The fact those with power and influence don’t understand what Poverty really is makes the ‘solutions’ they come up with potentially more harmful to those in need, rather than making the genuine difference that so many who have been left behind now need.
As someone who experienced poverty as a child, a research project for a Postgraduate Course project in late 2023 enabled Adam to compare the realities of living in Poverty in the UK today, to the experiences from the 70’s and 80’s that were his own.
In his own words, ‘The experience was sobering’ and the brief paper he wrote for assessment based on his question ‘Is Poverty invisible to those who don’t experience it’ is contained within this short Book.
Today, Adam often states: “You have to experience or be touched by Poverty to understand it.”
Like most people whose comments I’ve seen, I am a big fan of Clarkson’s Farm. I don’t think there’s one episode of the 22 I’ve already watched that hasn’t ticked all of the boxes for good, all-round entertainment in a field which isn’t exactly full of other big beasts.
In case it’s important, I’ve watched 6 of the 8 episodes of series 3 and the final 2 will probably work their way into the weekend schedule as some kind of diversionary treat.
Just as I’ve previously tweeted in responses to comments and thoughts by the Farming Press and some of the Farmers I follow, my view as someone who has maintained links with Farming whilst I’ve worked for charities, run my own businesses and was an elected local councillor for 12 years, is that the series has done a massive amount in breaching the gap between farmers and the food chain, and the public or consumers. Something that’s very important bearing in mind that it’s where the strongest and most meaningful relationship in the UKs food chain really should be.
Whether we consider Clarkson’s ‘Let’s test everything I can think of’ approach to farming 1000 acres in the Cotswolds as contrived or planned, or quite literally as anyone new to farming with enough money to experiment in every direction might behave, the fact remains that there is real public benefit to this show and what it shares.
The money spent and the honesty, transparency or insight being provided hasn’t failed to demonstrate just how complex and bureaucratic UK Farming has become, and how difficult being a Farmer in the UK really now is.
What is more and perhaps most importantly, Clarkson’s Farm openly demonstrates that UK Agriculture is at massive risk.
British Farming simply doesn’t generate the income for landowners and agricultural workers that an industry providing one of the most essential and non-negotiable parts of our daily lives really should.
Meanwhile, the shops that sell everything ‘on their behalf’ are achieving billions in profits as a return.
Whilst I’m not sure the leaps in thinking made by Amazon Prime subscribers will have yet reached a point where everyone recognises that there’s probably an equivalent to Diddly Squat in the form of a farm gate farm shop that’s much closer to home, Clarkson’s Farm is shining a light on real-World or rather real-UK Food Security issues that no other rural-life programme has or could.
If there’s anything annoying about the programme at all, it’s the attitude and approach on the part of so many involved, who have probably stood in the way of this very popular series doing a whole lot more for us all.
The reality that not only Jeremy Clarkson, but all UK farmers have to face is that whatever the level of government, whether it’s a local council in Oxfordshire, DEFRA or any department in Whitehall, the whole of the public sector system works in its own particular way.
There is a way of working with everyone who sits within the processes where decisions are made and few Civil Servants and Government Officers will value anyone telling them how anything they have control over or responsibility for, should work. No matter who those telling them are or who they might be.
Wrong as it may be, its just the way that things work.
The problem is made significantly worse because so much of the legislation and directives set at the centre or in London are left ‘open to translation’ at local level. And interpretation can go either way, depending upon many things under consideration which often fall way outside how any logical explanation or understanding would suggest everything works.
Like it or not, Clarkson was pretty much on a date with destiny from the start. It was inevitable that there would be a clash of cultures when it came to working with any formal body.
As a councillor, I experienced and at least tried to console the distress that the feeling of unfairness and injustice of the government system visits on people who are morally correct in their position, but nonetheless feel very let down by the way the technical legality of the system works.
I really do wish that Clarkson might have taken a different approach. He almost certainly could have demonstrated that for both Diddly Squat and an entire Industry that’s now in deep trouble, real success and long-term benefits are achievable, just by stepping back, counting to ten and approaching ‘the game’ in a very different way.
It’s nearly the middle of April and 2024 has been a washout. You don’t need to be a farmer to know there’s little that feels normal about the wet weather and I know I’m not alone in feeling like it’s been raining nonstop since Christmas.
Is there a conspiracy at work? Is the weather being manipulated? Is this all part of some concocted grand plan?
Well, in terms of the things we should really be worried about, getting lost in the debate over whether Mother Nature or some malevolent force is behind the growing threat of a failed harvest this summer is the only real rabbit hole there is to fall down.
Hopeful as I am for our struggling farmers, that the weather will turn around and put everything back on track, the sober way to start thinking about issues that should really be concerning anyone looking at the wider U.K. food security and production situation is to question how decision makers will frame what may soon be recognised as the 2024 harvest crisis and how they will then respond.
Of all the food security issues we are facing today, which include but are not limited to deglobalisation, climate change, retail profiteering, political ineptitude and anything that falls under the manufactured problems that need a logic defying solution too, weather should never have been the one problem that has the potential to end up making our fragile food security situation even worse.
The reality that we and our farmers face, is that a failed harvest across in 2024 will play straight into the hands of those who believe and advocate that the U.K. doesn’t need to grow its own food.
There is an unsettling belief at work within the establishment that our food supply can always be guaranteed to come from somewhere abroad, and that new technologies and factory foods – like ground up insects, lab growing and warehouse production – will solve all problems. This mindset results in the fallacious idea that there is little reason to continue pandering to farmers who can only be productive when they are a) told what to grow, and then b) are paid for doing so.
Farmers are being set up to fail
For an essential industry already in crisis and under attack from an establishment that views food security and all of the highly beneficial add ons that U.K. produced food can give British people as trivia they can do without, the ongoing storm is one that couldn’t have landed at a less helpful time.
The real risk to U.K. farmers is that government will make token gestures, but in truth do very little to help the industry in the immediate aftermath.
This is likely to lead to many more business exits for what should really be thriving farming businesses, and a situation arising quickly where the U.K. becomes perilously close to losing the ability to feed itself, even at emergency or wartime levels, using recognisable farming methods that are beneficial for everyone involved in the food chain.
Whilst there is growing unrest among farmers, a belief that the powers that be will eventually step in and save the day still regrettably persists.
It is regrettably fair to say that the misconception that government understands the risks to an already critically vulnerable food supply is easily dismissed when we consider that the equivalent of around only 54% of the food we eat is currently grown in the U.K.
Decision makers either don’t see the risk or they don’t want to see the risk. And whichever it is, the result for U.K. farmers, U.K. food production and U.K. food security is pretty much the same.
U.K. farming, the infrastructure that supports it and the legislation that facilitates it might not be anywhere near able to feed the uk population without help today.
But that doesn’t mean that it cannot. It certainly doesn’t mean that the industry shouldn’t redirect, reform and repurpose where needed, so that U.K. food sovereignty is no longer viewed as being pie in the sky.
The wide range of green, environmental, climate, food quality, nutrition, transparency and other farm and food related issues, that have different activists fighting each other for air would all be resolved by getting behind U.K. farmers and food production to refocus. U.K. agriculture will only be saved by moving away from the Globalist/EU production models to one that puts locality and traditional methods at the centre – albeit in a 21st century form.
The power for change sits within the hands of our farmers themselves and the trades that align around U.K. agriculture.
Although many still don’t see it this way, it would be wise for anyone and everyone with an interest in being able to grow or eat a regular, sustainable supply of good, healthy and nutritious food to watch carefully what the establishment does and how it responds if the realities of a 2024 harvest crisis begin to unfold.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. So, when it comes to giving away money, anyone who thinks that a Universal Basic Income is going to help anyone and in particular our farmers, either has an agenda they aren’t sharing, or they don’t have any real understanding of the true cost of making UBI work.
UBI is certainly well intended. A lot of research and thinking has gone into the trials and projects where a localised equivalent of a guaranteed basic income has been tried.
The problem is UBI is a solution that uses the creation or printing of money to enable it to work.
Money creation or printing is an essential part of the FIAT monetary system that we have today. The same system that is the root cause of all the money related and inflationary problems that we and our farmers are facing.
It is ironic that giving cash handouts to farmers would only build upon the culture of dependency that now exists, where the conditioned over reliance on subsidies and guaranteed contracts have made farmers vulnerable to the greed underpinning big money and profiteering retailers. Corporate interests that are not only taking all the profit that would be available from the food chain if it were accurately priced, but they are also using their market positions to inflate prices even further so that they can continue to take even more, without giving a damn about the impact and consequences for us all.
Minded that every one of us needs food every day in pretty much the same way that we need water and the air that we breathe, it defies sense or logic that British Farmers should be in a situation where they cannot have a secure, financially sound and fair-income-paying business, in return for providing a service which really should be considered a public good.
That farmers cannot survive and there are now organisations suggesting that UBI is the answer makes very clear that the working model or operational platform for British Agriculture is broken.
This reality is all the more alarming given the fact that in a time of growing world crisis, we only grow the equivalent of around 52% of our own food in the U.K.
Regrettably, the farming problem isn’t one that good politicians would be able to fix in isolation. Because the issues farmers are facing are interconnected with many other areas of public policy that are breaking down today. All for no bigger reason than we have now had decades of politicians and the political parties they represent that have become increasingly poor.
If good politicians were representing us all as they should be today, the focus on farming would be to use legislation to immediately end the profiteering, price manipulation and speculation taking place that keeps taking money from the food chain without adding any form of value.
The next step would likely be to provide financial support and other legislation to help farmers transform food production and the pathway to retail to a system which is a contemporary version of what we had historically, where food was produced and consumed locally and in much more original, unprocessed and therefore healthier forms.
However, we don’t have good politicians and when the eagerly anticipated General Election comes, we will not have the option of good politicians to choose from even then.
This leaves farmers with a very difficult choice. To remain at the mercy of poor politicians who say lots but do very little. Or step back from conformity with the current broken system, take the risk of funding change themselves and then taking the lead and working closely with consumers who are the other key stakeholders in the food chain, so that food security, healthy nutritious food, and viable food producing businesses supplying every one of our local communities are brought back.
Some of us are already unable to eat healthy meals, because heavily processes foods are all that we can access.
Others miss meals so they can feed other members of their families, whilst increasing numbers don’t eat because food is simply a luxury that they cannot afford.
It’s easy to dismiss the realities of other’s life experience when we’ve never had to go without a good healthy meal at any time in our life. But that doesn’t mean that any of us are safe or protected from the questions surrounding Food Security in the UK today. Questions that left unanswered may mean that we all have massive problems in store – potentially any day.
Politicians are treating UK Farming and Food Production as a political inconvenience; as if they will always be able to source the food that the UK needs from Europe or from other Countries abroad – Because politicians assume that imports will always be safe.
Meanwhile, the elites look upon the stories of food being grown in warehouses, created from ground up insects, from fungi or from processes that are even worse, and are very happy with the idea that this is how the masses will soon be fed. Because the true realities that underpin manufactured, processed and synthesized foods are not a problem that they believe could ever affect them.
Food is a basic essential of life.
Food is therefore a public good.
Yet generations of politicians have allowed commercial interests to take over almost every part of food production and supply across the UK.
Small numbers of very wealthy people and the companies they own make more and more money from addicting as many of us as possible to foods that taste nice and look good. And many genuinely believe that they are good for us, for no better reason than these highly attractive and fashionable foods appear to be a luxury that most people can afford.
The politicians and the narratives that the money behind this avoidable direction of UK Food Supply buys, deliberately tells us that Climate Change, the needs of Net Zero and with too many people to feed, the food of the future does not lie with farming or food production of any traditional kind.
But this is a constructed story that simply isn’t true and benefits only those who want continually growing profits and the control over everything that maintain it.
The narrative is all about destroying the ability that the UK currently has to feed our own population and creating a situation where the same people who are responsible for so many of our problems – just so they can make money, will be able to make even more. Because in time, their actions will make democratic forms of government redundant and will be able to assume absolute control.
This is no conspiracy. This is what the systematic destruction of UK Farming and the ability of UK Farmers and Food Producers to run viable businesses has been and is all about.
It is time to wake up to the reality that the future the establishment proposes for us all, because they know better, isn’t the healthy future that any of us need. Nor is it one that is necessary or inevitable for us to have.
However, without change, we will soon no longer have any choice.
The world has many problems. But it is the abuse and manipulation of money and how that affects every part of our lives that is the real problem underpinning them all.
Those who care only about money, don’t care about people.
That means they are not worried about what any one else eats. Especially if there are public health systems in place that will continue to address the problems they cause and that their friends with pharmaceutical companies can also continue to make profits from, by providing many different expensive treatments for.
Funny that they never create any cures.
Politicians will not address the issues that the World faces. Because it is not in the interests of their ‘careers’ and whatever they believe they have to gain in the future, by not going against these ‘interests’ and by otherwise not making decisions that are in the best interests of the people who elected them instead.
This is why when asked, politicians appear to understand the problem and talk about solutions. But nothing ever happens that addresses the real issues that they have facilitated and therefore caused.
Food is our Freedom. As long as the Food we eat remains under our control
What we eat is the foundation of everything that we do. It is the foundation of our future. It is the foundation of our lives.
If we surrender what is left of our ability to choose what we eat and where our food comes from, we will no longer be able to make choices about our health or the health of the people we care about.
The only way that we can maintain the little control we have over food and then increase it to where that control should be, is to ensure that the UK Produces all of its own food.
We must ensure that the food the UK Produces always comes from natural processes, growing and animal husbandry that takes place on local UK Farms.
It is no understatement to say that the food we eat, that makes other people very wealthy, is actively destroying our health. In growing numbers of cases, it is slowly killing us too.
We need to put Food Production and Supply back into the hands of people and business that we know and can trust.
Whilst we continue to be without politicians who will stand up for us and legislate for us all as they should, the best way that we can help to instigate the changes that we all so desperately need, is to buy as much basic or essential food that isn’t processed, from local farms or from small shops and businesses that source everything they sell from local farmers and suppliers.
Basic or essential food is food or food products that we buy in a form that is recognisable for being in its original form, or has undergone basic processing such as milling, pasteurisation, breadmaking or cheesemaking etc., that doesn’t involve the addition of manufactured ingredients or additives and could or traditionally would have been processed or prepared by hand.
The more we use small businesses, independent retailers who are committed to local food production, and farm shops and box schemes that are from identifiable sources too, the more accessible and affordable the food we should all be able to eat every day will become.
It’s a lot of responsibility for every one of us. But the people we elected to take that responsibility on our behalf are effectively refusing to do so.
It’s the actions of our politicians that we all need to watch, rather than just accepting their words.
Instead of leading us, it is the Politicians who need to be led.
The best way to lead our politicians is to demonstrate how change works without them. So that joining the growing momentum the People create will feel right to them, rather than making a choice which they currently believe would make them look like they are wrong.
