Vegan parents kill baby by starvation (1 Viewer)

[Squiggle]

from what i've seen, there's not enough regulation of irish farms in the sense that i've seen a few farms where the farmer has nothing but contempt for his animals or for any sort of litter laws.
i'm not saying all farmers are like that - far from it - but these fuckers should be clamped down on, and clamped down on hard.

There is plenty of regulation, there are regular herd inspections carried out. I would be interested to know what you would define as contempt for animals... the animals are a farmer's livlihood and I remember times when our cattle were eating better than we were because they took priority. And don't get me started on the subject of litter. If you're talking about stuff in ditches you can be sure it wasn't put there by the farmers, but they're the ones expected to clean it up and pay for the privilidge of dumping it.

I have no idea to be honest. I don't think there was much change in the process on our farm as long as i was helping out (the last probably ten to fifteen years). We were always 100% dairy, as were almost all the farmers i knew/know.

I should also mention, seeing as you said UK farms typically had 90 odd dairy animals, we had between 70-100, and my dad was running it alone unless i was around at weekends or in the summer. Super farms i imagine would have thousands of animals.

Our farm was initially mixed dairy and arable, slowly that became impossible to maintain as we couldn't afford to hire the help necessary to harvest the crops, costs kept going up while prices stayed largely fixed. Then the same happened with dairy. We had a herd of about 100-120 cows, about 60-80 would be milking at any given time.

Before he finally had to give up Dad was in the process of designing and building a mobile milking parlour which would enable the cows to be milked in the field rather than being brought into a collecting yard. Then milk prices dropped again and he decided enough was enough. He sold most of the herd, planted about a hundred acres of mixed forest and is now working for an engineering firm.

Farming on a small scale is not economically viable any more. If we broke even that was a good year. That does mean, sadly, that the quality of the food we are being provided with, the wheat, milk and meat, is going to decrease... but if you want to know who to blame look no further than the mirror. You want cheap bread, cheap meat, cheap milk etc... fine... just don't expect quality. And fruit and vegetables are no better. Pesticides, genetically modified crops and fertilisers are doing just as much damage to the environment as meat production.

 

[jane]

I think what's equally tragic is that organic food is seen as a 'niche market', which means that it's seen as perfectly acceptable to make pesticide-free food out of the reach of anyone below the fey middle classes. I was at a seminar where this was taken as an okay thing to say, that organic food was a 'lifestyle' choice, and there were so many other things I wanted to challenge that I didn't even get to that one. But the future of the small farm, overall, looked really atrocious, and I did ask why it was that nothing was being done about it, that if this was the vision of farming in 2020, why didn't we spend the next 15 years trying to do something about it? It can't be a done deal if it's 15 years away. The dude was pretty dismissive, despite serving on an advisory body.

What's shite is that there is a contempt for farmers because they have a lot of land and are therefore considered 'rich', when the average salary for a farmer is about half the industrial average, and sure, there's money in land, but the land has to be sold in order to get at it. Farmers get the shittest end of the stick, and it's too fucking late to turn around and start recovering what this country once had in its farming produce. Irish dairy products are the tastiest, yummiest dairy products ever (sorry, vegans, but it's one other reason I couldn't survive as a vegan), but they won't be for long. The 'countryside' that draws the tourists is also dependent on farms and farmers, but that's going to be gone, too.

I haven't been on a lot of farms, but any time I have, they've always been small farms where animals were valued highly. Now, I absolutely understand the argument that just because a farmer loves the cow before it's eaten, it doesn't make it right, but I personally don't believe it's wrong to eat meat. I eat fish, so I'm not a veggie, and I can't stomach eating meat myself, but that's my personal taste, not really a moral choice. Small farms are so much more important than we will realise until they are all bloody gone. What is now called 'organic' food used to just be called food.

I will say that I'm really glad I spent a few years Down the Country, and that as an archaeologist, I got to at least get a glimpse of small farming. But I can't believe the contempt for farmers, especially in Dublin, where people just hear acreage and think, "Stop whining." Big farms are also bad for the archaeology, but when it comes down to it, I think a healthy future is much more important than saving every single monument (though I'd hardly want to see them all razed).

In closing, small farms=good all around, even if not all farmers are perfect (which duh, of course not), big super-farms=good for exactly zero point zero zero one percent of the population who make money off of them.

Edit: Squiggle, your dad sounds like a superamazing mad scientist inventor dude. Please bring him to my next party.

 

[Squiggle]

What's shite is that there is a contempt for farmers because they have a lot of land and are therefore considered 'rich', when the average salary for a farmer is about half the industrial average, and sure, there's money in land, but the land has to be sold in order to get at it. Farmers get the shittest end of the stick, and it's too fucking late to turn around and start recovering what this country once had in its farming produce. Irish dairy products are the tastiest, yummiest dairy products ever (sorry, vegans, but it's one other reason I couldn't survive as a vegan), but they won't be for long. The 'countryside' that draws the tourists is also dependent on farms and farmers, but that's going to be gone, too.

I haven't been on a lot of farms, but any time I have, they've always been small farms where animals were valued highly. Now, I absolutely understand the argument that just because a farmer loves the cow before it's eaten, it doesn't make it right, but I personally don't believe it's wrong to eat meat. I eat fish, so I'm not a veggie, and I can't stomach eating meat myself, but that's my personal taste, not really a moral choice. Small farms are so much more important than we will realise until they are all bloody gone. What is now called 'organic' food used to just be called food.

I will say that I'm really glad I spent a few years Down the Country, and that as an archaeologist, I got to at least get a glimpse of small farming. But I can't believe the contempt for farmers, especially in Dublin, where people just hear acreage and think, "Stop whining." Big farms are also bad for the archaeology, but when it comes down to it, I think a healthy future is much more important than saving every single monument (though I'd hardly want to see them all razed).

In closing, small farms=good all around, even if not all farmers are perfect (which duh, of course not), big super-farms=good for exactly zero point zero zero one percent of the population who make money off of them.

You make some excellent points there Jane. What really killed the small farm were the EU subsidies, they kept prices artificially low while eroding any respect that people might have had for farmers, as well as their self-respect. My father refused to buy into it and insisted that he would only stay in farming as long as he could manage without subsidies.

Edit: Squiggle, your dad sounds like a superamazing mad scientist inventor dude. Please bring him to my next party.

That pretty much sums him up

 

[snakybus]

I think what's equally tragic is that organic food is seen as a 'niche market', which means that it's seen as perfectly acceptable to make pesticide-free food out of the reach of anyone below the fey middle classes. I was at a seminar where this was taken as an okay thing to say, that organic food was a 'lifestyle' choice, and there were so many other things I wanted to challenge that I didn't even get to that one. But the future of the small farm, overall, looked really atrocious, and I did ask why it was that nothing was being done about it, that if this was the vision of farming in 2020, why didn't we spend the next 15 years trying to do something about it? It can't be a done deal if it's 15 years away. The dude was pretty dismissive, despite serving on an advisory body.

What's shite is that there is a contempt for farmers because they have a lot of land and are therefore considered 'rich', when the average salary for a farmer is about half the industrial average, and sure, there's money in land, but the land has to be sold in order to get at it. Farmers get the shittest end of the stick, and it's too fucking late to turn around and start recovering what this country once had in its farming produce. Irish dairy products are the tastiest, yummiest dairy products ever (sorry, vegans, but it's one other reason I couldn't survive as a vegan), but they won't be for long. The 'countryside' that draws the tourists is also dependent on farms and farmers, but that's going to be gone, too.

I haven't been on a lot of farms, but any time I have, they've always been small farms where animals were valued highly. Now, I absolutely understand the argument that just because a farmer loves the cow before it's eaten, it doesn't make it right, but I personally don't believe it's wrong to eat meat. I eat fish, so I'm not a veggie, and I can't stomach eating meat myself, but that's my personal taste, not really a moral choice. Small farms are so much more important than we will realise until they are all bloody gone. What is now called 'organic' food used to just be called food.

I will say that I'm really glad I spent a few years Down the Country, and that as an archaeologist, I got to at least get a glimpse of small farming. But I can't believe the contempt for farmers, especially in Dublin, where people just hear acreage and think, "Stop whining." Big farms are also bad for the archaeology, but when it comes down to it, I think a healthy future is much more important than saving every single monument (though I'd hardly want to see them all razed).

In closing, small farms=good all around, even if not all farmers are perfect (which duh, of course not), big super-farms=good for exactly zero point zero zero one percent of the population who make money off of them.

Edit: Squiggle, your dad sounds like a superamazing mad scientist inventor dude. Please bring him to my next party.

Classic Jane

 

[magicbastarder]

There is plenty of regulation, there are regular herd inspections carried out. I would be interested to know what you would define as contempt for animals... the animals are a farmer's livlihood and I remember times when our cattle were eating better than we were because they took priority. And don't get me started on the subject of litter. If you're talking about stuff in ditches you can be sure it wasn't put there by the farmers, but they're the ones expected to clean it up and pay for the privilidge of dumping it.

i'm thinking of one farmer in particular, who i saw drive past a field of his cattle, one of which was trying to disentangle itself from black polythene which the feed he'd been given them was wrapped in, and him doing nothing to help the cow. also, the yard he keeps the cattle in is utterly strewn with the stuff. re the stuff in ditches - he's the one who put it there.

he's a fucking arsehole of the highest order. it just amazes me he's able to get away with it; i asked around as to where i might be able to report him, and was told that none of my complaints was probably serious enough to be investigated; i.e. the cattle don't look malnourished, etc.

 

[egg_]

What really killed the small farm were the EU subsidies, they kept prices artificially low

Low? The CAP was started up in order to keep prices high and therefore keep farmers on the land, and lots of small farmers couldn't survive without them ... the main damage that subsidies did to farming, as far as I can see, was to make it more efficient. Grants for land improvement and farm buildings and mechanisation and the like meant it was possible for one guy to farm a much larger area, and therefore he could afford to sell each individual item of produce cheaper, and so anyone who couldn't keep up has been squeezed out. The economic argument would be we're getting more food out of each farmer now, so we don't need the smaller guys, and ex-farmers are freed up to do other productive work ... which a fairly good demonstration of how rational economics doesn't necessarily lead to desirable outcomes

 

[Squiggle]

Low? The CAP was started up in order to keep prices high and therefore keep farmers on the land, and lots of small farmers couldn't survive without them ... the main damage that subsidies did to farming, as far as I can see, was to make it more efficient. Grants for land improvement and farm buildings and mechanisation and the like meant it was possible for one guy to farm a much larger area, and therefore he could afford to sell each individual item of produce cheaper, and so anyone who couldn't keep up has been squeezed out. The economic argument would be we're getting more food out of each farmer now, so we don't need the smaller guys, and ex-farmers are freed up to do other productive work ... which a fairly good demonstration of how rational economics doesn't necessarily lead to desirable outcomes

Low. They kept the prices paid by the co-ops and, ultimately the consumers, artificially low by subsidsidising the farmer's earnings. The end result was the death of the small farm, followed by the death of the medium sized farm. I can remember a time when a 200 acre farm was considered large and a 40 acre farm was still viable, barely, now 200 acres is not enough.

Very interesting article about the subject of small farms here

Some highlights

For every country for which data is available, smaller farms are anywhere from 200 to 1,000 percent more productive per unit area.

We have to look at why that is. My belief is that it's because we have a system here that rewards inefficiency, low productivity and destruction of soil -- 90 percent of the topsoil in the United States is being lost faster than it can be replaced.

This system is heavily based on direct payment subsidies tied to the amount of land that a farmer has. American taxpayers paid a record $22 billion in direct farm payments last year. Sixty-one percent of those payments went to the largest 10 percent of American farmers.
Although those subsidies have been presented to us as helping keep family farmers on the land, they do just the opposite.

Because large farms in the U.S. get such a large subsidy, they can stay in business even if they're selling what they produce below the cost of production. The subsidies are tied to area and allow prices to drop below the cost of production. That prevents small farmers from competing because: one, crop prices have dropped so low and two, they don't have enough land to get enough subsidies to live on.

This is about the US but the same applies here.

 

[jane]

which a fairly good demonstration of how rational economics doesn't necessarily lead to desirable outcomes

This is a really fundamental point here.

 

[broken arm]

Squiggle, what would the situation be if farmers never received subsidies in the first place?

the impact isn't only on the environment, small farms but it also has detrimental impacts on farmers in the developing would - overproduction leading to dumping on developing markets etc.

 

[Squiggle]

Squiggle, what would the situation be if farmers never received subsidies in the first place?

the impact isn't only on the environment, small farms but it also has detrimental impacts on farmers in the developing would - overproduction leading to dumping on developing markets etc.

I believe farming worldwide would be in a much healthier condition without subsidies.

Subsidies encourage overproduction - which is why there is talk of cutting subsidies in an attempt to encourage farmers to leave land fallow. Before all the regulation of farming overproduction would have resulted in huge price drops, or the farmers being stuck with unsalable produce, so it would have regulated itself. Now overproduction is rewarded.

Subsidised farming is keeping global prices for goods low... which means that non-subsidised farmers in developing nations are suffering, where traditionally they would have been the ones able to produce goods at the lowest cost.

 

[broken arm]

I believe farming worldwide would be in a much healthier condition without subsidies.

I'm not sure about this at all but the context in which the common agricultural policy (CAP) was developed may have warrented it - european food security etc. But would it be reasonable to suggest that in the interests of sustainable development the CAP subsidies should be removed?

what impact would that have on farmers that have developed a dependance on the payments.. would the market be able to sustain the transistion from heavy subsidies (CAP accounts for almost half the European Community budget..)

I suppose the question is, we know it is bad having it but is not having likely to improve the situation or make it worse?

i'm going off the point but I'm interested in adverse impacts of policy and issues of moral hazard from government intervention......

 

[Squiggle]

I'm not sure about this at all but the context in which the common agricultural policy (CAP) was developed may have warrented it - european food security etc. But would it be reasonable to suggest that in the interests of sustainable development the CAP subsidies should be removed?

what impact would that have on farmers that have developed a dependance on the payments.. would the market be able to sustain the transistion from heavy subsidies (CAP accounts for almost half the European Community budget..)

I suppose the question is, we know it is bad having it but is not having likely to improve the situation or make it worse?

i'm going off the point but I'm interested in adverse impacts of policy and issues of moral hazard from government intervention......

I was answering your question about whether it would have been better not to have them in the first place (although the tense I used did make my answer ambiguous). Sorry

There is already talk of cutting the subsidies to reduce over-production. At this stage that will probably be one of the final nails in the coffin of farming in most of Europe. This is a case where intervention has caused the very thing it was supposedly introduced to prevent. Realistically the assertion that the subsidies were to protect farmers was fallacious from the beginning. There are many articles that will say all of this much better than I will.
http://www.iht.com/articles/1998/06/27/farm.t.php

This website has some very interesting articles.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/trade/subsidies/index.htm

 

[magicbastarder]

i thought the subsidies were definitely on the way out?
due to the brazilians successfully taking an action to the WTO about american subsidies on cotton (or sugar?) being against WTO law.

 

[Squiggle]

i thought the subsidies were definitely on the way out?
due to the brazilians successfully taking an action to the WTO about american subsidies on cotton (or sugar?) being against WTO law.

As far as I know you are right. US subsidies were the reason for EU subsidies.

 

[egg_]

Low. They kept the prices paid by the co-ops and, ultimately the consumers, artificially low by subsidsidising the farmer's earnings.

It's a long long time since I was well-informed on this, but I thought the subsidies were originally in the form of higher prices to farmers (which, as you say, depressed global prices but not prices within europe), and then moved to other means because that was resulting in overproduction ... could be wrong of course, my memory is hazy

I was going to continue to argue that the fundamental problem for old-style farming is technology and globalisation rather than subsidies, but I guess I should read some of the links you posted first ...

 

[broken arm]

As far as i know the CAP reform is changing the nature of the payments not getting rid of them - it is removing the link with production and the new single payment system will reward things like environmental best practices etc YO

 

[egg_]

the new ... system will reward things like environmental best practices etc YO

They've been saying that since I did my masters (in 1995)