Wednesday 16 November 2011

Dissatisfied Farmers

Staying with farming and food. Farmers Weekly report that there have been 'Blunders by senior civil servants that delayed support payments worth of millions to thousands of farmers, MP's have been told.

"Don't let us kid ourselves that farmers are happy," said committee chairman Margaret Hodge. "The latest evidence we have is that four out of 10 farmers are dissatisfied'. [1]

Now it turns out that the new Chief Executive of the Rural payments agency is the ex-Chief Operating Officer of the Child Protection Agency. This comment was made about them. "Sir Archy Kirkwood of Work and Pensions Committee, vis - CSA suffered "a systemic chronic failure of management right across the totality of the agency" - [2] Farmers are asking who employed Mark Grimshaw? 


"When I heard that the former head of the Child Protection Agency had been appointed head of our own RPA I could have wept.  The Bureaucrats running the government who made this appointment have proved why I cannot abide them and their incompetence. I would like to ask this man who made the appointment, if it was a Minister please tell us so that we may protest to the individual concerned or was it one of the previously mentioned faceless ones in Whitehall."[2]

The other aspect of the farming issues is that a lot of the farmers of my
generation are looking to retire. From what I have heard their children are not following in the family tradition. What farmers can afford to purchase extra large farms when they are sold off, ending the family line of farmers? What will happen? The corporations will take them over.

In addition, children in Europe have almost zero interest in farming, the children have been leaving the farmlands for decades, heading for the big glitz of the big cities. There was a major EU funded facility built in Spain to teach young people how to farm goats and make cheese. It cost millions of Euro's and ended up remaining empty, because the young people did not wish to be goat farmers.

The first class facility standing empty, became such an embarrassment to Spain, that it had to be rented out for a peppercorn rent to a farming operation at your expense. It would have made an excellent eco-living, complimentary therapy college.

Education has taken the children away from source, away from the land and that which is essential for their own survival. The less independent farmers there are, the more that the corporations have control over what you eat.

Children in rural communities should be given the opportunity to grow their own food so that they know how to survive. They should also be given the opportunity to be with animals and shown how to take care of them. In fact, there should be a school based on large farms in rural communities, or a small holding built-on to holistic schools. Then those that have a natural talent for farming can be identified to pursue a career in farming.

If this is not addressed, then the future is bleak for farming and the food that is available for the masses.

Also more people should be encouraged to grow their own food. However, the way that property developers in the UK operate, most homes do not have the room for people to have what is known as a vegetable patch, let alone chickens for their own eggs.

The ideal of course, is that everyone is living ecologically and self-sustainably, growing food inside their homes. Food prices and the corporations are out pricing themselves in the same way that the property developers are doing.

The prices of housing is now beyond most first time buyers, due to the fact that the cost of living as continued to rise and salaries have not risen to match it. As such, most people are living to simply keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. The days when the second salary was to pay for holidays and luxuries are long gone. Now it takes two salaries to pay for the basics, when 30 years ago it only took one salary.

ELIAKIM JOSEPH-SOPHIA


1. http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/16/11/2011/130116/Failures-delayed-support-payments-worth-millions.htm

2. http://www.fwi.co.uk/community/forums/p/58282/177202.aspx#177202

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