Category: We Need A Famine

Whatsisname’s Britain

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunchor not.

FARMING in England is facing a crisis as thousands of farmers have accepted government payments of up to £100,000 to leave their land. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) say that their ‘Lump Sum Exit Scheme’, launched in 2022 by Boris Johnson, aims to ‘support farmers in England who wish to leave the industry’.

It has been successful. Last month Defra told me they had received ‘just over 2,200 eligible applications’. Approved farmers who want to throw in the towel have until May 31 of this year to transfer their land, but there is no rule that says it must remain as farmland.

Contrary to a previous statement, Defra said: ‘The scheme itself doesn’t have any specific restrictions – however, we expect that most of the surrendered land will stay as agricultural land.’ Earlier they had said: ‘In return for signing up to the scheme, farmers need to either rent out or sell their land or surrender their tenancy in order to create opportunities for new entrants and farmers wishing to expand their businesses.’[…]

It comes from the Absolute Zero report produced by six of our universities, Cambridge, Oxford, Bath, Nottingham, Strathclyde and Imperial College, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a government agency. The research programme goes under the name UK FIRES with the convoluted slogan Locating Resource Efficiency [RE] at the heart of the UK’s Future Industrial Strategy [FIS].

They suggest drastic measures. By 2029 (five years from now), they aim to reduce beef and lamb consumption by 50 per cent. By 2030, they recommend that fertilisers are phased out, by 2050 all beef and lamb production should end and energy used to cook and transport food should be reduced by 60 per cent.

Related.

Soylent Cow

The garden utopia is not blooming as we were promised;

Plant-based meat spiked in popularity in 2016 when the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Burger — both made to look and taste like beef — launched and gained mainstream media attention. Some ingredients that make up plant-based meat include soy, potato, pea protein, artificial flavors, coconut oil, beans, etc.

Now, start-up companies who produce plant-based meat products are experimenting with blending animal fat into plant-based ingredients as they are now prioritizing taste over sustainability, according to the Post. Companies also don’t mind straying away from its vegan and vegetarian customers as they are more interested in reaching a larger base of consumers.

According to a recent Gallup survey, in the United States, only 4% of Americans claim they are vegetarian and 1% vegan, revealing a slight decline to figures that were seen in previous years. In 2018, 5% of Americans in the survey claimed they were vegetarian, and 3% said they were vegan.

Master Plan for Humanity: I’ll eat the still-beating hearts of my enemies before I eat bugs.

When You Piss Off People Who Work With Heavy Equipment

Telegraph- Farming is in peril throughout Europe

Telegraph- French farmer vows to ‘starve Paris’

A tractor blockade established at eight points around Paris is intended to “starve Parisians”, a French farmer has claimed.

Benoit Durand, a grain farmer, told French broadcaster BFM TV: “We are holding a siege in Chartres, one hour away from Paris. It’s part of the blockade… the goal is to put pressure on the government.”

Y2Kyoto: They’re Not After Your Meat

Or your guns, nor your gas stoves…

The world’s most-developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat as part of the first comprehensive plan to bring the global agrifood industry into line with the Paris climate agreement…

The guidance on meat is intended to send a clear message to governments. But politicians in richer nations typically shy away from policies aimed at influencing consumer behavior, especially where it involves cutting consumption of everyday items.

‘Livestock is politically sensitive, but we need to deal with sensitive issues to solve the problem,’ said Dhanush Dinesh, the founder of Clim-Eat, which works to accelerate climate action in food systems. ‘If we don’t tackle the livestock problem, we are not going to solve climate change. The key problem is overconsumption.’


India has by far the largest herd in the world with over 300 million head of cattle! Who is gonna tell them?

They Want You Dead

Financial Post- Worried about grocery prices? Wait till we get compulsory carbon accounting

Among other things, these standards mandate the use of intrusive, burdensome, and expensive CO2 emissions accounting across a company’s entire value chain. For grocery retailers this includes explaining and accounting for emissions in the production, transport, packaging, refrigeration, consumption and disposal of everything they sell. In other words, your grocery store will need to quantify all the emissions of that hamburger meat you bought: whether in producing it (including all steps from farm to processor), transporting it to the store, packaging and refrigerating it at the store, plus your travelling to and from the store, your refrigeration and eventually your cooking of the hamburger, and your disposal of the packaging and any waste of the food.

h/t Scott

Diesel Squeeze

Bloomberg;

The world’s oil refiners are struggling to make enough of the fuel that powers vast swaths of the global economy.

In northwest Europe, benchmark diesel futures have topped $1,000 a ton, trading at a 10-year seasonal high. In New York, the fuel is at its most expensive in three decades, and it’s a similar story in Asia.

Diesel-type fuels aren’t just used by drivers of trucks and cars. They’re also consumed in farming, construction and manufacturing, by trains and ships, even in heating. The world may be trying to move on from oil, but petroleum prices still matter.

Costly fuel typically spurs refiners to make more, increasing supply and ultimately bringing prices down. But this year, a slew of factors have made that difficult.

A sweltering summer in the Northern Hemisphere led to cuts in oil processing. Meanwhile, some large new refineries have been slow to start. Many plants have also closed, with 3.9 million barrels a day shuttered in recent years, International Energy Agency data show.

No Water for You

Castanet- Westwold farmers’ fight for water catches ear of BC United leader

Drought conditions in the North Okanagan are becoming a political football.

Following a fish protection order placed on the Salmon River on Aug. 16, forage crop farmers in the Westwold area are crying foul.

“People need to wake up … their food doesn’t come from a supermarket, it all starts right here,” farmer Russel Clemiston says in a video documentary.

The order comes as water levels reach critical lows.

It doesn’t affect water pulled from the river for personal, market vegetable or livestock use – but forage crop growers were ordered to turn off the taps completely.

“We depend on forage to feed our cattle, we’re not doing it for fun,” Clemiston said.

Some have been defying the order, and resource officers have been going from farm to farm to enforce it.

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