Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/12/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Walker, I was brought up on a mixed farm in Lancashire. We grew potatoes, mangles, wheat and barley. The barley was milled on the farm and mixed into the animal feed. The mangles were for the stock too. We had 600 lambing ewes, milked 120 cows, had about 200 beef cattle fattening, 500 pigs and goodness knows how many laying chickens. Farming is desperate in the UK now, it was the major casualty of joining the EC who's agricultural policy was designed with the French and Italian peasant farmers in mind. The farm makes about 1/20 of the income it made in the 60s, its efficiency blighted by a policy worlds apart from the British post war approach. The irony is that whilst farm incomes have dropped to 1/20 the land value has increased 10 fold! Most British farmers would be better off selling their farms, investing the money and sitting around, rather than working 7 days a week. Farming is in the blood though and most hope for improvements. Frank On 28 Dec, 2004, at 02:53, Walker Smith wrote: > GeeBee, thanks for the reply and I'll be interested in knowing what's > actually planted there. I'd often take back roads around the East > Anglian countryside and the yellow fields of rape stretching over the > distant hills was always beautiful. > > Frank, you're likely right. I've seen all of those crops in East > Anglia and there was a huge sugar beet processing plant along the main > road through Bury St. Edmunds. Sugar beets were - and I suppose still > are - a major cash crop there. Lots of rape, corn (wheat) and maize > too. I was amazed to see farms of 2,000 acres or more. The average > dairy farm where I grew up in the states was more on the order of 300 > - 400 acres. There were even a few cattle growers and some farmers > worked two and even three farms which expanded their potential quite a > bit. > > Walker > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >