New coronavirus in/from China

[stumuz1]

BTW.

My grandfather received the Atlantic star.

[Vortex2]

Yes, we were totally reliant on the French for Moet.

Carrots we did not import.

From anywhere.

Well, Maggie closed the carrot mines so today we are in a worse position.

[Mean Mr Mustard II]

I'm told that Chatteris / Wisbech, Cambs is Carrot Central. Picked and processed by them foreigners.

[Vortex2]

150k global deaths now reached

[Little John]

................I agree with all of that. However, you have forgotten that most people are morons who can barely tie their shoelaces let alone understand economics.

You have also forgotten that many economists are morons who don't understand the environment/nature. And the environment/nature will win out in the end even if it takes another couple of hundred years. But then economists are only worried about the here and now.

Being able to produce what we need to feed ourselves is not a matter of economics, when push comes to shove. It is a matter of physics and biology. Being able to buy what we need to feed ourselves, however, is very much a matter of economics.

[Little John]

I really don't know how many times this needs to be said before it sinks in.

The UK has to import getting on for sixty percent of its food. Of the less than 50% that it produces, this is only achieved on the back of imported fertilizers and fuel.

The UK is a capitalist economy that has to purchase those imports with capitalist money off other capitalist exporters. If this country's economy completely collapses and has no money or, just as bad, its money becomes worthless, we will have starvation in this country.

Not everyone ... if you have a viable business or desirable skills you will be fine.

The Plague changed the way that society worked when it swept through Europe and the Britain. A shortage of food due to a shortage of labour increased the value of that labour and the cost of the food produced. A shortage of food in this country would turn the payment for work in this country on its head as well as bumping the cost of food up to its proper value to us all. The cost, at the moment, doesn't relate to the value of food to us so we don't value the food nor the people who produce it.

If this current plague changes societies values it will be worth the sacrifice of those who died because we badly need to change how society works. There has been a drastic change already with governments putting lives over the economy, perhaps less so in the US, but we need to carry this change forward into a different attitude to the environment.

From that point of view the longer this virus hangs around the better because if people don't die because of the virus they will die when the environmental changes caused by global warming really hit the world in a few years/ decades time. We have been given a chance to change and we must grasp it with both hands.

Ah, I see. The goalposts are now being moved from:

"we need the lock-down to continue to save people"

to

"if people's lives are impoverished or, even, shortened as a result of the economic crash that is a consequence of this lock-down,that is a price worth paying".

[adam2]

We couldn't even feed ourselves in WW2.

We could and we did.

A beautiful theory is always spoilt by an ugly fact

At the beginning of the war we imported very roughly half* of our food, Considerable effort was put into increasing domestic food production, and by the end of the war imports amounted to only about 20%* of consumption.

*No great accuracy can be claimed in either figure since some imports were measured in tons, others in bushels, and yet others by cost in money.
Some imports were not properly accounted for, like live cattle driven across the border from the Irish republic for slaughter in Northern Ireland.

Our American allies also supplied a lot of imports some of which were incidental to importing other war material and therefore not counted.

I have somewhere an instruction leaflet issued to USA armed forces stores, on "proper packaging of war material for export"
There is much emphasis on the use of loose grain as a packing material for fragile glass items, in preference to say sawdust or straw.
"grain is a most valuable material of war. By use of grain to pack fragile glass items, it serves two purposes as both transit protection for breakables, and afterwards as food"

Bulky but lightweight machinery etc. "should be placed in stout wooden crates, and cases of tinned meat or sacks of grain be added so as to fully utilise the weight capacity of transport, rather than just the cubic capacity"

"A ship that can carry say 100 vehicles (which are lightweight in relation to the space taken up) can often carry 100 tons or more of canned food"

Most "incidental" imports were not counted.

[Little John]

We had 35 million or so in this country in the Second World War and our farmland was in better, inherent organic condition. And we still had to import food to meet the requirements of food rations.

We now have 66+ million, employ highly industrialized farming methods that mean the only way we maintain the less than 50% of food we produce here is via those farming methods. Methods that require massive inputs of hydrocarbon energy and derivative products such as nitrogenous fertilizers.

If we were New Zealand, for example, I would gladly say F--k the capitalist economy to hell. But, we are not.

If our import supply chains are cut in the context of a globalist capitalist world economy, because we can't pay for them, we starve.

This is below economics.

It is about physics and biology.

[Vortex2]

We had 35 million or so in this country in the Second World War

46M for the UK.

[vtsnowedin]

We had 35 million or so in this country in the Second World War and our farmland was in better, inherent organic condition. And we still had to import food to meet the requirements of food rations.

We now have 66+ million, employ highly industrialized farming methods that mean the only way we maintain the less than 50% of food we produce here is via those farming methods. Methods that require massive inputs of hydrocarbon energy and derivative products such as nitrogenous fertilizers.

If we were New Zealand, for example, I would gladly say F--k the capitalist economy to hell. But, we are not.

If our import supply chains are cut in the context of a globalist capitalist world economy, because we can't pay for them, we starve.

This is below economics.

It is about physics and biology.

Not to steal your thunder as I think you are on the right side of this argument. But during WW2 the land was still being farmed with a combination of draft horses and small tractors. You can now used the land needed to raise the feed for the horses to raise crops and the equipment today is much more efficient than of that time and the science of agriculture has advanced a lot. Just a soil test which shows they level of nutrients in the soil and it's PH can increase yields and avoid waste of fertilizers and money. You still need the cash to pay your farmers or those in Canada and Australia so you still need the economy to function reguardless of where you grow your food.

[Catweazle]

VT's right, the modern farm machinery is in a different league to the pre-war kit and there is a lot of it about.

Yes, we do import a high percentage of our food but we waste loads of it and I'm sure we can survive without avocados and bananas.

[vtsnowedin]

VT's right, the modern farm machinery is in a different league to the pre-war kit and there is a lot of it about.

Yes, we do import a high percentage of our food but we waste loads of it and I'm sure we can survive without avocados and bananas.

Do you have a department of Agriculture or your equivalent of one? If so they probably have yield per acre and total production figures going back to WW1 or earlier. That might be a guide to what can be done if needed. Biggest question will be what to do with all the pleasure horses now on the land.

[Catweazle]

VT's right, the modern farm machinery is in a different league to the pre-war kit and there is a lot of it about.

Yes, we do import a high percentage of our food but we waste loads of it and I'm sure we can survive without avocados and bananas.

Do you have a department of Agriculture or your equivalent of one? If so they probably have yield per acre and total production figures going back to WW1 or earlier. That might be a guide to what can be done if needed. Biggest question will be what to do with all the pleasure horses now on the land.

Horses are not the biggest problem, sheep and cattle use far more land. We raise livestock because the profit ( with subsidies ) is better than trying to compete with veg imports from abroad, but that's an economic issue that might soon change.

[vtsnowedin]

VT's right, the modern farm machinery is in a different league to the pre-war kit and there is a lot of it about.

Yes, we do import a high percentage of our food but we waste loads of it and I'm sure we can survive without avocados and bananas.

Do you have a department of Agriculture or your equivalent of one? If so they probably have yield per acre and total production figures going back to WW1 or earlier. That might be a guide to what can be done if needed. Biggest question will be what to do with all the pleasure horses now on the land.

Horses are not the biggest problem, sheep and cattle use far more land. We raise livestock because the profit ( with subsidies ) is better than trying to compete with veg imports from abroad, but that's an economic issue that might soon change.

Some land (steep slopes rough rocky etc.) is most productive grazing sheep and cattle and you can eat the beef and mutton and drink the milk or make cheese or yogurt. Buffy's show horse that has won a handful of ribbons not so much. You could ship them to France but I would not want to explain that to Buffy.

[Little John]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... c-hit.html