Farming In The UK

You can't just press [Enter] and there it all is!

Glasshouse horticulture may need more heat than can be supplied by anything on the farm itself; and the capital and payback costs of the equipment may well be far higher than the already high costs of the electricity, gas or oil already being used.

Too much farm land is being used already for solar farms and their huge battery-packs, and we do need food as well as heat and light.

A godly number of farmers are already using methane from animal-waste "digesters", though I don't know if the gas is burnt for space-heating or fuelling i.c. engines coupled to alternators. Others too do use at least some "home-grown" electricity.

What's gone wrong with most mass-produced good being now imported - and this applies to many countries, even the USA, not just Britain? Many reasons but the main one in common is simple undercutting. The Asian costs were so much lower than our own and so many people use cost not quality and longevity, that they overtook domestic production. Initially Asian goods were of low quality and some still are, but less so nowadays, especially once they looked more closely at the stolen patent designs and realised buyers do want at least fair quality for the lowest cost.

Also of course many Western countries have been persuaded by the money-trade to allow selling their businesses and utilities overseas, in the guise of "inward [[i]sic[/i]] investment"; without thinking of the obvious effects it takes a qualified economist or stock-market analyst to miss.

We are though still very good at very highly specialised engineering products. It is mainly the domestic-products trade, vehicle-building and some heavy industries like steel-making and ship-building that have gone either physically or by ownership. Oh, and railway engineering. Why the Hell is the country that invented the public passenger and goods carrying railways, now using trains built by Hitachi (Japan) and Bombardier (Canada)?

.

You will recall this problem was behind President Trump's campaigning but he missed the point that once large-scale industries have gone, it is very difficult or impossible to revive them in the forms they were. The UK has the same problem but we (perhaps the USA too) made the mistake of thinking so-called "service industries" a good replacement, simply because they undeniably represent an extremely valuable "export industry". So instead we need new industries at large scales, but should also really develop new "made In Britain" trade.

Oh - and without destroying agriculture in the process, hence increasing food imports!

.
I typed this on a DELL computer linked to two Hewlett-Packard printers. American companies, American designs; Chinese or Taiwanese manufacture. Ironically their printed-circuit boards, like that in my portable 'phone, may have been made on a production line that includes machinery built in Britain - and only a few miles from my computer, too.

In front of the PC is a mug of tea, made with local spring water from rain "Made in Britain".... sold to me by a [i]Malaysian [/i]hotels-quarries-and-cement group of dubious environmental credentials in its own country.

Oooh: the mug is now empty so let's have a look. Embossed on its underside is, "Made In England" !

I guess the original cost of solar panels is the problem and farmers might own lots of land but don't have the cash for it.

But everything is being managed in a sh*t way though, which don't blame farmers for but the last few governments :(

Did you run the maths on that?

Get out of there and move to the USA.