A trade expert in @BBCr4today just explained how UK needs to *remove* protection for animal welfare in order to compete in the global market for beef and lamb. Is that what consumers want? Is it what farmers want? All for 0.01% of GDP?
Not many farmers will want to use growth hormones, or consider the cruel practice of mulesing, so as a Welsh farmer explained on @BBCr4today they will be forced to increase stocking rates to compete. Goodbye nature recovery targets & biodiversity...?
But for many farms, intensive stocking won’t work. They will enter cycle of debt and falling incomes, eventually retiring or selling up. The farm houses will become holiday homes, the land will be bought by big agri firms & private equity. What happens next?
The companies will have no links to local rural community. They will put in contractors to maximize profits, and they will lobby for lower animal welfare standards so UK can ‘compete’. Rural areas will become wastelands; culturally, environmentally and economically.
Some small farmers (like us) will survive by offering high welfare organic, grass fed, meat to discerning customers. But we will struggle if the rural infrastructure collapses: small abattoirs, craft butchers, livestock marts etc. are all essential in the local supply chain.
When we lose the practical wisdom of lifelong farmers (upon whose goodwill and generosity new entrants like us depend), the cultural meaning of livestock farming will disintegrate, a huge loss to our country’s sense of itself. @herdyshepherd1
This may seem like ‘bourgeois sentimentality’ (thanks, #Marx), but when we look on a country view in #Exmoor, do we just see meat production, or do we feel something else? Perhaps being sentimental about landscapes or animal welfare is not so deplorable?
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