No coincidence that it’s UK and USA who are most rabid in the comparative advantage mindset. Only anglo-saxons could be in favour of a system that makes their food taste of nothing.

Like they’d notice…

Part of the impetus comes from traditional UK/USA devotion to the principles of Free Trade and Comparative Advantage. By this reasoning, First World countries shouldn’t be ‘doing’ agriculture at all, because it’s not our speciality… and we can sell our own products the better if we’re buying our food from countries that need the income and can grow it cheaper.

… which is all well and good, but of course – as you rightly point out – it means that we outsource our food production to countries that have little or no safety or animal welfare regulations. Plus we have to import it all, at vast cost in fossil fuel CO2 etc etc. Plus it consequently tastes of nothing and has lost most of its vitamin content. Plus we lose our ability to feed ourselves from our own backyard.

And all so that the cars in the showroom and the lawnmowers in the garden centre can remain cheap.

God give me strength.

There is a tale so ridiculous from Vermont, US that it boggles the mind “Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA’s War on a Family Farm”. A bit depressing reading, but eye opening.

But the clamour for ever safer food is also a problem. Most UK red tape to do with livestock was introduced for noble reasons to do with safety – ie tagging, animal feed and transportation rules originated in old Foot and Mouth crises, plus Mad Cow Disease etc etc.

All could easily be justified by a Whitehall desk man as sensible, proportionate and necessary for public health/safety. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Just as the only way to reduce road traffic deaths to zero is to outlaw motor cars, the only way to make all our food 100% safe is to legislate on every fucking detail of every fucking minute of every farmer’s life… until it becomes impossible to make a living farming.

Which is what’s happening right now. When you look at it dispassionately, the Occam’s Razor principle would suggest the policy is deliberate, and the extinction of UK farming is its strategic goal.

There is a small back to the land movement in sections of community. Unfortunately it is still much more focused on “lifestyle” acres rather than farming enterprises. It is so sad to see generational farms end up on the market because they simply can’t find anyone within the family that sees a living in farming. I can’t blame them though as you said we have such a strange disconnect when it comes to our food producers.. most just don’t seem to see that cheap food at the checkout means that the farmer is loosing out, cause you can be sure the supermarket isn’t loosing.

Kind Regards
Belinda

To get the merest flavour of it, have a read of this DEFRA doc. Believe me, actually implementing these rules and regs – as you say, Ruth – is even worse than reading about them.

The saddest thing is that the bureaucracy hits smallholdings especially hard; in other words, the person who’d like to keep a pig or two for food, and who isn’t in it to make money. It’s become nightmarish.