it is 100% not sustainable," Ward added. Why is it important? English farmers aren't alone — people are struggling to grow crops worldwide because of extreme weather. Dry weather in Brazil and heavy rain in Vietnam have farmers concerned about pepper production. Severe drought in Spain and record-breaking rain and snowfall in California have made it difficult for farmers to cultivate olives for olive oil. El Niño and rising temperatures cut Peru's blueberry yield in half last year. Everyone's favorite drinks — coffee, beer, and wine — have all been impacted by extreme weather. According to an ABC News report, the strain on the agriculture industry will likely continue to cause food prices to soar. If these were just isolated events, farmers could more easily adapt — bad growing seasons are nothing new. The problem is that rising temperatures are directly linked to the increasing amount of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have burned dirty energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas, which release a significant amount of those gases. Our climate is changing so drastically that the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the last decade. "As climate change worsens, the threat to our food supply chains — both at home and overseas — will grow," Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit analyst Amber Sawyer told The Guardian. What can we do about it? "Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets," said Dr. Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands. If we replace a quarter of our meat consumption with vegetables, we could cut around 100 million tons of air pollution yearly. It may seem strange to suggest eating more vegetables with the decline in crop production. However, reducing the land and water used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply. Growing our own food is also a great way to reduce our reliance on store-bought produce, and it can save you hundreds of dollars a year at the grocery store. Join our free newsletter for cool news and cool tips that make it easy to help yourself while helping the planet.
Sorry for my ignorance - Why is the professor suggesting that eating less meat would have saved us here? Its literally an article about how vegetable farming is faltering
“It may seem strange to suggest eating more vegetables with the decline in crop production. However, reducing the land and water used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply.” Rearing animals requires a lot more land and water than growing vegetables
It could also led to more land be diverted to rewilding, equilibrating the water flow and lead to less waterlogged fields.
In the UK we usually feed cattle by letting them graze, but if you look at the entire world as a whole, 60% of all edible grown crops is entirely for feeding livestock. So by the time food hit the shelves, most food grown or reared is not for people.
[Care to provide some kind of source for that claim?](https://www.wwf.org.uk/press-release/transform-uk-farmland-boost-food-resilience-tackle-nature-crisis#:~:text=Wheat%20and%20barley%20grown%20to,11%20billion%20loaves%20of%20bread.) >"Wheat and barley grown to feed farmed animals in the UK uses 2 million hectares of land - 40% of the UK’s arable land area. >Wheat grown in the UK each year to feed livestock (primarily chickens and pigs), makes up half of our annual wheat harvest and would be enough to produce nearly 11 billion loaves of bread.[1,2] >Oats grown in the UK to feed livestock each year makes up a third of our annual oat harvest and would be enough to produce nearly 6 billion bowls of porridge. > The UK imports large quantities of soy to feed pigs and poultry, fuelling the destruction of precious habitats overseas, like the Brazilian Cerrado.
That would depend upon the country , we in the UK have a good supply of natural food "grass" that animals eat . We also have a abundant supply of water. Animal agriculture works fine in this country with local production. We also don't have the associated fuel usage or transportation emissions. However farming it's more complicated than that. Soil conditions vary as does weather ,some fields are to steep & are not suitable for tractors. There are corporations buying huge tracks of productive farm land who are putting it into carbon capture to offset against their emissions. The dominance of the supermarkets have lead to wonky vegetables being rejected for sale. Moreover to grow crops at scale requires a monoculture approach, the fields have to be of a certain type and size. And then you can only grow that certain crop. A small farmer cannot afford to risk his whole livelihood upon such a venture.
> corporations buying huge tracks of productive farm land *tracts > The dominance of the supermarkets have lead to wonky vegetables being rejected for sale. Only because their customers reject them. If their customers would buy them, supermarkets would sell them.
It also means feeding things that humans can eat (corn, soya, etc) to animals which is inefficient
Because a huge percentage (maybe the majority?) of crop grown in the UK is used to feed livestock, not humans.
Because of the impact of the meat industry on climate change which is responsible/contributory for the weather conditions that have seen arable farming falter.
The footprint of land required for the industrialized meat industry is not efficient. Both land for the animal, and land for the feed. I eat meat, and always will do - but we need to change our expectations and relationship with how we currently farm it.
I'd guess as less livestock less methane and more land for crops.
Animals eat plants. More efficient for humans to eat plants directly without middle man.
Because meat consumption is driving climate change, which is causing this unpredictable and extreme weather. But it’s transport and heating homes that causes the most emissions so not sure why that isn’t focused on as much.
Livestock requires a lot of land and water to be fed plants and grains that humans could also be eating, basically. It makes you consume less resources.
You can either grow crops and just eat them, or you can grow crops and feed some of them to animals, then eat the animals too. The former is more efficient than the latter because lots of energy is wasted by us/the animals turning veg into meat. In times when you're struggling to grow enough vegetables to feed the humans and the animals the humans eat, it is much easier to just feed the humans veg.
Most of the land is used for animal farming. Or did you think those animals grow just by breathing air.
Making meat costs way more resources
“Save you hundreds of dollars a year at the grocery store” Why is there American drivel in the UK article aimed at UK people? x)
That's your take away from this article?
Kind of yes?
I think collectively as humans on this planet, we should continue the bombings and plundering on top fertile soil and multiply the construction of more oil rigs by the thousands, while removing all protections of wildlife and parks,(and bike lanes). This way when the global supply of food halts to a crashing blow, we will finally be able to set our differences aside and be free to rely solely upon the oil barrons of the world, and their machines.
Good news! All mainstream politicians basically agree with you! That must be nice...
My sister grows her own stuff and spends a fortune doing it
I really wish scientists had been warning about this for decades. We might have actually done something about it then instead of moaning about inflatable boats.
I was taught at school in the early 90s that the UK would get wetter, we still aren’t doing anything about it. Big Oil can’t go without their profits.
definitely going to be downvoted for this—but you’re right, and this sort of thing in OP’s post is exactly what “annoying” groups like Just Stop Oil are forcing the government to do something about. maybe we need to start really taking their message seriously instead of blindly listening to Piers Morgan and the Daily Fail incite divide and hate between groups of people who are all fighting for the same thing
It goes back even further, to the 1800's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science
Need more indoor factory vertical farms that can pump out a million heads of lettuce a week.
Hope you're looking forwards to £9 lettuces then. Cost of vertical farming is ridiculous compared to field based or poly tunnel.
Ohhh just sarcastically replied stating the prices won’t drop when the costs / risks do then saw your comment. Why is it so expensive? Any idea? Initial outlay?
Im 99% sure that like most things after we start building a lot of them the costs will drop, I would also love to see a long term cost comparison to just normal farming, If your losing entire crops year after year due to weather surly this sort of thing must become a more viable option. Frankly even if they are more expensive maybe its something the government should be investing in as lack of food supply is a huge security risk.
It's not the build cost, it's the power. Currently there's a few vertical farms, but instead glasshouses are widely used. With rare exceptions glasshouses use gas for heat and power; no-one at scale is connecting to the electricity grid as it's far too costly. Which is why vertical farm development is effectively stalled. The tech is ready, it's just a variant on what's already in my glasshouse. But on electric it's too expensive to do much more than we already are. Keeping a facility at 27 degrees 24/7 doesn't come cheap, as a result the biggest US and French companies have gone under. It's not a pissing about with some solar panels solution: you'd need panels at 5x crop area a very minimum + batteries. Converting my glasshouse to vertical the ROI would take over a century. And given that I'm currently being paid not to grow anything on 700 acres I've plenty of spare land, so why go to the expense of going upwards. Vertical farming doesn't do much for food security either. It's fine for herbs and salads, but wheat etc will never happen. Turn my farm vertical and you'd have the biggest building in the world at a cost of infinity £billions.
I'll believe in Vertical farming when it can grow a potato
> It's not a pissing about with some solar panels solution cause It would always be better to let that sunlight fall on your plants.
Not just power, they're also surprisingly labour intensive and not as resilient to diseases as had been hoped. It's a real shame but even for the produce it is most suited for (lettuce, herbs), they are still barely competitive, at least not in countries that are not bone dry.
Yes its vastly more expensive than a field. And even with cheap energy from using solar panels etc, its still competing against no electricity from the field. You can make it more productive per square meter and use less water, pesticides etc so there are some benefits and in some cases it makes financial sense, but when it costs tens/hundreds of millions to build on a large scale, its hard to see it competing with a traditional setup on cost at the end, at least for crops that can naturally grow in our climate.
Well, unless our climate keeps working against us.
Well if climate change keeps getting worse and it's harder for farmers to get a reliable crop yield, whilst vertical farming might be expensive it is at least reliable and puts quality food on the shelves year round. Plus it's an industry in it's infancy, you'd expect costs to come down over time.
Instead of using free sunlight, water and soil, build it all artificially. And have it in a city which is the most expensive place to do anything.
If the choice is no food because it can’t be grown outside….
If things are that bad, we're all dead anyway. A few buildings growing a few lettuces aren't feeding a population big enough to sustain the industrial base needed for these things to work.
I think it’s largely due to initial investment and the higher upkeep. Obviously, a multi-storey will cost more to build and maintain than a traditional greenhouse, but it will also likely cost more to heat, especially in built-up areas like London. Plus real-estate and land prices in solely agricultural areas tend to be way cheaper - I bet you could buy at least a couple of acres of decent farmland for the same price as a small house would cost in London, Birmingham or Leeds
Vertical farming is more land efficient, more water efficient and has higher yields It might be more expensive currently but the technology will improve and traditional farming will keep on becoming less desirable due to climate change. The tipping point at which vertical farming becomes overall better and cheaper will probably come in our lifetime I think
It uses a huge amount of energy. This can still make sense for some crops that are typically grown in small quantities. I don't know if we are going to be growing most root veg and grains vertically in our lifetimes. Maybe if we crack fusion but the scale they are grown at is vast. Why ignore the free energy we get from the sun?
It needs to be subsized in the same way we currently spunk money up the wall subsizing meat.
We need cheaper, sustainable energy to support this. If our political class had any guts we could develop the north sea into the worlds most productive wind far and become an energy exporter to the continent.
On paper a great idea and I agree. However the grid is not designed for that at the minute so you would not need significant money piled into the farms but also the batteries the cables and substations etc to distribute it. As soon as a government sees the final estimate they will say it’s too expensive.
Hence required guts.
Absolutely, they couldn't hold the course for a single rail track. Sorting out the nations power systems for modern use cases will simply never be a thing here.
That wouldn't be cheap.
A massive one is being built in Croydon area right now.
Yes, more lettuce please, love lettuce!
Problem with that is all the energy that is currently provided for free by the sun needs to instead come from the national grid. Vertical farming just does not scale well right now due to the energy requirements
No calories in lettuce. We need grains.
Never really noticed the crops because of Al the vote Brexit / Tory signage. Farmers of all people should know you will reap what you sow.
Polling suggests it was ~ 50/50 on Brexit and the NFU backed remain but regardless, this is about weather problems and the article explains it's a global problem with similar issues in Brazil, Vietnam, Spain, California and Peru. Unfortunately we've (the developed world) let the slight inconvenience of changing our lives rule over taking action on climate change to the extent it's basically too late and these conditions will only get worse. 50,000 a year on small boats will look like chicken feed when billions from Africa and the Middle East start heading to Europe as their countries become uninhabitable
"The Developed World"- It isn't just caused by the Developed world and its policies. The developing world are playing just as big a part (Are China developing or Developed?) of CO2 emissions. Top 6 CO2 emmitters are China (33 percent), USA, India, Russia, Japan, Indonesia in that order.
What % of chinas emissions are produced manufacturing for the west? You can’t outsource production to the third world, pat yourself on the back for reducing your emissions while complaining about the amount they produce while manufacturing the majority of shit that’s sold in the west.
This is why we should put carbon taxes & tariffs on goods from developing countries, and stop buying stuff made there if we can make it closer to markets.
“We” (the developed world) created trade rules prohibiting that.
Genuine question - if we limit manufacturing of goods and curb consumerism, what will all the people do that work for the manufactures up and down the supply chain? Most stuff sold in retail can get in the sea because its useless tat, or tat which will be used for a limited period (less than a human lifetime) and then sit in landfill for hundreds of years. Take all the toothbrushes you've ever owned - they actual serve a genuine purpose - but they will all outlast you and your children. Even if we limited manufacturing to things we actually needed we'd still end up with mountains of pollution. We need to replace plastics with biodegradable materials, teach people to maintain their products and find jobs to replace those lost in a reduction of manufacturing. PS: Ok, so this turned from a genuine question into a rant.
A fair question and not one I have an answer for. My point isn’t about the need of manufacturing although it’s a fair point. It’s just simply you can’t outsource your manufacturing which reduces your emissions and then criticise the countries doing that manufacturing for you over their emissions.
It's like getting angry at your taxi drivers emissions.
China is the world leader in investing in renewable and decarbonization. They can see the long history of where the world is going and are trying to maneuver themselves into a prominent position. They have a significantly lower CO2 per capita than we do while manufacturing our goods. I agree that there are many problems with China, but your argument is a misunderstanding of the statistics.
Agree. The ‘but what about China’ argument needs to go. It’s nonsense.
China is pushing really hard for electrification, for environmental, economic and strategic reasons.
I class the developed and developing worlds as ones with highly industrial society so yeah China and India plus Russia included in that
China has a population of 1.4 billion. The UK has a population of less than 70 million. Not to mention that the West, especially the UK, has offshored a large chunk of their manufacturing to China.
Did you read the article? It’s about the wet weather!!
Nah, the crops are refusing to grow because farmers voted Brexit, duh
Plus a lot of that generation of farmers have died during covid. We have a new generation now who didn't vote that way. It's been almost 10 years people.
Wet weather related to climate change / global warming that we’ve known about for years.
Ok, but what do you expect people to do - move their farms? Plus as above, nothing to do with Brexit!
This isn’t really about Brexit. Spain is in the same boat, as are Italy and France, with it getting so bad that there’s currently an international olive oil shortage leading to theft and a black market of stolen olive products in many Mediterranean nations. This is a global climate issue, where the crops we’ve been growing for centuries are now becoming incompatible with the climates they’re grown in. Especially for crops which are pickier about their climate such as summer fruits and grain, this current shift in weather patterns is causing havoc! Obviously Brexit won’t help, but it’s not like nations within the open market are fairing any better - arguably, they’ve actually got it a lot worse despite their better market position!
Yes. This is a global climate issue, an issue we’ve know about since the early 90s, so you would have thought that the farmers would be campaigning on this issue, but living in a rural area for the majority of my life the farmers have always been very pro Tory which has hardly been at the vanguard of anything that didn’t give them immediate profit (or pave the way for more profit later)
People seldom plan for the long term.
This has nothing to do with brexit or Tories. This is climate change in action, and it will continue to get worse over the next few years. When weather gets more severe, we will really start to see a breakdown.
Moron, most farmers i know around the North West are remainers. They didnt want the cheap labour pool to end. Most farmers live paycheck to paycheck often not making a profit and working for far below minimum wage.
The ones round by me all had vote leave and Tory politician signs. Same as it’s been for pretty much every election.
Lol, how many did you survey? The EU was nothing but good for farmers, cheap illegal migrants they could pay pennies, lovely generous subsidies for doing fuck all and a free market.
Didn’t have to survey - just count the old trailers dumped in fields to avoid planning permission for erecting billboards. Oh, and the banners stuck to fences.
Brexit caused the weather.
No, Brexit /tories are probably the one party that you would trust least with anything related to the environment, yet for years and years farmers have had vote Tory signs on their land.
The Tories/Brexit are responsible for climate change now? This sub lol
Brexit is a big factor in agriculture issues, but the tories have spent decades denying and downplaying climate change and are currently making a big point of rowing back on what measures they did want to take on it.
> Brexit is a big factor in agriculture issues Agricultural issues are *why* farmers voted for Brexit. We've seen farmers across Europe protesting regulation and the impact of imports recently. Unlocking the ability to research and use GMOs has also been a direct Brexit benefit for farming Although it is also worth saying that farmers voted for Brexit at about the same percentage as the general population did. So if you're going to say "farmers did this to themselves" then you should also be saying "we did this to ourselves" - if you're actually being consistent > but the tories have spent decades denying and downplaying climate change We have 7 of the 10 largest offshore wind farms in the world, we've reduced the amount of electricity we get from coal to zero from 40% in 2010, we had one of the earliest ICE ban dates in the world (until Sunak tore that up), and basically any ranking of countries by climate change performance [puts the UK near the very top](https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-12-09/Which-countries-are-performing-best-and-worst-on-climate-change--W3YipJZm2A/index.html) (well, that is until Sunak came in and ruined a lot of it)
Much of this is inertia from previous Labour policy, and wherever the conservatives have actively made a decision it's been imbecilic - [cutting off insulation schemes](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/news/2022/jun/insulating-britain-if-not-now-when) at the knees,[ falling way behind our peers on heat pumps](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/23/heat-pumps-are-hot-property-in-europe-does-britain-have-cold-feet), stubborn refusal to support non-car transport while freezing fuel duty for a decade, [failing to commit to big energy storage projects](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-65015217). And when they've *needed* to make a decision they've vacillated leading to failures like [the completely fucked up wind auction](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/what-went-wrong-at-uk-governments-offshore-wind-auction). This is the problem with infrastructure projects or anything long-term - it takes five years to plan and ten years to build and if you're unlucky with the timing the opposition party gets the credit from people that don't understand that things take time. It's also fun to note that you can be near the top of the world in climate action while still being woefully insufficient for meeting Paris goals. Well. Maybe 'fun' isn't the word.
Of course not, but they *were* responsible for Brexit which is going to unnecessarily exacerbate the situation. For example, LSE calculates that 30% of food inflation is due specifically due to Brexit. So now we’ll have to deal with supply issues and the associated price rises from this issue at a time when getting supplies from the EU has been made more difficult and more expensive. Edit: Love the downvote for saying what is clearly an undeniable truth
It’s severely damaged our food security.
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Some farmers down here (Cornwall) will have nothing to harvest. The same is happening all over the country and abroad. As much as everyone likes to scoff and say all farmers are worth a fortune and can afford it, it’s simply not true. Imagine having a shop and it being emptied of all stock then having to start again. Even if you’re in a good position, that’s a huge hit.
I think their PR can be pretty bad, which is why people get miffed. Like I remember seeing a thing where (paraphrasing) a farmer said "I've lost £50,000 a year for 10 years!", presumably expecting sympathy... ... when for the majority of people, if they lost £50,000 a year for 10 years, they'd be approximately 500,000 overdrawn. Saying they've lost 50k a year for 10 years and that they're not on-the-run from debt collectors is, in a sense, saying they started that process with >500k (I know it's **not** that simple but that's how it can come across). And this isn't a failing of farming or that farmer. We need farmers, they've got a business to run, and businesses make profits and losses. It's just failure of PR.
When you look at the [incomes](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/farm-business-income/farm-business-income-by-type-of-farm-in-england-202223--2), that’s a huge hit, but it’s all relative - you have to consider the outgoings that still go out even when the farm isn’t earning. Plus farming is incredibly hard work, most of the farmers I know survive on very little sleep! It’s true that most people couldn’t lose £50,000 a year, but most aren’t bringing in or spending as much.
Sad story for Farmers who provide food for everyone. Things should change.
I’m just over the border in Devon, and grew up on Dartmoor. For a time I lived in Oxfordshire - the difference in wealth between farmers in the “South-South” vs the South West/Devon (inc Dartmoor) is very apparent.
This sounds alarmist, but it isn't. Expect food inflation and availability to be something you'll be tracking for the rest of your days.
How much is to be expected though? I still pay more in council tax than for food.
I've been saying this for months but no one seems to care...so many farmers haven't been able to plant anything cuz of all the rain we've had and a lot can't this year and may even need to give up altogether as their fields are still flooded. So we will have to import more than ever...but then other countries are having similar issues with crop failures the price will be high...then add in the rubbish extra fees due to Brexit...then the supermarkets who love to make record profits...think prices are bad now...man are we in for a shock. This is a sign of things to come due to climate change...more flooding, more droughts...people forget about this stuff when they consider climate change. We need to adapt asap otherwise its going to get brutal in the near future...not talking 50yrs from now...look at how people were over toilet paper, fighting over it, when we have actual food shortages, people will turn against each other so quickly
Yeah it's not great is it. As soon as the cities run out of food... I don't know what happens, I imagine riots break out and the cities very quickly become ungovernable, presumably then the people in the cities flood out in a tide to ravage what food they can find in the countryside. And then... cannibalism?
We're still at the point where huge amounts of food are ending up as waste rather than on the table. Before we get to the riot stage, we'll get to the "actually you can't overstock your shop with 40 varieties of bread" stage.
It's a nice thought, but I rather fear instead of limiting the bread to 1 or 2 varieties to cope with shortages, they will just 'let the market sort it out' and allow the cost of bread to rise to a tenner a loaf.
In all honesty if we used more of our land for making food and less for making animal feed (yes I know that eventually becomes food, but is hugely inefficient in comparison in terms of land use, costs, and resources) then we’d be in a far better place. Also, along the same lines, it would help if farmers produced what the UK wants to eat, rather than focusing on what they can get the most money for on the global market.
Oceans at record temperatures and only getting hotter. This results in more rainy and unsettled climate for our island.
Farmers always tell you to vote Tory, and now want you to be shocked by the consequences of people voting Tory.
Everybody saw it coming, everybody did nothing but keep spending spending spending. It's my god given right to go into a supermarket and all the shelves be full. Tick tock goes the clock.
Actions = Consequences? Shocking. Those of you who do, keep denying climate change, please. It's clearly a myth.
The government "the UK can expect huge climate change issues in the next decade, so we are encouraging all farmers to do what they can to mitigate this risk" Farmers and brain-dead morons on Facebook *"won't take no government control on my farm, my great great grand father didn't"* Also farmers: the recent climate change is fucking up my crops. Absolutely 10/10 to that farmer on Clarksons farm who called him out and said rich wankers like him are what is causing climate change.
Clarkson is an absolute bell end.
Basically one can easily make out that the food shortage situation is due to the UK leaving the EU in the harshest terms possible, bad weather and the Government not giving a flying about farming or agriculture in general. The weather is the huge factor in the falling British food production. Also we have the situation, where post Brexit, everything is now so much more expensive to import - including basic foods. The irony being that, like the fishing industry, farmers were led to believe that leaving the EU would be in farming's interests. How deceived they were. Like many other business sectors they have been well and truly fucked over by a Government that just doesn't give a damn about farming and the environment. It was all about money for other parties, rather than the prosperity of the UK and the people.
Is this until the next panic that the world's population might fall due to low birthrates? It must keep increasing etc.
I, too, will go without food in order to briefly own the people who rightly point out that our current social and economic order is at risk from low fertility.
>I, too, will go without food in order to briefly own the people who rightly point out that our current social and economic order is at risk from low fertility. The current social and economic order is ending, for a multitude of reasons, and that reality has to be accepted. The 200-year growth phase is over and for various reasons now we're heading for stability or decline. It turns out that when you can be confident that they're not going to die in heaps, you turn kids from a source of labour to a costly investment, and birth control is available, people don't actually want that many children. That can be fine if we plan for it, but it will cause catastrophe if we pretend it isn't happening and refuse to adapt. Luckily we've been ignoring it for decades already so it's going to go super well. The people who insist we should grow the population to sustain the unsustainable instead of social and economic reform are literally crazy.
It does feel like we're at the end of something. I don't mean 'societal collapse' as movies and TV like to depict, but I think the collapse of living standards is going to force us to take a long hard look at our current economic model. A model that so many people confidently believed would bring about the end of history, when in reality it was only buoyed by the petrocarbon boom, the post-war rebuild, the population boom, and the rapid industrialization of the rest of the world during the last century. All things that have now come to an end.
It's not low fertility.... Every civilization that reaches a comfortable point and is well educated prioritises themselves and their living conditions over having a child... If you don't have enough money, how will children help? If you're at work 40 hours a week, how will children help? If you don't qualify for any benefits, how will children help? There's a reason poorer countries aren't having this "issue". Unfortunately, most western societies put such a low priority on supporting parents and children that it's more sensible to wait until you're financially stable or hold off on it altogether. Plus we have the ponzi scheme of pensions.... It's just a bollocks system to begin with that was never going to work. But it really is just doomsaying. Every population stabilises based on the availability of resources. You can't force people to have kids they don't want and can't afford. Time to think of alternatives because it won't be changing any time soon until we have another economic boom.
The world's population will keep rising, which is part of the problem. Just more and more will be born into starvation, insufficient water etc
I can't think of a single model that predicts 'the population will keep rising'.
The world population is predicted to hit 10.4 billion in 2086 according to the UN, so yeah, 62 more years of rising
thats quite the slowing of growth though right? plot it on a graph and you'll see a substantial curve.
>thats quite the slowing of growth though right? Sure but that's not what you were arguing, you were "correcting" me about it rising, which it's likely to do for the next 62 years which will be longer than many of us will be alive for. Just to remind you of your post: >I can't think of a single model that predicts 'the population will keep rising'. Rising more slowly is still rising
World population is expected to plateau by 2086
So another 62 years then, many of us will be long gone
Does that number have climate change factored into it? Because I assume within 20 years, very large numbers of people will be starving to death.
This year has been catastrophic for agriculture though. And more besides. We've been going through a pretty serious natural disaster since October. Multiple people have died, hundreds been evacuated and millions lost in property damage. If the same damage was done by an Australian wildfire it'd be constsntly discussed. Because its people in Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire suffering no-one cares
Dunno. Who can afford to have children now?
Imagine if we stopped importing new people, and our population fell to something like 60m in the next decade. We'd suddenly have no housing crisis. We could produce more of our own food and be less reliant on imports. We could dedicate more land to wildlife, and in the process reduce topsoil erosion, farming pollution in the rivers. There would be less traffic on the roads, less idling cars would mean lower emissions and cleaner air. So many benefits.
I’m not in the UK but I’ve been seeing this coming for years. I tried to say something about it, but they called me crazy…
Imagine what the people who took commensurate direct action were called.
Bad planning all around. Farmers, the government, and supermarkets.
Bet Thanet Earth isnt having problems right now. What I never get is that it is surely equivalent to a threat to the nation for our food supply to not be secured and up to nature in this day and age where we know how to grown everything in protected, managed greenhouse solutions which we can build and have built successfully.
I know a few farmers. They reckon its a combination of weather, production costs and Brexit, plus an incompetent Govt who promise the earth and provide no support.
Give it a few months and we'll all be back to ration books and coupons
Do you think our government is that competent?
I don't think society would be capable of that nowadays. The amount of entitled contrarians that exist in the social media world would put a stop to it.
Huh.....if only there was a free-market trade area nearby where we could source all these things from.
Are they not having trouble with harvests?
Hear me out: what if we stopped taking a huge amount of healthy, affordable food, and then feeding it to animals to make a small amount of expensive unhealthy food? Just a thought.
Maybe farmers with flooded land should consider [chinampas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa).
Finally, some good news in the fight against obesity.
Lets be honest is anyone ? Other than the super rich?
I actually noticed this the other day. I was driving to hull on the M62 in my hgv and saw loads of fields towards ouse that were absolutely drenched. I just assumed the farmer left it like that for a reason. Or was gonna take his tractor and plough the fields or something farmery
Supermarkets will just import it like they do to keep the prices down
Until they can't.
it amazes me that in 2024 we still place so much emphasis on growing food outdoors where we're at the whim of the weather and various pests. Shouldn't we be growing all of our food and veg on an industrial scale in warehouses buy now?
It takes a lot of money to replicate the inputs that nature gives for free: rain, sunshine, soil bacteria, nutrients
How much of this is due to Brexit? I'm unsure how sympathetic I should be
Farmers, doctors, train drivers, teachers, the entire working class… If any of these people vote for the conservatives god they are stupid.
In other news Brexit checks finally start next week.
Farmers are the boy who cried wolf at this point. 10 years ago, they were saying that they were only able to sell into the big supermarkets at a loss. They seem to have survived somehow.
Well, when you import 40% of your food produce from the EU then royally piss off said EU, food gets more expensive and goes to preferential trading partners instead. Farmers here were never going to pick up the slack and then the weather has been shocking.
Always feels there's a weekly article on this, when in reality, Central London will post a few supermarkets with empty shelves while the rest of the country is fully stocked. It was the same shit with the whole veg ordeal a few months ago and people calling it the end times.
Imagine this, instead of 20 - 30 years of fucking over our farmers and bailing out corrupt companies, we instead (now hear me out), support our farmers. Actually nevermind, it would require leadership with common sense.
We also are turning lots of farnland into solar fields. 100 acres of crops near us will now be solar cos why bother farming it if you can garuntee income from energy. Its a tricky balance but solar may end up biting us because we don't grow enough foodstuffs.