Category: War On Agriculture

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.

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.”

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.

Dutch Government Falls

Guardian;

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, has announced his resignation and that of his cabinet, citing irreconcilable differences within his four-party coalition about how to rein in migration.

The decision on Friday by the Netherlands’ longest-serving premier means the country will face a general election later this year for the 150-seat lower house of parliament.

“It is no secret that the coalition partners have very different views on migration policy,” Rutte told reporters in The Hague. “And today, unfortunately, we have to draw the conclusion that those differences are irreconcilable. That is why I will immediately … offer the resignation of the entire cabinet to the king in writing.”

Opposition lawmakers wasted no time in calling for fresh elections.

Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Party for Freedom, tweeted, “Quick elections now”. Jesse Klaver, leader of the Green Left party also called for elections and told Dutch broadcaster NOS: “This country needs a change of direction.” […]

During provincial elections earlier this year, a populist pro-farmer party put Rutte’s party into second place. The defeat was seen as a possible incentive for Rutte to do his utmost to hold together his coalition until its term ends in 2025.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Depopulationists rejoice.

The White House offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming, in a congressionally mandated report that could help bring efforts once confined to science fiction into the realm of legitimate debate.

The controversial concept known as solar radiation modification is a potentially effective response to fighting climate change, but one that could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, some scientists say.

If this works, we could get the crop failures they’ve been striving for.

I’ll Eat The Still-Twitching Bodies Of Their First Born Before I Eat Lab-Grown Meat

Daily Sceptic;

Earlier this year, the Grocery Gazette reported that the UK was set to be a world-leading developer of lab-grown meat. In the recent past, Guardian climate hysteric George Monbiot claimed lab-grown food “will soon destroy farming – and save the planet”. Alas, such boosterism is being challenged by hard facts. Lab-grown meat is up to 25 times worse for the environment since it needs ‘pharmaceutical-grade’ production to make it fit for human consumption. In particular, there is a need to remove endotoxin from the cultured mix, a substance that in concentrations as low as one billionth of a gram per millilitrie can reduce human IVF pregnancy success rate by up to four fold.

These are the startling conclusions of ground-breaking work recently published by a group of chemists and food scientists from the University of California. It turns out that ‘pharma to food’ production is a significant technological challenge. The major problem with lab meat is that it uses growth organisms that have to be highly purified to help animal cells multiply. Compared with environmental savings on land, water and greenhouses gases, the whole bio-process is noted to be “orders of magnitude” higher than rearing the actual animal.

The promoters never really explain how they plan to feed the “meat”.

The cells will start to divide after they are cultured in an appropriate culture medium, which will provide nutrients, hormones and growth factors. The best medium is known to contain fetal bovine serum (FBS), a serum made from the blood of a dead calf, which is going to be rate-limiting, and not acceptable for vegetarians nor vegans. More than one trillion cells can be grown, and these cells naturally merge to form myotubes which are no longer than 0.3 mm; the myotubes are then placed in a ring growing into a small piece of muscle tissue…

They want you to assume that petri dish proteins just grow on their own like magic.

Jevons Paradox

“Every molecule of fossil fuel produced worldwide will be burned by somebody somewhere, and local efforts to restrict consumption merely relocate the enjoyment of that privilege.”

Prior to the widespread proliferation of the steam engine, mining for coal was back-breaking work. The industry relied on human and animal strength, with laborers using primitive tools, to extract the stuff from hand-dug mineshafts. The work was as dangerous as it was dirty, and fatalities were commonplace. Then, a revolution unfolded. A step-change improvement to existing steam engine design, engineered by James Watt, allowed miners to leverage machinery such as pumps, hoists, and ventilation systems to alleviate significant portions of direct human effort. Pumps that used Watt’s engines were particularly effective at draining water from deep mineshafts, making vast and previously inaccessible coal reserves economically viable. The genius of his invention was in delivering far more work per quanta of fuel.

What did these advances in energy efficiency do to the demand for coal? Did society limit itself to doing the same amount of work as it had done before, just more economically so? Quite the contrary.

This is a good one, worth sharing around. More discussion here.

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