Imagine you ran a dodgy bus company. You offer very cheap fares
and frequent services, because all your buses have dodgy tyres, no
insurance, inexperienced drivers etc etc. You use cheap fuel, so
that your buses keep breaking down. After a while your safety
record is so bad that despite your cheap fares no-one will use you.
In fact several people have died in accidents due to the state of
your buses, reckless driving by your drivers, and their novel,
experimental, anti-highway code driving. In fact you are broke, and
have a fleet of useless broken down buses. What you are now
entitled to is compensation from the Ministry of Transport. No?
Well since farmers began feeding bits of dead animals to
herbivores (sheep and cows), keeping animals inside cramped
crowded buildiongs, not what they were designed for, stuffing them
full of antibiotics and athoer artificial chemicals, ditto the (GM)
crops - all in the name of cheap, plentiful food (the Western World
has an obesity problem, not a lot of this surplus gets to the
starving South, but thats bot the farmers concern) we have had one
farming crisis after another. And a few fatalities (CJD). Some of the
crisis is external, the high £, price lowering by the supermarkets,
etc, but a lot is due to farming methods. Sp why compensdation. It
surely can't be because the farmers are the "guardians of the
conutryside" as, prarie-factory farming in Lincolnshire aside, much
farmland is in a very artificial state. "Disease free" farms restrict
access by ramblers, in case some evil walker brings in some
bacterium which the poor delicate chemical-stressed flock can't
cope with. Farmers go bust and the countryside returns to a state
of wilderness? Loss of rural employment? Farms have already shed
many jobs, many villages are inhabited largely by wealthy
commuters, and I guess a return to a bit of natural wildlife wouldn't
go amiss in the very artificial state the rural parts of much of Britain
is in.
Hillary Shaw, P/G Geography, University of Leeds
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