Monday, June 13, 2022

A HEARTWARMING HEADLINE

A HEARTWARMING HEADLINE

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN AGRICULTUREUNITED KINGDOM

It comes from the U.K., via the London Times: “Ministers quietly abandon ‘green crap’ as focus shifts to food security.” The threat of starvation, like the prospect of hanging, concentrates the mind:

Boris Johnson has scaled back plans to rewild the country as the government retreats from the green agenda to focus on the cost-of-living crisis.

Ministers last year announced a post-Brexit scheme that would pay farmers up to £800 million a year — a third of the farming budget — to transform agricultural land into nature-rich forests, coastal wetlands, peatlands and wildflower meadows.

Because who needs food? But that was then and this is now:

But the fund, called the landscape recovery scheme, has been quietly slashed to just £50 million over three years, less than 1 per cent of the budget.

The war in Ukraine has precipitated worldwide food shortages:

The UK is hugely reliant on imports, producing roughly 64 per cent of our food, down from 78 per cent in the 1980s.

A new national food strategy, due to be published tomorrow, will confirm a shift in emphasis, saying that land management schemes should reflect “farmer demand”.

Environmentalists are irate, mostly because they hate modern farming, which relies on fertilizers that come in large part from natural gas, as well as other chemicals needed to control pests. Sure, we could go back to farming techniques of, say, the 17th century. And thereby support a global population equal to that of the 17th century.

As for the heartwarming phrase in this post’s title, it comes from former Prime Minister David Cameron:

The tensions echo the storm that embroiled David Cameron in 2013, when the then prime minister was alleged to have ordered his aides to abandon “green crap” despite publicly vowing to run the greenest government ever.

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/06/a-heartwarming-headline.php

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