This is just the beginning.
The pursuit of Net Zero made energy prices shoot up by 400% in 2022. At the time many farmers warned that the price rise would drive them out of business and would lead to massive shortages in food supply. Nobody was listening.
Now, their predictions are coming true, with the main four UK supermarkets reporting supplies are low, or have dried up completely. Fresh produce is merely the first domino to fall. All types of food production are effected, with grain, dairy and poultry producers also reporting energy costs are driving them out of business.
On top of the cost of energy, farmers are being bombarded by Net Zero rules and regulations that strangle production, lower yields and make the rest unprofitable. Thousands of UK farmers are being driven out of business by the policy, whilst eco-activists cheer every time a farmer loses his livelihood.
Jamie Blackett, a farmer in Dumfriesshire, has written an article for the Telegraph explaining exactly what is happening to farming and what's really behind the shortage of vegetables, writing:
If public expectations are that they should be able to eat tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in February, something previous generations could barely imagine, it is perhaps understandable that logistics along an attenuated supply chain will play a major part. Yet the fact that this has happened during a relatively normal period, without a pandemic or general strike, highlights once again that the model on which successive governments have based their food and farming strategies is now deeply flawed.
At the heart of the problem is a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) still in the grip of the Green Blob and wholly uninterested in the messy business of producing food. The paradigm has shifted but the civil servants haven’t. Defra’s preoccupation remains ‘sustainability’ and environmental management – seemingly denying that large quantities of food can be produced while maintaining high environmental standards.
In fact, in many respects, a regeneratively farmed environment can be better for biodiversity than ‘rewilded’ land. Nevertheless, thanks to Net Zero targets, acres of productive land continue to be given over to solar farms, while the nation’s roofs remain relatively unpanelled. Trees are favoured in place of crops and animals. The Government’s flagship Environmental Land Management scheme has a bias towards cutting production. All of which won’t be much use if our people go hungry.
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