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bongo
24 Jul 16 20:56
Joined:
Date Joined: 12 May 01
| Topic/replies: 6,052 | Blogger: bongo's blog
Choice of two for this one:

1. Subsidies that benefit owners of UK farmland
2. Subsidies that benefit owners of non-UK farmland
Pause Switch to Standard View Which does the UK taxpayer spend more...
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Report sean rua July 25, 2016 8:47 AM BST
I guess it all depends on the percentage of the "Green Pound" that comes from non-british sources of the EU grant and subsidy.

I guess again that the landed gentry get less from the "state" nowadays than they did years ago.

Maybe we'll have to ask the Duke of Westmorland or somebody?

What's the answer?

Have ye included Los Malvinas in your calcs?

I expect ye'll say number 2.
Report sean rua July 25, 2016 5:57 PM BST
Nothing, bingo?
Report bongo July 25, 2016 8:53 PM BST
What's the answer?

I wouldn't want to be in a pub quiz with you Sean. You're supposed to work it out, or if not have a guess yourself, not refuse and ask the quiz master.

Here's some data to help.

UK farm subsidies are about £3bn a year
UK net contribution to the EU is about £9bn a year, and farmland owner subsidies account for about 38% of the EU budget
Report sean rua July 26, 2016 9:05 AM BST
Cheers, bingo.

Ain't much in it , according to that, is there? Confused

Not sure whether ye included Las malvinas and Gibraltar etc, and not sure the landowners get all the subsidy.

It seems to me that there's a difference of
0.42 of a billion some place. ?

What's your point, anyway?
Report bongo July 27, 2016 8:06 PM BST
The point is this:

UK taxpayers spend more on foreign landowners in the EU to compete against our own producers than it does on our own producers to compete against those in the rest of the EU.

Anyone voting to leave the EU madhouse 5 weeks ago, give yourself a pat on the back
Report sean rua July 27, 2016 8:52 PM BST
When will that change , d'ye think, bingo?

I see no change for a decade.

Did ye do the arithmetic and check my figures?

There seemed to be a difference of 0.42 of a billion. Do ye agree?

Thanks for your repy, btw.
Report The Shiekh July 27, 2016 9:24 PM BST
Good point bongo and it's well overtime that much needed help is given to our hard working dairy farmers
Report The Shiekh July 27, 2016 9:36 PM BST
They don't want paid for nothing just to be offered a decent living for their hard work
Report jollyswagman July 27, 2016 9:42 PM BST
subsidies to the farming sector cause more harm than good imo.

(sorry comrade rua, we may disagree here Laugh)
Report The Shiekh July 27, 2016 9:45 PM BST
Subsidies grants whatever they may be called don't seem to work long term sustainability is what is neede
Report sean rua July 28, 2016 9:42 AM BST
mATES,

as a sop to the working class, the capitalist rulers realised years ago that providing good wholesome food at a cheap and affordable price was a positive overhead for their businesses.
It made the labour force stronger and fitter and stemmed demands for wage increases.

To this end, and also after the farming catastrophe of the twenties and thirties, they have followed this policy of subsidising food production.
When the dirty supermarkets came in, they also made huge profits. This allowed them to screw the farmers and sell at below cost.

When the green pound was taken away, the quotas stopped, and the milk cheque wasn't there any more. The whole thing went to fk.

Farmers sons came out into the construction game. They were mostlty fkn good workers, but 'twas only a bit of bunce for them ( they lacked ready cash on the farms, where they only get paid about twice a year with the sale of crops or livestock).

So, the general effect was tio depress wages further.
Then, when and if they can engineer a building boom, they sell a bit of land and take it easy, just doing pheasants, fish ponds, and moto-cross.
Report sean rua July 28, 2016 9:46 AM BST
Subsidies are reverse taxation and are a part of capitalism.
As such they do not work for the good of the people and generally cause disgruntlement and animosity.

In the old days, the farmer racing along in his new tractor ( on red and with little tax) had three of the four wheels paid for by the tax-payers.
Then they troop out on election day to vote agin labour, saying the fkn tax is awful! Laugh

They got it made.
We cannot make land; 'tis a finite resource. Got that, ye got a lot.Cool
Report The Shiekh July 28, 2016 10:12 AM BST
All resources are finite and therefore require careful management
Report sean rua July 28, 2016 6:19 PM BST
Few are as finite as land and sea, shaky.

"Human resources" are self-
Report sean rua July 28, 2016 6:20 PM BST
self-renewing.
Report The Shiekh July 28, 2016 7:25 PM BST
Either finite or not Sean can't be a bit finite
Report sageform July 28, 2016 8:26 PM BST
The annual subsidy to EDF and other energy companies will be many times the total subsidies paid to farmers and these days, the only payments to farmers are for environmental reasons. Even at the height of the subsidies in the 70's and 80's there were many products that never had any subsidy at all including poultry, pigs and most fruit and vegetable crops. Sheep, cattle, grain and oilseeds get 99% of it between them. As most payments are per hectare, the UK will only get payments for its land area compared to the EU as a whole and we all know that we have the densest population and therefore will only get back a fraction of what we pay in. For instance if our GDP is 10% of the total for the EU but our land area is only 4%, then we will only get back 40% of what we pay in.
Report sean rua July 29, 2016 7:19 PM BST
I take your point, shaky. Finite is finite. Land is finite.
We took the advice from the rulers and bought land. However, we still got evicted off our own land.

That said, 'tis the best way to get as far from the Machine as possible, but the freedom is only partial. They have all sorts of taxes and rules.

However, out on the land is the free-est a man can get in the UK, imo.

---

sage,

some intesting points there.

I know the farming community were split: sheep and cattle got the most, but there was set-aside, I'm sure.

Wales gets plenty from Europe and not just in the old industrial fkd areas, but also out in the rural farming parts.

--

That deal edf hope to get at Hnkley is diabolical, imo.

How any govt in its right mind would lock in the taxpayers and consumers till 2050 I do not know.Sad

Got to be the biggest waste of money since trident.

At least with farming, we were getting a bit of food.
According to a young woman I stood next to at Cheltenham one time, uk arable farmers have increased yield per acre 25 times in the last 25 years, but the return is still the same.

One thing I'll say in regard to that is the higher yields had another cost: ie. the nutitional value of the grain is well down.
That's why there is so much illness in GB.

Food is not what it was, but there's a lot of it nowadays.
Report bongo July 30, 2016 12:01 AM BST
In the late 19th century the US President at the time said this when asked to provide hand outs for Texan farmers:

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. …the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

No US President would say anything close to that now.
Report sageform July 30, 2016 12:46 PM BST
Set aside was a policy for several years when certain crops were in surplus across the EU, but you only qualified for payment if you left some land fallow (so made no other income from it) and you had been growing those crops in previous years.
Report sageform July 30, 2016 12:54 PM BST
bongo, all farm "subsidies" or support stems from WW2 when food was rationed and food security was a vital part of any Government policy. We had a farm support policy from 1948 when a minimum price was negotiated for most products in order to avoid shortage and rationing as we had from 1939 to 1950. That ceased when we joined the EU common agricultural policy which is and always was a huge waste of public money most of which ends up paid to civil servants and bureaucracy. The UK now relies increasingly on cheap imports from countries that produce a surplus but we would be in dire straits if imports were cut off.
Report bongo July 30, 2016 1:13 PM BST
"Set aside was a policy for several years when certain crops were in surplus across the EU, but you only qualified for payment if you left some land fallow (so made no other income from it) and you had been growing those crops in previous years. And you owned the land"

There, completed that sentence for you sageform.

There are of course tenant farmers who claim the subsidies, but the incidence of the subsidy is on the landowner who can charge a higher rent.

Farm support didn't begin after WWII - remember the Corn Laws. And in the 1920s and 1930s UK farm support was about 1/60th of government spending ( self-sufficiency was below 40% ), hence the importance of breaking the codes used by the U-boats to attack the Atlantic convoys.
Now UK farm support is about 1/250th of government spending and is topped by non-UK farm support. Self-sufficiency is around 60% ( or 80% allowing for 20% exports ) - round numbers of course.
Report sageform July 31, 2016 6:14 PM BST
I don't see what owning the land has to do with anything. If you owned a widget factory and the Government asked you to cease producing widgets for a year, you would seek financial compensation for doing so which is what set aside was. Set aside was paid to any eligible land and who got the money between a landlord and tenant would depend on the tenancy agreement.
Report sean rua August 1, 2016 12:38 PM BST
Interesting stuff.

What I noticed about the big, rich, arablwe farms of East Anglia was that there were many cases of one rich dude owning acres and acres with the actual farming left to "managers" or tenants plus the labourr force ( which was gratly reduced by mechanisation.)

--

Yeah, I know what was set-aside, sage.

I also remember rationing was in force when we came here. I ate so many rabbits ,I can't stand them to this day! Laugh

--

In the USA,

check out the Tenessee Valley Authority (TVA); I gueesed the "A" and cannot be bothered looking it up.

There are two sides to most things.
Report bongo August 26, 2016 11:21 PM BST
.
http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/newsroom/292_en.htm

The EU has decided that milk is too cheap, and thanks to an Irish Commissioner for farming is about to spend 150m Euro of your money paying people who are good at producing milk cheaply not to do that very same thing they are good at doing. A thing which benefits people who like milk based products such as normal people who don't own a lot of farm land.
If you voted to LEAVE, which at least means a review of this sort of madness give yourself another pat on the back.
Report akabula August 27, 2016 12:15 AM BST
Gotta love Malvinas. Kinda like Wolfy shouting Up the revolution. LaughLaughLaugh
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