Skip to main content

European farmers

For years the green movement has tried to tame European farmers.  Probably because they view that farmers are conservative (e.g. they don't vote for the green parties) and partly because reading the ingredients in retail pesticides will make you doubt the justification farmers have for using the commercial version.

Here in the UK, since Brexit things have improved immeasurably for the average commercial farmer.  Government legislation that was imposed or suggested by the EU was immediately binned by the government.  Farmers had a freeer hand, aside from the eye-watering rise in the cost of pesticides.  

The European green movement has been adopting pesticide use legislation with little consultation with farmers.  Their recent target of reducing the use of pesticides by 50% was born in a think tank with political expediency and sound bites in mind.   The result of such legislation would see ordinary farmers face a massive yield collapse.  Farming is already a precarious adventure, reducing revenues by a third while keeping costs constant would lead to bankruptcy even for large commercial farms.  

We know that it is the large commercial grain farms that made the threat, amidst the protests, and projected grain shortage this year (future prices have trebled), commercial farmers have told EU politicians that they will hold off on planting this season (planting starts in a few weeks) unless the EU backs down.  A simple economic decision, the large commercial farmers were better off selling off their seeds instead of planting with a 30% reduction in pesticides and fertilizers.  The losses for the farms would be less.

This time the EU farmers won.  They will not next time.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more