36: How The Americans Ruined Our Farming

An episode which strays seamlessly from Charismatic Megafauna into Food Security, The Game Fair and the real reason that farming in the UK changed.

If you are going to be at The Game Fair and see us wandering around then please say hi! It'll help Producer Amy to herd us onto the next thing if we all stop at once!

CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.

Send us photos of your interesting trinkets that your other half wants to burn or bin as submissions to the calendar or for fun at: [e-mail] 

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The Hosts

Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website


Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's no Calum this week because he's involved in this
remarkable project to reintroduce the Essex snow goose to Hyde Park.
That's what he's involved in this week. That's that's not do.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
He ever heard Callum's honk? It's quite remarkable. He's what
he sits right on the foreshore with you already, and
he and he like sort of we're quacking and ringing
ringing and just out of nowhere. You know, he sat

(00:35):
there with a load of hardy wildfowlers are very serious
and there he is right in his actor X little
Jim slip where he wears and he goes hah hack
like that, and it's just quite funny watching old Norfolk
boys stare at him and go, who is this bloke?
Who's this blow you bought with you Richard? And this
is Calum. He honks.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Like the effeminate goose.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah it is slightly camp goose. There's a definite level
of campness to his honk. I have to say, to
look at him, you wouldn't think it, but you know
that's what he is. You know, out on the marsh
where no one can hear you scream, he's as camp
as Christmas.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Geese always do look a bit camp anyway, but like
anyone with that voice, generally, they have got this heart
of iron within them that will break your arm.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, yeah, Do you know Mabel, my oldest cocker spaniel.
She I remember her. Once I shot a left and
right of Egyptian geese, and I killed one stone dead,
and the other one was a runner. And this thing
set off at a fair old rate of knot, and
it sort of plopped over this this gutter and then
carried on going. And she heard after it like a

(01:46):
sort of waterloo cup favorite and she got this thing.
And the Egyptian geese are pretty savage creatures, and not unsurprisingly,
you've also been shot and wounded, so they're feeling a
little bit irate anyway, And this thing started going at her,
and I watched her. She stood back on her haunches.
She eyeballed it, and the goose ie bolled her, and

(02:07):
she leapt up like a stoat, grabbed it by the throat,
killed it, immediately throttled, and then sort of shook herself
and then brought it back to me. I thought, what
a thing, you know, because I think I'd have actually
flinched if an Egyptian goose was attacking me, but not Mabel,
she just went right abo it. She's a remarkable little dog. Really,
that's a shame her daughter is not half as good

(02:29):
as a I think had.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I watched an Irish draft horse face off against a goose,
and the goose didn't come on as well stamp on them,
just went honking up with this horse and no stamp.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
There was a horse called Boomer in the Household Cavalry
and my troop through Troup lifeguards and he, amongst other things,
his one one of his claims to fame was that
in Jilly Cooper's book Riders, Rupert Campbell Black, the sort
of anti hero in there, supposed to have got this
horse out of the regimen who jumped jumped a milk float. Well,

(03:06):
actually that was based on Boomer, because he actually did
jump a milk float some kindly milkman in a Chelsea
side street as they're exercising the horses. Boomer was getting
led and he trotted off and he just stood off
his hocks and this because he was sort of free range.
You're just the guy leading him and let him go,
and the milkman put the milk float across the across

(03:30):
the road to try and think he'd stop this horse,
and old Boomer just stood off his hocks and popped
this milk float like it was a little cavaletti pole.
But he was a funny old horse because he used
to stamp on the pigeons, because the pigeons go arounderneath
your horse's feet when you're out in Queen's lifeguard picking
the sort of oats and whatever out of the horse shit.
And the old horse used to look down and then

(03:51):
he'd sort of wait, and he wouldn't change his facial expressions.
He is, wouldn't go back, but it's only me a massive,
great big foot out and go splat and kill pig.
And I think he was such a proper squaddy of
a horse, you know, is that he would do outlandish
feats of endurance and physical excidence and just kill things randomly.
He was a Boomer was a proper squaddie of a horse.

(04:14):
What a wonderful creature he was.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
And if you haven't spent time with horses, particularly like
proper horses like Shetlands and Welsh, things don't count. You
don't realize that they do well. A lot of them
do have vertical takeoff capability if they so choose. They
just choose not to use it most of the time,
but they will if they suddenly decide, right, I'm going
to be over there now, bank Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It's like a working men's club in Newmarket called the
New Asleygue Club. I think it's now called something really wet,
like the Racing Center or something like that. But he used
to be called the New Aslee Club and it was
a sort of stable lads working men's club in Newmarket
and it had this massive blown up photograph on the
wall of this horse that was trained in Newmarket and

(04:59):
it was running in the pre Barden. Barden were the
big Group one race in Germany, and this thing was
a notorious man hater and it's a picture of the
lad leading it up and this horse just turning round
and it turned around on himself and snaked this bloke
and bit him across the head and it fitted this

(05:19):
lad's whole head in you know. They I think it's
Desmond Morris. He said that the horse has got the
intellect of a human seven year old child, and a
seven year old children are usually pretty horrible, you know.
They've worked out and make your day a pre torrid
one if they want to. And they also weigh half

(05:41):
a ton, so therefore, if they want to go and
really throw their teddies out the pram, they are an
incredible foe if they want to be. Yet it's remarkable
how on the whole they're pretty generous and giving of
their goodwill to us. I mean, you know forty someone
that maciated irishman whacking them around a race course in

(06:01):
Liverpool for the Grand National has to be evidence in point.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Horses can be lovely and sweet and they can just
be incredibly violent, but they can switch from one to
the other. You can be in a fight in a
stable with a horse and then twenty seconds later be
staring at each other in sort of this mutual truce
that you've that you both agreed on without ever a
word being spoken. And it's this it's a unique thing.

(06:27):
You don't get that with dogs, you don't get that
with other animals. You don't get that with cows. No,
and cows either want to kill you or they don't care.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yes, there is a level of ambivalence about minute.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, I grew up with horses, which is all my
mother's fault. Who have discovered does listen to the podcast.
So hello, mum, hello missus p Yeah. I always had horses,
and so I grew up so I used to ride,
but then I got too big. So because I was
when I was about seventeen, I was about eighteen stone
and six foot two. You need a Clyde Stale the
rugby because the calling then. Yeah. But grew up around

(06:58):
horses and particularly being on the ground on the Dane
gas bit. So I had horses, and then we had
dairy cows and doing stuff with them as well. So
I spent a lot of time looking up a huge
beasts thinking I'm gonna have to punch you in the
head to get out of this, which is not the
RSPCA friendly.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Version of the I'm saying that it is that there
are two fatalities every year in farming caused by cattle
or two and a half. I think it's two point.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
It's not as much as people think. More people fall
into slurry lagoons and things than get track killed by cattle.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah chafts yeah, even so, I mean you think about
it is that the cow is not that far removed
from a water buffalo, really is it? And they reckon
that's the most dangerous animal in Africa by far and away.
You know, lions and snakes and elephants, they're nothing compared

(07:54):
with the Cape Water buffalo, which you know is just
basically this psychopathic And and I did actually once go
to Ronda in Spain two because I wanted to go
and sort of see where death in the Afternoon was
was set. And I didn't watch a bullfight. I couldn't
bring myself to do it. I just thought, now, I

(08:17):
think that is so unevenly.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Nervous with them.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, it's anyway, I don't I don't get it. But
I was still fascinated by it. And I thought the
pageantry of what it was. And but I saw out
on the farms outside when we're driving back, some of
these polls, and I thought they're athletic, hefty creatures. You know,
they're not very big really, but by god, I wouldn't

(08:42):
want to go and wave a flag around in front
of them.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Now, who was they want? Who used to draw bulls
like stubs drew horses? There was some one. There's there's
a stub's equivalent for bulls, isn't there in livestock. Someone's
screaming at their podcast player. Now, yes, but probably my
mother as well. Have you ever done anything with bison

(09:08):
or buffalo or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
The closest I came to them was I went dear store.
Actually it's from my DSc one and there's a place
out just the other side of Newmarket in Suffolk where
I did it. And the guy said to me, goes,
just be carefully so behind that fence. He said, there's
water buffalo in there because one of the wildlife trusts

(09:33):
were trying to do some wetland recreation type thing and
then put water buffalo in there to go and to
go and poach the place up, I think, basically. And
I sat up in a high seat with my assessor
and he and he said I'd be water buffalo come

(09:53):
and see us in a bit. And the hay press,
though they then did appear, and this was sort of
peered through this great, big wire mesh. But that was
the closest I've ever come to them. I was lucky.
I had a two four to three in my hand,
and I had a and I was up the high seats.
So now what wasn't too scary? An experienced Why have
you have you met them?

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yes? So I used to work for well, I didn't
work for them, I was a contractor, but I was
doing random things for this estate with this and they
had bison. I still have bison on the land. So
I ended up having to do take journalists and people
like that around the estate to show them all the
wildlife stuff and some of the nature things. So it
was this huge, like twelve thousand acre estate. So you'd

(10:34):
have mountains on one side and go down to a
river valley and there's woodlands over there. And they had bison.
And because they're classes zoological specimens rather than livestock, they
had to be in. There was only certain designated fields
they could be in. So I don't know how it
works at NEP, but this place they had basically four
paddocks or five paddocks with extra high fencing, and that

(10:56):
was where the bison were. And they're just in a field,
you know, they're not in some like woodland or willow
aspen terrain. They're in just like grass in whales. But
we drive in there and I'd be often driving the
Bosses rain drover, so big rain drover, the is the
signature whatever whatever the top of the end rain drover

(11:18):
is yes, so be driving that in there, having to
jump out open the gate, drive it through and be
someone from the Telegraph or the Times in the back,
and then I drive them up towards the bison and
then just hoping that they didn't decide right now we're
going to stampede and now, because it's pretty safe in
the car, but you'd probably write the car off because

(11:38):
the heads on these things like the size of a
mini fridge. And when you see the bulls as well
they are, they have a different look to them. The
cows fair enough, you know, they just look like big cows,
but the bull bison have a you know when something
looks at you and you know your you know your

(11:59):
communication with it in a different way, you know sometimes.
And I wouldn't want to be stuck out there at
night with them or more than fifty paces away from
the car, because I'm thinking I can make it to
the car, up onto the bonnet and stand on the
roof before you get to me. It was kind of
my risk assessment for doing anything with them. The keeper

(12:21):
who he was attached to another part of the estate,
but he was also the licensed person to control them
because they couldn't be killed the bison went for meat,
but they couldn't be taken to an avatar, so they
had to be killed in the field. He had a
cariber something basically an elephant gun that was just there
for bison, and he had that and he was on

(12:43):
the list for if the bison got out, you ring
this person before you ring anyone from the estate, because
he needs to get rolling towards where the bison kept
because if the ball, yeah, if the breakout. It's a
bit of a Jurassic Park problem.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Ye know. It's one of the things I find. There's
a number of things I find a little bit weird
about this charismatic megafauna. Isn't that well the remoldests call it,
but I mean they do like to go I mean
they go heavy on the charisma and get heavy on
the size. I mean, I know it wasn't it. Gurring

(13:22):
used to sort of have all sorts of bizarre massive
beasts wandering around his estate, Karen Hall, where he had those.
He had the same sort of mindset, is that he
liked things that were big and power or he kept
lyon cubs as pets and all that stuff. But it's
one of the things that I know that there is

(13:43):
certainly I've heard from a neighboring farmer to nep Is
that they have some doubts over the age of some
of the cattle there again, because you know that they're
struggling through brash and scrub and ear tags go missing.
How are you going to then get hold of these

(14:05):
I think they surely must have to go and shoot
them with a rifle, bit like you were saying with
these buffalos, and don't know how you'd get them because
they're more or less living wild. And so there are
doubts that have been expressed to me which I can't
confirm or in any shape or form, but of the
age of these things. And I do sometimes wonder, you know,

(14:25):
are you going to suddenly turn into proper wild cattle,
because I think those park cattle in the wild park cattle,
you don't go wandering through that place. So I mean
that might be the answer to the right to Rome.
Solution is that if we do get right to Rome,
every farmer just goes into puts beef cattle into their rotation.
Wild ones going everywhere, and there's shrub soul and this

(14:48):
little gang of people morris dancing across your fields. And
the next thing you know, they've got a herd of
bison charging towards them. I just think they'll probably go
to the pub and stuf Morris dancing.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Well, this understanding of what is wild and what the
natural state is of wild is all skewed anyway, because
if you look at places like Yellowstone and the National Park, there,
the the or the ungulates just stay away from the wolves.
So they just go and sit next to the visitors center,
and so they stay away from people, so they're not
behaving in a wild way there. The wolves haven't replicated

(15:23):
a wild environment because people are still there. And there's
this there's this theory that so when Lewis and Clark
went over and were pushed over into the Western state
to do this big exploration of what the United States
was and to find out what, you know, what lands
that those early settlers and the early Americans could expand

(15:44):
over to in the west to find out what was there.
They found these huge numbers of bison, and then those
bison were almost wiped out by market hunting in the
Western States. You know, you're all the stuff that's in
dances with wolves and things like that. There's a theory
that the huge number of bison that Lewis and Clark
witnessed was actually a population boom because of the vast

(16:08):
reduction of Native peoples through disease. So as Europeans came over,
they brought all these new diseases with them and huge,
huge reductions from ninety percent reduction in the population of
Native peoples through disease. They removed a predator, the hunting
predator of man from that landscape for a few decades,

(16:29):
and that is why there were so many bison on
the plane. So the population levels and our assumptions about
these massive ecosystems over decades is probably wrong because it's
still based on imperfect observations and we can never really know,
which is why I'm always get so annoyed with people
have this such confidence, with people having such confidence that

(16:51):
if we do this, this thing will happen. Well, so
you don't know that, yes, it happened here, yes, but
you don't know it happened.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
There either, exactly exactly until you invent tardis, you ain't
gonna know. It's all guesswork, I mean, And it's a
lot of could this, could this should happen? Well, I'm
afraid could and should are not strategies you want to
work under, you know that sort of the sort of
daft things of that's how you end up with Rachel

(17:18):
Reeves's bloody chance that the exchequer could and.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Should And you need to have something going going back
the other way as well. If you do screw it up,
you need something like a tardis that goes backward, sort
of a retardest sort of.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Anyway, are you feeling are you feeling it slightly like
Christmas Eve? Well, nearly Christmas Eve? Because very soon, in
fact fact, in only two days time. Well, iren't going
to be heading off to that. They're game fare and
we'll have to go and put up with one another
three whole days.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Richard Friday is basically work for you and I isn't it,
because you've got many meat and work to do and
oh well, we'll just catch up at the game fair.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
It's producer Amy has been so good, hasn't she been? Good?
Producer Amy? She has given us a list almost daily
updated on who we're speaking to and when, Which swanky
drinks soere were being invited to, which ones have been told?
On no account? Are you allowed to attend, not pointing

(18:22):
any fingers the field.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Uh well, I'm glad we didn't name them.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Oh yeah, no, it's I apologize. It was something I
did thirty five years ago, and it's not my fault. Ali,
I was young. I was in a pickup truck and
your friend fell out of it. The Uh yeah, so
who are going to see? But the question is, Richard,
So if say you are a game fair newbie, right

(18:51):
you've never been before, what are the three things that
you would say that one must see?

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Do I do field sports already? Or am I just
do I just like the countryside?

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Ques that's the case. I think that they pitch it
as for anybody who is interested or passionate about the countryside.
I think I'm paraphrasing out they're called passionate, so they
don't actually mentioned field sports to say the country side.
So what do you reckon they should see? If you
were passionate about the countryside.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Okay, I would go. I would go to the main
ring early on because you can still get a seat,
and there's other baiales and things around it, and you
can find a space that's not too far away from
one of the speakers, but not too close either, so
you don't lose your hearing. Yeah, and there's a lot
of good, weird stuff that happens on in that main

(19:46):
ring in the morning, so you get everything from sort
of the gun dog demonstrations and things like that all
the way through to every hound pack within striking distance
of Warwickshire turns up, so you'll see a lot of
really passionate people doing something in an outdoor space. You
can get that out of the way. Then i'd go
to go for lunch or head towards the food area.

(20:09):
And the food area of the game fair is huge.
I think you and I ended up spending about two
hours there last time, just talking in the middle of
one of the tables, drifting off to get food and
coming back again. Yes, and it's like a food court
in a shopping mall that it's spread over about four acres.
Go there, and then in the afternoon a bit of

(20:31):
a wild card, I would go to the landscape management
area and I'd go and see those huge wood chippers,
the sort of thing you can put a whole redwood
into in one go and just see the enormity of
those machines, because they're cool and weird.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yes, I would find all that interesting. See I grew
the entirely is that there's so much going on in
the main ring. It's almost easy to miss that because
there's so many stands and things to see, and there
are one or two things. One of the things I
always find hugely funny is the Pony Club games. They

(21:06):
just they make me laugh because A it reminds me
of myself being a kid. But it also is just
these galloping ponies. You almost sort of think this is
you can almost imagine these were the people who when
we charged the French at Waterloo. This is what they
would have been like. So I was games. It was
a strange thing. The other thing I always make a

(21:27):
point of going to, and this is a terrible plug
and I'm really sorry, but I always go to the
GWCT stand because A they've always got there was dressed
the game fair one so beautifully. Secondly, it's sort of
it's the I catch up with people who I'd only
see once a year and they're always there. And we're

(21:48):
also like minding because the GWCT mindset is one which
I wholly embrace, and so I think that's one I
always go to. And the third thing that I always
make a b line for is they have a dog's
exhibition and they have three tents, and they have gun
dogs terriers. I think they didn't have the hands one

(22:11):
last year, but these obscure breeds and they usually sort
of show bench varieties. But you know, you're talking about
people who have got a passion and I think that
that and knowledge. And I can remember I had a
conversation for about an hour and a half with a
guy who was the chairman of the Norfolk Terrier Club.

(22:32):
He's a vet and wonderfully sort of flamboyantly gay man
and Charlie my Son. He absolutely loved these little Norfolk terriers.
And then we're whiffling away and this guy, he very
nearly had me persuaded that I put my name down
for a Norfolk Terrier pot, because you know, he was
clearly passionate based dogs knew a huge amount by their

(22:53):
history and their heritage and the pros and the cons
And if you're thinking about getting a dog, I know
there's lots of people say, oh, get one from rescue
homes and all that, but I rather like the idea
of the fact that if you're thinking about what breed
of dogs should I get, And I perhaps want to
get one of the rarer English breeds, because nine times

(23:13):
out of ten that they're British breeds of dogs, so
you know I'm Welsh. Therefore I want a Welsh Terrier. Well,
you will meet the guys there who are the experts
on Welsh terriers, and they might turn around and say
where do you live, what's your family situation? No Welsh
terrier isn't going to go and be for you. You
want to go and see the guys in the Bedlington
Club and you're going golf. And I find that is

(23:36):
wonderful that passionate about dogs. Most of them I wouldn't
give kennel room for because I'm thinking, well, you ain't
going to retrieve me a goose eyre. But I find
them fascinating the people. The dogs are always beautifully behaved
because they used to getting prodded and poked on the
show bench, so they're quite used to lots of people
around them. And just like you say, when speaking to

(23:57):
anyone who has got an in depth knowledge of their subject,
even if it's an obscure one and one you hadn't
even thought of before. I always find fascinating anywhere. So
go and see the dogs is my third go to thing.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
That's an excellent suggestion. And there's also there's a smell
in a dog TENSI. It's not an unpleasant smell, but
there's a unique smell to a dog breed Marquee.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, that's the Handlers, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
It's its own and it's the one of the few
dog places where you won't find somebody with a wolf
on a chunky fleece, the wolf logo howling at a
moon on a chunky fleets. You get that that's almost
ubiquitous in the dog world, but it doesn't seem to
be in that world.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
No, no, no, you know I think. I mean, it's
one of the things I suppose is that, you know,
the kennel club gets a very bad rap. But one
of the ladies there was explaining to me that a
lot of the the almost the horrible freaks that you
started seeing, and the elaborate haircuts and whatnot. She said,

(25:02):
it's because she explained it to me, which I then
started to sympathize a bit more. She said, you know,
these are our passion and it's also you have to
win in the show ring, because if you can win
a championship, then that is the difference between you making
a living or not. And she was saying, but because
of the Russians and the Americans. I don't know if
Russians are now banned after Putin decided to go and

(25:25):
invade Ukraine, I don't know, but she said, because they're
the ones who had these exaggerated confirmations and silly haircuts
and whatnot. She said, they basically changed so we had
to in Britain play catch up or otherwise our dogs
would never win and then a lot of these breeds
would go and die out, which, yeah, there's some ethics

(25:46):
questions around it, but I thought, oh, is that typical?
The international dog showing has become the way it is
because of American excess and the fact that judges have
been persuaded, probably with some exchanges of cash, that the
American sort of wheezing dog or the German shepherd with

(26:08):
a loin that sort of is walking around like he's
got wet nickers on has suddenly become an acceptable thing
because of that pressure, which explained something to me and
gave me some good ammunition for an article actually, and
also to be jingoistic and say it's not our fault,
it's all the foreigners. That's why our dogs look weird.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Well, if you want to hear more about us talking
about the game fare, because there's something I want to
bring up as as a pointed debate item, we're going
to do that in the after show, which is only
available to patrons.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
So you go to.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
I don't know, I shouldn't I should ask Amy shouldn't
know and she should have told me first. I'm going
to blame Amy for the fact that I've forgotten the
thing country slide not code at UK forward Slash Support.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
That's what it is. I've just been told. So if
you go to country Slide dot code at UK forward
Slash Support, or it's in the sh show notes for
this episode, you will find all of the links there.
You can become a patron. So that means it's about
three pounds a month. The pricing varies depending on which
whether you're on Apple or other podcasts or other platforms

(27:14):
for your phone, but go on their sign up it's
not very much per month. You can access to add
free episodes, you get access to longer episodes, and you
can access now to our WhatsApp group. So the WhatsApp
group there, it's we're going to have to subdivide it
off because there so many topics being discussed at once,
everything from the lead band through to who's bringing what

(27:37):
in with the bali, to what you're doing this weekend
to the best way to make slow jin. All of
these conversations are running in parallel. It is like Twitter
used to be sort of before covid. I think that's
the best description of it. So if you want to
join in on that, you have to become a patron.
But we will take that money and we'll use it
to fund the podcast, and we won't use it to

(27:59):
buy extravagant things because we don't need those things. We're
good down to worth people, aren't we.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
No, No, absolutely, Now hold on a second. My cigar
light is just coming in. Yes, thank you, Yes, one
of the kahebas. Now go back to your room. Yes.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Speaking of discussion, you sent over something which we sort
of saw at the same time in that the other
WhatsApp group that we're not meant to mention. That was
for the Countryside Forum, which I'm not sort of aware
of their existence, but I've never noticed anything they've done
read anything. As you know, I don't engage them in

(28:36):
any way, but a mutual friend of ours shared and
then you put it into our production chat here. So
what is this thing this?

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Well, okay, so perhaps the Countryside Forum is an interesting thing.
It's an organization that was founded in nineteen seventy eight
as the Standing Conference for Countryside Sports. But anyway, what
is basically it's it's a it's a hotch potch of
various people who are I suppose, you know, proper individuals

(29:10):
who have got a stake in the game in this.
But what they've done is that they're looking at it.
I think from an angle is that the Wildlife and
Countryside Act is getting a bit long in the tooth, right,
and a lot of a lot of what applies in
that probably doesn't necessarily apply now, because you know, the

(29:30):
countryside has changed dramatically since was it was it nineteen
eighty one or something like that, Well, it might be
older than that, and it was just.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Really it was all based on the Antiquity Protection of
Antiquities Act or something like that was.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
A very weirdly, yes, very strange, and so they've come
with that, but they've also then come up with sort
of I think something where they're talking about fiscal reform,
and I think what they're trying to sort of address
is the fact that the now we've left European Union
is that the way that farming has been funded for

(30:05):
certainly two generations has gone. You know, that is no
longer the common agricultural and policy. They're saying that there
are of how we look at how we feed ourselves
and also how the whole economics of food and farming works.
And I think their number one policy or the number
one recommendation should I say, is the government must accept

(30:27):
the primary responsibility to feed the nation and declare that
food security is a top priority. Now, I think that
is actually quite radical if you think about it, because
I would say that our own food security since the
end of the Second World War has been way off

(30:51):
the top of our priority list. And obviously that's been
shown even more so just recently with you know ed
Milliban really one to go and shift the usage of
land to energy in all its various forms, and that
clearly the Labor government has decided that the way to

(31:11):
food security is actually to fund agriculture overseas and import
rather than us to produce our own, which I think
is a risky policy.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
What do you think, Yeah, well, we're already at forty
something percent of UK food is imported, which you can't match.
I occasionally teach chefs. I take chefs out on wild
food things around the countryside, and they're always slightly young
on the younger side, because you don't tend to be
an old chef because you get annoyed of it and

(31:45):
bugger off and go and do something else, or you
become famous and rich and you don't need to go
on my courses. The younger people I'm working with there,
we often talk about things like rationing in the Second
World War and why rationing and why with your ration
cards you were encouraged to go out and gather berries
from the hedgerow because that was a way of supplementing

(32:08):
the food from the wild food that was in the UK.
And one of the key things in that was rose
hip syrup because that is one of the only native
sources of vitamin C. So you were encouraged to go
out and make rose hip syrup because that was a
way of replacing vitamin C to prevent scurvy.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
And then.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
The conversation that led on from that was well, you
know why was why did it need to be imported? Well,
because you know those things don't grow here, those citrus
fruits don't grow here, all right? How come they couldn't
get here because Jerry was blowing them up in the Atlantic?
Oh right? And then the conversation led into so where
did they come from now? Or they're imported? Oh? And

(32:48):
then the inevitable part of that is how much do
we import? Half If we went to a blockade type
scenario tomorrow, whether it's trade or whatever, that's half of
our food not coming in straight away. And then when
you take into other economic factors like transport or channel

(33:11):
tunnel collapses, and none of the ferries can get over
that alone, because that means we have to just feed
the UK. We also have to feed Ireland because all
of their imports come in virals as well. We do
not have the infrastructure to feed the nation and you
can't ramp that up quickly, which is the problem with
this policy because it's very easy to remove or tweak

(33:35):
or put in a level of bureaucracy. Because you can
do that instantly, you can do that over a period
of a year, which is very quick in bureaucratic terms.
You cannot ramp up food production that takes a decade.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
You can that.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
That's the scary thing for me, that you can't to
do this. You have to think at a level that
is seems to be impossible with any government. I mean
not not just talking about labor, because the every flavor
of the conservatives the last for twenty years has been
crap as well.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Oh holy, I mean, and I tell you what if
you do suddenly want to ramp up that production, the
environmental consequences are huge. I mean, you've only got to
look at the amount of grassland lost during the Second
World War because all that dig for victory. Well, yeah,
we were digging up anything that was grass. You know,

(34:26):
the village green out the front of me that had
one gigantic, great, big allotment on it. But then you
also look after the immediate after math of the Second
World War, is that the Attlee government who under them,
you know that they were the first people for a
long long while to go and say, oh gosh, we're
going to have to look at the farming policies and

(34:48):
subsidy came in for the first time. Really, then but
to go. And they wanted to get rid of bread rationing.
That was the thing that the first thing they wanted
to try and remove rationing because they wanted fought really hard,
had this hideous war for such a long while, and
the thing that most people winged about was food. You know,
they hadn't got that. My mother said that when her

(35:09):
brother came home from Burma, he had got on the
docks when he got off wherever it was he got
off from, he'd got an orange, and he gave her
her first orange she'd ever add and she was like
nine years old, never eaten an orange in her life before,
because they couldn't import them, as you correctly say. But
the thing that you look at, the speed with which

(35:31):
they wanted to get rid of rationing, that's when all
the hedges went, prairie fields had and I think bread
flower came off the ration in someone like nineteen forty six.
Bread came off the ration in nineteen forty eight. So
those worked, But we are only now beginning to put
back the wrongs that were done then because of the

(35:53):
speed with which they wanted to go and say, all right,
we need maximum production, maximum production here, and the land
won't take. Nature won't take the speed with which, all
of a sudden we have to deal with food emergencies
caused either by disease, natural disaster, or war. And I

(36:13):
think that's a very interesting yet short sighted thing. I mean,
Starmer's understood that the Americans are no longer going to
be the big guy in the bar fight who's on
our side. You know, the current American government have said
we ain't going to do that anymore. And he's actually
embraced and has understood that. Yet what he hasn't understood

(36:35):
is that, well, if we're actually going to start pluffing
our chests out against people like China and Russia, then
you can't really go into a war unless you have
secured your food security, because, like you say, certainly the
Channel tunnel's got to break down. I live very close
to Felix, though, and I can tell you there's a

(36:56):
lot more lorries coming this way than there are where
he's going towards Felix though.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, and you mentioned the Americans there. That's that's part
of this this long history that you have to look
at in order to work out why these things are
happening now. And some of these things you can only
see in retrospect like Atlee and the subsidies coming in
in this sort of new farming policy which was to
feed the nation and then to feed the to start

(37:25):
to feed the world as well, became part of that mission.
That's why we have the Archers radio show. The Archers
existed was BBC propaganda to train farmers into moving over
to these modern methods. That is that is that is
the official history of the Archers. While this was all
happening in the fifties and the sixties, Britain was repaying
back every for every bit of steel and bullet and

(37:49):
everything else that came over the Atlantic from the step
from America to support the war. I think we were
paying for Russian stuff as well. Meanwhile, huge amounts of
money was going going out from the States to go
into Germany and France and go to all the battle
the places where the world or two mostly happened on
the ground and reinstate their agriculture, reinstate their economies to

(38:10):
get them back up to speed, which then led to
a market just on the other side of the channel
that was then able to supply our supermarkets that became
that started to pop up from the sixties onwards. So
in a strange way, the Americans and NATO are partially

(38:33):
responsible for the decline of British farming. So the Americans
are responsible for dogs and farming, dogs farming, and Taylor Swift,
oh my god, a holy trinity and everything.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
But it is this.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
You can't separate out farming from and food from everything.
And this is this is an observation I saw today
or yesterday that a part of the problem we have
now is that everything's given over to a department to
handle within Westminster Whitehall, so it's this is deferent okay,
so this is just an environment and food and farming.

(39:13):
We're just going to deal with it on that. So
health won't have an input into it. Yeah, Finance and
the Treasury won't have an input into this, or Treasury
will deal with it, but farming won't get a say
in it. So but all of these, all the policies
that are being enacted, all of the decisions being made,
hit more than one sector, but they're being handled by

(39:34):
a department that is wholly focus on their brief so
things can't work. No, every policy is doomed for failure
because they just hit one aspect and all the bits
that they ignored then fall over, and then they spend
the rest of the term trying to work out how
to fix all the things that were knocked over by
one thing being announced utterly.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
I mean, if if you've only got a look at
the army, the army was a fascinating one, right each
each generation or each decade, you hear, oh, god, bloody
recruits are useless now. And so what it was in
the First World War is they were all underfed, too small,
and had weak lungs. Because most of the working classes

(40:18):
will certainly if you're recruiting into a northern regimen, they
had cold dust and slack on their lungs, and so
they said, oh that this was no good. Then you
come to my ear and generation, and there were people saying, oh,
they're no bloody good. They're all running around in plimp
souls all the times. Their feet aren't hard enough, so
therefore they're Now they're all saying, well, they're all unfit

(40:38):
buggers because they don't wear they wear plimp soles, but
they just sit there doing Xbox or something. Now, that
therefore is if you think military recruitment is relying upon
the health service the education system, the sports department. Everything
is is holly cyclical. But the one thing that I

(40:58):
think where this this, and I will put them on
the old show notes for this, but I think it's
very interesting. So a lot of the policies that they're
suggesting here are all about what if the balloon goes up,
what if there is a major shock to this country again,

(41:19):
because I don't think this country could withstand fifty percent
less food in their shopping baskets. I think that would
be the swiftest way to a revolution in this country.
And even Len grasped that. He said, you know, revolutions
are born on the back of hunger, so therefore if

(41:40):
you've got them hungry. And one of the interesting things
I see buried way down here is that they are
very keen on the research and development must be encouraged
and adequately funded. There should be incentives for farmers to
adopt new technologies and innovate to prove productivity, which is

(42:01):
what the SFI was supposed to be all about. But
also they're suggesting that there should be more research into
gene editing of so rather than sort of GM genetically modified,
they're advocating ge Now, I quite like that idea that

(42:22):
you're going to go and say, Okay, so we don't
want to spray neo nicotinoids over oil seed rape, but
let's go and find the gene that the stem flea
beetle doesn't like, and if we can introduce that to
the oil seed rape plant, then away we go. And
I was told because I was quite enthusiastic about this,

(42:42):
And a friend of mine worked for one of the
seed producing companies, and he said, one of there was
two reasons why we're so far behind with ge gene editing.
And he said the first one was the green movement,
because the green movement had made such a who ha
about GM that and going in sort of destroying research

(43:04):
sites and all that stuff. Back in the sort of
eighties they would all don NBC suits and run into
the middle of fields of maze and sort of run
around and set fire to it and stuff like that.
But he said the other thing was George W. Bush A.
What's he got to do with it? I mean, I
get the whole thing about Iraq. I know he wasn't
very good for that, but once he got to do
with that, he was such a fundamentalist Christian that George W.

(43:29):
Bush believed that it was interfering with God's way to
gene edit plants and cattle and anything like that to
go and get rid of disease. And because he was
this fundamentalist Christian, he refused to give licenses to the
States where let's be honest that they've got the money,
so they used to do most of the research into

(43:51):
most biotech stuff is done by him. So because of
his weirdo fundamentalist Christian ways, and he was a two
term president, we basically had eight years where there was
none of it, and we're still playing catch up now
courtesy of George Bush. So we can now say the
Yanks are responsible of dogs, dangerous cows, food insecurity, and

(44:18):
the lack of ge I mean God and Taylor Swift,
I mean goodness means.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
And Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift and a tail onto
that as well, is when Obama put the funding instead
into health and put it into disease and viral research,
which through matter of public record now part of which
went over to the labs in Wuhan. So if you

(44:48):
if you look at this is not crazy conspiracy theory.
This is sort of like matter of Congress report. But
the yeah there is that is the thing that the
development of it use very very basic monology, was funded
by the US State. Well, I never so it's all
the Americans fault. But luckily no one in America listens

(45:09):
to this podcast. The bigger in career than we are
in America.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
So probably bigger in wu Ran.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, yeah, welcome. So there's this thing about food pricing
as well. Is that piece today that food bills are
going to rise by two hundred and seventy five pounds
a year. This is not just a farming issue. This
is not just a food import issue. This is also

(45:38):
monopoly of supply issue. And now expectation from the public
that if you do something for long enough, you have
created a normal which then the public will fight to retain,
which is going to be a problem that can't be solved. Really,
it can't be solved internally, at least by saying we

(46:00):
all have to tighten our belts and do this now,
because you can say, well, where where am I tightening
my belt? It's everything's incredibly expensive at the moment, and
for a lot of people that really are struggling on
everything from rent through to fuel bills, and if you
dig into any one of these subjects you can you say,
why is that most so incredibly expensive? And you go, oh,

(46:21):
it's this thing, Oh, it's this thing. You know, fuel bills,
power bills are just going up again, but gas prices
globally are at their lowest they've been for two decades.
I think, yes, yeah, so it's there are other costs
in the system that are making that electricity price rise,
which isn't the cost of the raw materials. So you've

(46:43):
got that with food as well, that it's the whole
system from which it's not just the farm. It's what
happens after the farm there that gets you onto your plate.
That has to be improved as well, and that has
to be looked at. The problem is that there's so
many businesses and so many people involved there that it's

(47:06):
not going to get resolved quickly.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Well, I think that the supermarkets have become so big
and so powerful, not just in the fact of how
they set prices, but they are so big and so
powerful to our economy. All of the supermarkets, Footsie one
hundred companies, so many of our pension schemes are wrapped up,

(47:29):
will certainly be invested into the big British supermarkets. So therefore,
to actually control their monopoly over pricing would inevitably negatively
affect their profits. And if their profits weren't what they are,
we'd say, okay, food will go down in price. But

(47:50):
every single nurse, every single teacher, every single voter who
has got a private pension scheme, but I'm particularly thinking
of all the public acceector workers, they would immediately see
their pensions go fuck. You know, we've already heard an
announcement that they're probably going to even extend the national pension.

(48:12):
The state pension is going to be extended for another year.
So now you're going to have to be aboute hundred
and three before you can claim the state pension.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yeah, I'm never going to get one. I don't think.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
No, I don't. I don't think that. I think you
have to be a centenarian to go and get a pension,
a state pension soon. But they can't because they're so
the supermarket is so financially important to our economy that
you can't restrict them. So therefore, the only way that
you can really go and try and keep the price

(48:44):
of food down is to attack the producer and the producers,
and I was saying, okay, I'll just sell up. I
can't do it anymore, and again, oh damn, Which is
why the labor parties conclusion to that is to go
and fund third world countries to go and produce our food.

(49:06):
But clearly that is a short termism, and you know,
what is the quality of our food going to be?
Are we going to have a say over what the
Kenyan farmer sprays on his beans? I don't think so.
But also we come back to that whole point of
we've lost our food security completely. So that race to
cheap food has affected nature hugely because you know, every

(49:32):
time you go and make a cut to the price,
the production costs stayed the same. So therefore nature always
has to take the hit. But also were a bit
of a worrying time, and I think it's I hope
that this report is read and looked at. And I'm
sure there are people. You know, I'm a great critic

(49:52):
of the of the current government, and rightly so, but
I do think that when prices rise and there is
bound to be some sort of there is going to
be another COVID, there is going to be another war
of some description. There will be some virus that will
poke its head up and put major shocks on and
I don't know if we're capable even if we'thstanding it.

(50:16):
So perhaps it's time to go and address something. We've
got to do something, and perhaps one of those answers
may be ge.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Yeah, you can't. I think we can't accept. I think
we have to accept that we can't have all outcomes
at the same time. Equally, we can't just say, right,
we're going to have full access for people and nature,
and every farm is going to be successful and everyone
gets a job in farming, and there's loads of countryside
for everyone, and the towns have plenty of places to go,
and we get clean energy, and you get this, and

(50:47):
you get that, and you get you have to say, okay,
pick three, pick three of those things. You can have
food for everyone and everyone gets a job and it's secure.
So you can't have clean energy or nature or play
is to be or you can have lots of nice
country side to go in and everyone's happy and everyone's
got somewhere to ride the bike. So you can't have
food because a lot of the land's given over to recreation,

(51:09):
or you can't have it so, and there's also probably
there's a holding capacity of population unless if you're not
going to go to blade run a type high rise
where that everything stanked vertically. There is a holding level
for the population of this finite land mass that we're in,
which sounds a bit Malthusian. But the numbers aren't numbering.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Now, I've got a list of people who aren't quite
happy can be culled. If that helps, I'll post out
in the show notes as well. I've done it alphabetically.
It's just just to make things easy. It's it's I thought,
you know, I want to make sure that if you
can just cook down and say I'm not on the list. Okay,
crack on Vegas has not decided that the sort of

(51:57):
Damocles is going to fall upon me. And there's also
Lord leg correct, yes exactly that you know. I am
like to think I'm an omnipotent ruler yet fair. Do
you know One of the things that always strikes me
as very amusing is that whenever you look at all

(52:18):
these issues, it does ultimately come down to population, doesn't
It is that you know, what is our population? What
can we do? It doesn't matter whether it's rewilding or
whether it's food security. You know, how many people have
you got what is to be sustainable? And you know,
it's clearly obvious that we haven't got a population which
is sustainable. Yes, our birth rate is dropping, but our

(52:40):
population is increasing because of the numbers of people who
are migrating here. And so it always comes down to
it that on whether you're the most left of left
green or whether you're the most right of right sort of.
You know, immediately anyone arrives on these shawls from a boat,
they are going to be own back in a barrel

(53:01):
into the sea. Doesn't matter which we have agreed the
fact that there is a population issue. But you know,
somebody has got to go and accept. Okay, well, who
are we going to lose? Then? Who were going to lose?
You know, are we going to go and have a
mass color of people. Is it going to be like
Logan's run You hit thirty two and that's it. Bugger,

(53:23):
I'm absolutely stymied. Or are we going to go and
have you know, immediate mass deportations of foreign born people here?
I don't know, but I mean, no one's actually really
prepared to go and embrace it and I think one
of the interesting things. I was listened to a fascinating
talk by David Starkey, who I know isn't everyone's cup

(53:45):
of tea, and he's been canceled by lots of people
because he has the onerous job of actually telling the
truth as he sees it most of the time. But
he was saying, you know that we haven't had certainly
since Margaret Thatcher, and that was probably only really in
her first term, someone who was prepared to make incredibly
tough decisions, not actually worry too much about her popularity ratings,

(54:10):
but go and say we've got a serious problem. We're
going to have to do something about it. And he
was saying, is that his claim is that since Tony
Blair came in, is that we're basically been this wishy,
washy gang of wetpans. I would say possibly that was
before that, but I think that's it. No one's prepared
to do it. And if I remember back to my school,
it was never the pushover teachers who I had the

(54:33):
most regard for. Now I think back on it, it
was actually the teachers who showed you a bit of
tough love and a bit of you know, I'm going
to give you the bad news here, because if you
don't do this, you're going to be bloody. You know,
you're going to have no career, You're going to be useless.
I think was about time. And I don't care who
that individual is, but I think we're going to actually

(54:54):
have to have a prime minister who's able to do
some tough love, make some proper hard decision. It's not
the ridiculous things that Starmer does and actually going, you know,
say okay, this is this is it? Lay it out,
what's and all that you can't have, Like you say,
you can't have your cake and eat it. What do
you want? I think it's going to be this. Let's

(55:15):
let's hope that happens.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
I was going to say something else then, but I
think I might save it for the after show, So
we'll go on to that now. Thank you, yes everyone
for listening. Yeah, we'll see what the game fair because
this will be coming out on Friday, so we'll all
be already doing stuff. So if you're coming on the
Saturday or Sunday, come and say hello to us. I mean, Richard,
you're there all three days.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
I am yes in the gw CT stand.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yes or wandering around somewhere. I'm there Saturday or Friday
on Saturday and bits of Sunday, and I think Callum's
there Friday. I think that's the way.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Just to confirm, Richard, you won't be walking around with
a sign hanging over you this year.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
I've been I've been told not to repeatedly by everyone.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
I have to say. Much as I love you, yeah much,
I love you, I'm not hanging around with you with
a homemade sign. You looking walking around looking like Hagar
the Horrible with a big sign over your head.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Good sign by one. It was a good sign. Yeah,
that's that's that's That's what the Saxons found when they
went over the Tamar. The lots of people that look
like meat holding sticks.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's why corn That's why Cornwell
got jeth Rope.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah right, we'll go on to the after show now,
goodbye bye,