Eve and I were invited back to Bowlees farm today for coffee, birthday cake (John's birthday) and a blether. More detail of their walling job, it's around 300m, grant aided. I can start anytime now.
They also want Eve to advise them on gardening around their education barn, to brighten the place up as they have a lot of school visits planned. Concrete was being poured to make their yard wheelchair friendly, if rain keeps off. Nice to see a young #Farming couple getting on with new ideas.
Farmers have realised that Brexit has done them few favours (they were warned, of course) & now seek a solution that is popular on Mastodon: universal basic income.
It seems that farmers have hit on UBI as a form of funding that will replace the EU funding model they lost having (at least round here) deciding to bite the hand that fed them.
Q. would UBI for farmers help the more general case or provide evidence of its financial unsustainability?
The EU’s recent retreat from its ambitious environmental goals may benefit far-right groups, however for the rest of us, it’s a disaster.
Key environmental pledges, such as #pesticide use, green #farming practices, and other environmental reforms, have been abandoned in response to aggressive lobbying and protests by farmers.
🐝🐝🐝 "...today we bring you a story not of divisive politics but of a remarkable recovery. The bees are coming back. And folks, this is a very big deal."
--Dan Rather
Voters out in the "fly over" states who want to buy trucks and tractors that they depend on to do their jobs should be hounding their Congressional Representatives to support opening the port of Baltimore.
Anyone who buys anything from Europe, should also realize that closing the largest port on the east coast of the nation is not going to help their family budget.
"In 2019, this government was elected with a mandate to uphold our standards and deliver a ready-made deal with the EU which would see British agriculture boom.
"It is now entirely obvious that they have totally betrayed us all."
Yes I know - not all farmers, blame the conmen not the conned etc. - but I still bet this lot were 80% Leave. FFS guys...
"Kent farmers join Westminster tractor protest over ‘threat to food security’"
Liz Webster of Save British Farming accuses the English government of abandoning domestic agriculture to low-quality imports from outwith Europe, and calls for renewed alignment with EU standards.
"How much do we want AI to be involved in farming? The time for that conversation is now, before these trends are irreversibly locked in. Now is the time to set reasonable ethical limits."