hia kinda new here! from the farming community, was wondering what people on this forum have as opinions on UK agriculture?

Hi and welcome.
Some farmers are very good regarding wildlife conservation - good field margins etc, while others are naff - leaving black plastic from their silage bales everywhere.
I try to buy British if possible, but its not always easy as meat can be labled "British" when it hasd been im[ported and finished here!!
"Food labelled British should be born and bred in Britain. Supermarkets have made important steps towards better labelling of meat, but we need the whole industry to act and give the consumer the information they deserve. "
From http://www.farmersguardian.com/news/meat...96.article

What an interesting question,

My thoughts having a very strong link with schools and sustainability issues etc;
I think it is in a dire state, an industry in flux that has little cohesion or true direction. Here we have the true backbone of our country, never mind manufacturing etc, they will come and go, so what do we do with it?
We allow the big guns to drive prices down by our purchasing choices, we allow EU to size and grade our products producing huge amounts of waste and removing many cultivars from the market place, we purchase out of season from abroad, and we do not allow GM a fair trial.
The farmer who can diversify, has good land in the right location and capital to invest in non farming activities can make a good killing from the green trade. The big guys with the large capital reserves and huge land holdings can secure long term contracts and make a long term profit, but the rest are forced into a situation of very high production for decreasing income.
Our farmers are out on a limb and it isn't going to get any better until we have a government with backbone and a consumer who understands we do not have a right to roast dinner every night for under a fiver, strawberries in the middle of winter and perfect shaped supermarket display quality products every time. However, neither will it change while farmers fail to stand together and demand very real policy and protection from external cut throat and environmentally unfriendly imports.
I stand by our farmers, our landholders and with our support as consumers the true guardians of our countryside, but there is a very real need to get the balance right between production and the environment, between subsidy for economically unsound practices and profit.

I have lived and worked among the moorland farming community here in the Peak district. Farmers here are on subsistence levels of income and I can have a certain amount of sympathy with them when they have little regard for wildlife conservation. However, on the whole, I feel that farming is responsible for a huge decline in the habitat for our wildlife - as an example, the grubbing out of miles and miles of hedgerows.

Changes are under way, but there is still generations of outdated attitudes in the farming community towards wildlife to overcome before wildlife really gets the attention it deserves, but I am not optimistic about the future. With increasing pressure on agriculture to feed an increasingly overcrowded small country like ours, especially with an administration that will not cut immigration, we can expect the overcrowding to get even worse. Sadly, unless future governments are prepared to change their attitudes, there will be little green space left in the UK, it will all be covered with either concrete or GM crops!

But farmers were responsible for creating most of what we now call 'countryside' anyway.

Regarding hedgerows, if you'd been around prior to the 1750's enclosure acts you wouldn't have seen many at all!

Yes, but there would have been a lot more natural woodland!

Actually there wouldn't have been a lot more woodland either Richard.

Prior to the industrial revolution in the 1800s almost all woodland in the UK was intesively managed by selective felling, for building and other materials such as hurdle making, wattle (as in daub) charcoal, & tannings, Many studies of buildings from the early medieval period onward show that one of the most common tree sizes used for things like rafters, purlins, partion walls, lathes and the like were all approximately 25 years old, or less so the majority of these woods were coppiced So most of the ancient 'natural woodland' was intensively managed.

Also a percentage of what what classed as 'forest' would be unrecognisable to us as such and would be called (now) wood pasture with very few trees - a bit like modern parks and I assume that the trees would also have been pollarded.

The idea that the UK was until several hundred years ago one vast forest has largely been proved wrong from pollen counts and historical records. After all wolves, bears and beavers have all been extinct in England for hundreds of years.

I've looked over many old photographs of, for example, where I live in Yorkshire it is obvious that there are far more trees in the landscape than now than when the pictures were taken in the later years of the 1880s and early 1900s.

Farmers? Well, like the majority of people in this country they do what'll put money on the table. Farmers do what DEFRA give subsidies for, which amongst other things includes environmental schemes such as the countryside stewardship scheme. I was suprised at how many farmers in Ireland suddenly became very interested in the Irish version when it came out (Rural Environmental Protection Scheme - REPS). Couldn't care less about the environment - just ticking boxes so they got their money. Didn't really matter if it worked or not (Putting up birdboxes was one and tree planting was another - didn't matter whether they lived either!)l

That said I did live next to a farmer who was genuinely interested in conservation and I've met quite a few other farmers who are. I suppose its a bit like other people who go to work for a living. The main motivation is money - not being for being 'green' or for conservation purposes.

I know numerous conservationists and greens who drive over roads, motorways etc., in their cars to work in their offices - carbon rich affairs I'm sure, then drive home again to their Barratt houses made from brick imported from somewhere else, with wood from somewhere else with a wooden floor made from 'sustainable' Iroko (Yeh!!!), white goods from Tiawan, China, Japan and elsewhere all snug and warm with the central heating on fuelled with fuel from the Middle East, etc., etc., ("But we only eat free range chickens")

Richard my farming neighbour in Ireland, drove only around his farm - which was around 100 years old and no longer owed carbon to anyone. His offices were the fields. No doubt someone will tell me that he used far more carbon and was environmentally damaging to the countryside. But I bet they drink farmer's milk or its products.

Ah, I do feel better for a good old rant!!!
;-)

Debates like these always remind me of Iolo Williams: grew up on a farm, worked for RSPB and was scathing about Welsh farmers "Funny how poor they all claim to be and turn up in their brand new 4x4s for the Royal Welsh Show"

Be interesting to see what the take up might be for the anaerobic digester system being proposed here, which'll sink or swim according to support from the farming community as, in theory, the farmers are supporting green issues

"Changes in the distribution and management of woodlands in Rockingham Forest in the east midlands of England are quantified from about 1650 onwards, at six dates for which complete cartographic cover is available. Changes during the Middle Ages and earlier are discussed in general terms. The origin of woodland present in the Middle Ages is uncertain, but a proportion occupied land which was not wooded in the Roman period. Some woods have existed throughout the historical period; in these there has probably been little change in the composition of underwood, which is regarded as semi-natural. Continuity of mature timber within these woods is also considered. The rate of change in woodland distribution, composition and structure has been greater since 1946 than at any previous period. Species which are able to colonize new woodland readily will be favoured against poor colonizers. Existing woods have a bimodal distribution of age against time. Other features which distinguish the recent period from previous periods are described, and the possible effects on the native flora and fauna are discussed. Comparisons are made with the woodland history of Central Lincolnshire and West Cambridgeshire which emphasize the individuality with which each area responds to pressures for change. "

Long-Term Changes in the Woodlands of Rockingham Forest and Other Areas
G. F. Peterken
Journal of Ecology, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 123-146
(article consists of 24 pages)
Published by: British Ecological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2258686

Oh guys I know nothing of the politics of farming but my grandparents were farm workers moving from one farm to another for seasonal work. It was a harsh life back then with just manual labour and my great uncle had a tide cottage next to the farm he ran that was a milk herd and just remember as a girl helping out and milking by hand and drinking straight from the pail, green bits and all...
Also as a young married woman shopping and everything had a season, even crumpets, and I miss that looking forward to root veg inn winter or strawberries in summer only
... ahhh "those were the days my friend its so sad that they had to end" tra la la la la la la la la

This post was last modified: 22-02-2010 05:49 PM by Foxglove.

I'm afraid you're very wrong there, Dave.

Just one bit of evidence: farmers in Waltham Forest in the 13th Century were forbidden to have hedges more than four and a half feet high. There's lots more, but I don't want to be boring!

As for carbon footprints. I don't give a damn, since I'm a utterly unconvinced over the role of mankind in climate change.

This post was last modified: 27-02-2010 05:58 PM by wild canon.

The enclosure acts were fact. Farmers/landowners et al were forced by several acts of parliament to enclose their open fields. Although the enclosure acts affected different places it had in many places a dramatic and undisputed affect on the landscape. I have a number of references to the exact size, dimension, and construction of both walls and hedges which was specified by landlords as a result of the acts.

I'm not saying that some parts of the country did not have hedges or walls before then. But in many areas of the UK the amount of new boundaries are known and can still be identified by their regular patterns.

Look at many of the rural paintings before the acts and you'll see what is known as the open field systems which were widespread in the lower, level areas of this country.

Perhaps I should have said you would have seen less hedges or walls rather than 'few'
i assume you won't disagree on that fact?