Post by buccaneer on Apr 11, 2024 11:14:08 GMT
Unravelling the Brexit propaganda is tiresome, but needs to be done especially when the cries of 'how's Brexit going' and in this instance 'what about our farmers', or what about our so-called 'bestest in the world agriculture practices and standards'.
Thankfully, B4B is on hand to pushback the rubbish published by the likes of the FT's and the droning herd who regurgitate such rubbish, as can be found on forums like this. Only a week or so ago, we had farmers in our midst and rejoiners took an opportunity to pin their protests on the alleged failure of Brexit.
Below is a large excerpt that rubbishes the kind of propaganda published about Brexit, and this focuses on our beef farmers.
... But to reiterate the need for EU alignment, the FT chose to interview a farmer working in another tiny UK export industry – beef. The world’s top beef exporters: Brazil, India, Australia and the US all measure their beef exports in millions of tonnes, the UK barely exported 100,000 tonnes in 2023. We do produce almost a million tonnes of beef each year, we just don’t export it, we eat it. And then we import another 300,000 tonnes to fill the excess consumer demand.
The FT’s chosen farmer was Hugh Broom, who until recently did a Farmers Weekly podcast, has entered a Defra Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme and hosts a battery storage enterprise on his farm, all according to the National Farmers Union website – he was a speaker at their conference in February this year. (The FT mentioned none of this.)
Broom acknowledges that losing the CAP Basic Payment Scheme has caused him and most UK farmers to focus on productivity, and he claims he is producing more off his farm now than ever before. As he says ‘we’ve sort of got on and adapted’. This is exactly what farmers in Australia and New Zealand had to do in the 1980s and 90s when they lost their subsidies. Now both countries are major agricultural exporters, although this is unlikely to happen to Britain as UK farmers still have the environmental subsidies to fall back on, which effectively pay UK farmers to not farm, so rather than improve their productivity some UK farmers will stop producing at all.
Unfortunately, Broom, like many UK farmers, believes the UK is a major agricultural exporter. It isn’t. We are major agricultural importers. And we need to be able to import food from multiple suppliers, so that we are not trapped into exclusively buying from the EU. This will be even more important if the weather continues to change.
Broom mistakenly believes that the EU is our major market and so we would ‘be utterly crazy to rip up the rule book’ but he is wrong. The UK is the UK’s biggest customer, by far. And our rules should be designed to suit UK consumer preferences, UK farm sizes, UK climates, UK pests, UK seasons, and UK soil types. The UK has never ‘raced to the bottom on standards’ and had considerably better animal welfare standards than many EU countries while we were EU members.
However, the UK doesn’t have the highest standards in the world, as Broom and so many UK farmers have heard repeated so many times, they now believe it. UK standards are very similar to New Zealand and Australian standards, although their different climates and herd sizes require different rules, they aim for similar outcomes. For example, I doubt any Australian cattle would ever be kept in a shed as Broom’s are, having to stick their heads through the railings to eat hay from a trough outside the shed. But Broom happily lets the photographer film his cattle’s accommodation without fearing a visit from the RSPCA because this is standard practice in the UK although it would kill most cattle in Australia. Different countries house their animals differently to suit their climates, not better or worse, just different.
Altruistically, Broom suggests that the UK would be ‘throwing away’ its lamb export trade unless we align our regulations with the EU. He dismisses any fears about the UK becoming rule takers as just ‘give and take’ but he doesn’t seem to realise that would mean the UK gives and the EU takes. Broom will probably be surprised to know that the UK exported a mere 85 thousand tonnes of lamb last year, even less than our beef exports. But while France is still our largest customer for lamb, we also exported sheep meat to Ghana, Kuwait, Hong Kong and Canada. And these markets are growing.
There is a real threat to UK sheep farmers, but it is not from the new Australian and New Zealand trade deals. New Zealand already had a tariff-free quota of over 100,000 tonnes for sheepmeat that has never been filled. No, the threat to UK sheep farmers will come from France and Spain who have both greatly increased their sheep production and exports over the last ten years and unlike Australia and New Zealand, their lambing season is the same as the UK’s.
To survive UK sheep farmers must look for new export markets, not hope that French and Spanish farmers will go away if we align with EU regulations. One Brexit opportunity on the horizon for UK sheep farmers will be the trade deal the Department for Business and Trade is negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Broom knows little about trade. He doesn’t even know that the whole point of trade is to open your market to more efficient producers. He claims that the UK’s trade with Australia was ‘next to nothing’ without ever questioning why that would be or whether that was always the case. He seems oblivious to the massive tariffs the EU added to most of the agricultural goods Australia and New Zealand once exported to the UK and that they now export all over the world.
Broom may be interested to know that in 2023, UK car exports to Australia more than doubled in value, and exports of other transport goods also increased. Broom falsely claims that the Australian and New Zealand trade deals were rushed through probably because he mistakenly believes the UK’s main exports are agricultural, but as I have already mentioned they are a tiny fraction of UK exports which are predominately business, financial and insurance services and machinery, motor vehicles, aircraft parts, oil and gas and chemicals. The UK imports agricultural goods, mostly from the EU because of the high tariffs and small quotas that we still apply to many non-EU food imports. It will be 15 years before Australia and New Zealand have the same access to the UK market as other EU food producers have now.
www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/more-propaganda-from-the-ft/
Thankfully, B4B is on hand to pushback the rubbish published by the likes of the FT's and the droning herd who regurgitate such rubbish, as can be found on forums like this. Only a week or so ago, we had farmers in our midst and rejoiners took an opportunity to pin their protests on the alleged failure of Brexit.
Below is a large excerpt that rubbishes the kind of propaganda published about Brexit, and this focuses on our beef farmers.
... But to reiterate the need for EU alignment, the FT chose to interview a farmer working in another tiny UK export industry – beef. The world’s top beef exporters: Brazil, India, Australia and the US all measure their beef exports in millions of tonnes, the UK barely exported 100,000 tonnes in 2023. We do produce almost a million tonnes of beef each year, we just don’t export it, we eat it. And then we import another 300,000 tonnes to fill the excess consumer demand.
The FT’s chosen farmer was Hugh Broom, who until recently did a Farmers Weekly podcast, has entered a Defra Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme and hosts a battery storage enterprise on his farm, all according to the National Farmers Union website – he was a speaker at their conference in February this year. (The FT mentioned none of this.)
Broom acknowledges that losing the CAP Basic Payment Scheme has caused him and most UK farmers to focus on productivity, and he claims he is producing more off his farm now than ever before. As he says ‘we’ve sort of got on and adapted’. This is exactly what farmers in Australia and New Zealand had to do in the 1980s and 90s when they lost their subsidies. Now both countries are major agricultural exporters, although this is unlikely to happen to Britain as UK farmers still have the environmental subsidies to fall back on, which effectively pay UK farmers to not farm, so rather than improve their productivity some UK farmers will stop producing at all.
Unfortunately, Broom, like many UK farmers, believes the UK is a major agricultural exporter. It isn’t. We are major agricultural importers. And we need to be able to import food from multiple suppliers, so that we are not trapped into exclusively buying from the EU. This will be even more important if the weather continues to change.
Broom mistakenly believes that the EU is our major market and so we would ‘be utterly crazy to rip up the rule book’ but he is wrong. The UK is the UK’s biggest customer, by far. And our rules should be designed to suit UK consumer preferences, UK farm sizes, UK climates, UK pests, UK seasons, and UK soil types. The UK has never ‘raced to the bottom on standards’ and had considerably better animal welfare standards than many EU countries while we were EU members.
However, the UK doesn’t have the highest standards in the world, as Broom and so many UK farmers have heard repeated so many times, they now believe it. UK standards are very similar to New Zealand and Australian standards, although their different climates and herd sizes require different rules, they aim for similar outcomes. For example, I doubt any Australian cattle would ever be kept in a shed as Broom’s are, having to stick their heads through the railings to eat hay from a trough outside the shed. But Broom happily lets the photographer film his cattle’s accommodation without fearing a visit from the RSPCA because this is standard practice in the UK although it would kill most cattle in Australia. Different countries house their animals differently to suit their climates, not better or worse, just different.
Altruistically, Broom suggests that the UK would be ‘throwing away’ its lamb export trade unless we align our regulations with the EU. He dismisses any fears about the UK becoming rule takers as just ‘give and take’ but he doesn’t seem to realise that would mean the UK gives and the EU takes. Broom will probably be surprised to know that the UK exported a mere 85 thousand tonnes of lamb last year, even less than our beef exports. But while France is still our largest customer for lamb, we also exported sheep meat to Ghana, Kuwait, Hong Kong and Canada. And these markets are growing.
There is a real threat to UK sheep farmers, but it is not from the new Australian and New Zealand trade deals. New Zealand already had a tariff-free quota of over 100,000 tonnes for sheepmeat that has never been filled. No, the threat to UK sheep farmers will come from France and Spain who have both greatly increased their sheep production and exports over the last ten years and unlike Australia and New Zealand, their lambing season is the same as the UK’s.
To survive UK sheep farmers must look for new export markets, not hope that French and Spanish farmers will go away if we align with EU regulations. One Brexit opportunity on the horizon for UK sheep farmers will be the trade deal the Department for Business and Trade is negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Broom knows little about trade. He doesn’t even know that the whole point of trade is to open your market to more efficient producers. He claims that the UK’s trade with Australia was ‘next to nothing’ without ever questioning why that would be or whether that was always the case. He seems oblivious to the massive tariffs the EU added to most of the agricultural goods Australia and New Zealand once exported to the UK and that they now export all over the world.
Broom may be interested to know that in 2023, UK car exports to Australia more than doubled in value, and exports of other transport goods also increased. Broom falsely claims that the Australian and New Zealand trade deals were rushed through probably because he mistakenly believes the UK’s main exports are agricultural, but as I have already mentioned they are a tiny fraction of UK exports which are predominately business, financial and insurance services and machinery, motor vehicles, aircraft parts, oil and gas and chemicals. The UK imports agricultural goods, mostly from the EU because of the high tariffs and small quotas that we still apply to many non-EU food imports. It will be 15 years before Australia and New Zealand have the same access to the UK market as other EU food producers have now.
www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/more-propaganda-from-the-ft/