Foxes after baby owls.
- Thread starter silva
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I don't think its anything to do with helping poor people eat meat, commercial interests and government don't give a monkeys about poor people. Factory farming is about agribusinessmen, processers and supermarkets making the maximum profit for the minimum amount of investment and bother.
If the market was forced to change to higher welfare standards and hence better quality grub, it could be made to turn itself around in no time at a very similar price structure. There is nothing more resourceful than a farmer or supermarketeer.
In the meantime the general population have just become accustomed to eating ropey food and drinking low quality alcohol. have you noticed that you now have to eat gold brand foods, just to get the same quality of food as standard brands from about 30 years ago. How awful cider has become for instance, crap thrushy bacon that shrinks to nothing when you cook it, tasteless pork that won't cook proper crackling, dull androgenous lager that gives you a bad head.
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Aaah so you think the good old days were better?
My Gandad budgeted to spend one third of his take home pay on food.
In real terms food is cheaper than it was ten, twenty or fifty years ago. Its the consumer that drives the businesses - don't kid yourself. If people wanted high quality food, its out there. But, the vast majority of people want "cheap" so they get it. They shop where the weekly shop is cheapest. This creates large supermarkets with economies of scale, and monster farms.
If people want small farms, they can go to farmers markets, to the farm gate, grow their own etc. But most people want cheap, convenient, accesible food. So they go to Tesco. No-one puts a gun to their head. If Tesco open a new store and people don't shop there because they want local, high quality food, then they would close it. I know, I sued to work for them. But the truth is, food that represents a lower proportion of take home pay is more important to the majority. I wish it wasn't so, but, working for major retailers for thirty years, I know that it is.
I spent three and a half hours making caramalised onion chutney today. I grew the ingredients. I could have earned the money to buy that quantity in twenty minutes. Most people won't make that investment - or pay for those that do.
Sad, but true.
Red
You are right, in terms of protecting livestock, now when the youngsters are out and just before lambing are the best times, otherwise I think there is always a fair number of drifter foxes circulating that just move into the deceased's territory.
For conservation reasons - ground nesting birds, game and suchlike it is best to constantly keep on top of them. Though the same can be said of crows, magpies, stoats and weasels - so you just end up in the situation of shooting creatures all the time. The problem is you hear sorry tales of, "conservation groups", getting hold of wetlands, turfing the wildfowlers off the lease, then not keeping on top of the vermin with disasterous results to the bird numbers, far worse than the sustainable annual shooters bag.
It is a shame though, as these creatures are so beautiful and clever and work so hard to rear their young against the odds, just for someone to come along and shoot them. However lambs going missing, sheep predation and munched up nests probably make it a necessary evil.....
I never said the good old days were better, its just the food was better quality. Old people bemoan food quality more than youngsters who haven't known any different. To be honest I don't think food is cheap anymore. If you don't earn much money like most normal people, you probably still spend 1/3 of your wages on food. The point I'm raising, is that with economies of scale, food could still be competitively priced but produced to a higher quality. How can it make economic sense to import ham from south america, to sell in a supermarket in wales. And why does food in farmers markets cost so much - because its only being produced in tiny amounts.
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I suspect otherwise - people shop down to a price - not up to a quality. I am very lucky - I get to work long days trying to feed my family and preserve food and do it in a sustainable way. I know and work alongside many farmers - their hourly rates are atrocious - most would be far better off selling up. Supermarkets make a profit sure - but people choose to shop there. If they want to they can go to the farms and the farmers markets and get better food - but few do.
I wish it were otherwise, I really do, but its not.
I wish it were otherwise, I really do, but its not.
Meat farming is booming, farmers are making more money than ever - they just pretend to be poor, its just something they all do.
Theres only a range of supermarkets left to shop at now, theres no choice involved, people have become accustomed to shopping there. Indeed most of the new roads in towns lead to one. Supermarkets could raise the standard of food production with little effect on prices and I think they will be forced to in the end.
The poor people being able to afford food arguement, is just a smokescreen for disinterest and profit. I think us poor people deserve to eat quality grub to sustain us in all the hard work we do.
Anyway I thought this thread was about owls !
Goodnight !
Theres only a range of supermarkets left to shop at now, theres no choice involved, people have become accustomed to shopping there. Indeed most of the new roads in towns lead to one. Supermarkets could raise the standard of food production with little effect on prices and I think they will be forced to in the end.
The poor people being able to afford food arguement, is just a smokescreen for disinterest and profit. I think us poor people deserve to eat quality grub to sustain us in all the hard work we do.
Anyway I thought this thread was about owls !
Goodnight !
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Its a great pretence - my neighbours rising damp, falling apart car and 16 hour days are very convincing.
However any time you want to spent a couple of million on a decent sized farm, another half million on machinery and then make a huge profit, I'll be the first to sign up for your seminars!
However any time you want to spent a couple of million on a decent sized farm, another half million on machinery and then make a huge profit, I'll be the first to sign up for your seminars!
#
Other than that Marketing gun perhaps? I, personally, buck the trend - I don't shop at Supermarkets, I do shop at farmers markets, honesty boxes and I occasionally grow my own. The big difference isn't effort nor availability - it's availability of knowledge - either where to buy locally, that it's even possible to buy locally or even that you can make/grow/train your own. The genuinely sad fact is that as a species we're more or less led by the nose by marketing and sales people who neither make nor do ANYTHING, other than lead us to the trough to be 'fed', for a price.
I agree Adam - but we do have free will. I opted out (having worked in senior positions for big retailers for many years), I now grow a lot of my own and get most of the rest from local farmers - who I also do work for. I speak about both farming and retailing from decades of hands on experience. No-one make us buy this way. You are living proof of that. But convenience, price and marketing is enough to convince most people to take the easy path. We may wish it was otherwise - but (thankfully) we live in a society where people are free to make those choices.
With all due respect, the marketing men and the accountants make us buy this way - do you really believe, hand on heart, that supermarkets can't use their immense buying power raise the quality and welfare standards of food ?
Why should we be thankfull that a small group of supermarkets have a monopoly and dictate the standard of food we eat and how its produced, thats nothing to do whatsoever with freedom of choice or ecomomics !
You don't personally have to eat it and have admitted to having "opted out", as you can afford too - but expect the rest of us to put up with poor food as an inescapable fact of life !
So speaking as an ex-senior executive for a major retailer, during your experience gleaned at the helm, do you feel it has worked out well for anyone except the shareholders ? Certainly not the animals or the general public.
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Supermarkets don't have a monopoly in this country silva. There are many indpendents you can buy from. Nor do they dictate the food we eat or where we buy it. There is a plethora of independent food producers and retailers - veg box schemes, nearly free allotments, online organic retailers, farm shops, markets, the list goes on.
Why not get an allotment and grow your own? I'll happily send you some seed to get you going. No allotments available? Get into land share - plenty of people have set up private schemes.
Or shop from your local farm store? Or go to the markets? Buy a part share in a pig from a pig farmer - then process the meat yourself after slaughter.
We can all make a difference - a wise man once said
No-one makes you go to Tesco. If enough people shop differently, the supermarkets will change. Whilst people still buy on price, they won't.
Red
Think the thread drift has gone far enough here - sorry to the OP 
Silva - if you would like help in sourcing non supermarket obtained food, please shoot me a PM, I'll happily provide you with a lsit of online sources of high quality food.
Even better, if you want to try producing your own, I'll happily provide all the advice I can, and materials if I have them.
Lets take any further chat by PM
Red
Silva - if you would like help in sourcing non supermarket obtained food, please shoot me a PM, I'll happily provide you with a lsit of online sources of high quality food.
Even better, if you want to try producing your own, I'll happily provide all the advice I can, and materials if I have them.
Lets take any further chat by PM
Red
The Tawny was hunting voles on a field beside a woodland. It landed on one about 3m from the woodland edge at the meeting point dense grass that was about 0.5 of a metre high and recently grazed grass. Just after it struck and was looking up to take off the fox was just there as if from nowhere. From the angle it came from, it looks like it was in the dense grass already.
Yup, seen 'em do that. And the other way around:
http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43184&p=670663#post670663
Let me see if I've got this right...
Man destroys over 98% of the wildlife habitat in the British Isles. http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/humanimpacts/deforestation.html
Bird populations plummet. http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/teaching/resources/science/decline.aspx
So to save the endangered birds Man decides to kill species which kill birds.
Have I got that right?
I think I'd support the idea if we could extend it to its logical conclusion, which seem to me to be that. once we get the fox population down to dangerously low levels. we start killing the species that kill foxes.
As far as I know there's only one of those of any significance.
