Big J on radio 4..

[Conor Wright]

1 hour ago, difflock said:

Like what happened in NZ then.

Not familiar with what happened in nz. Did it work?! I live under a mossy rock and news can be a while coming my way!

[AHPP]

2 hours ago, Paul in the woods said:

I'm assuming the laws of supply and demand remain the same. Say farm land is £10k an acre due to the demand from farmers. Allow anyone to build on it then the demand rises and the price will go up. Not to the same price as a building plot today but I bet it would be far more than £10k an acre.

 

Then you wonder who would buy it. Not your average person because you've instantly crashed the property market so there wouldn't be many places to borrow the money from. There's plenty of wealthy people with cash who would hoover up the land, probably not those who really need it though.

 

In order to make the land available to most people you'd need very strict laws governing who could buy what I'd guess - something you wouldn't be in favour?

Yeah. Everybody will move out of the cities. This and the next housebuying generation are noteworthily keen on rural self-sufficiency. No. Wait. Hang on. They like Nandos.

And whilst demand will go up a bit because people can buy to build (and some will want to), supply will go up WAY more. Then there are plenty of places nobody wants to build etc.

 

Don't blame non-interference for crashing a market. Blame who built the house of cards. Then ask yourself if that crash would be so bad.

 

Exclusive land value tax probably deals with most of the other problems you envisage, for a while anyway.

 

 

 

 

[AHPP]

1 hour ago, Big J said:

The farm to the back of the site where we are presently working is run by a lovely couple whose method statement (as quoted) is "we're paid not to farm". So 180 acres in total, 20 of which is non-production woodland. They are on all sorts of countryside stewardship grants and as best I can tell have a small number of cows and earn the vast bulk of their income from the subsidies.

I'm afraid they're not lovely. They're parasites.

[LeeGray]

I don’t think anyone gets paid ‘not to farm’ anymore. The truth is most are too old or lazy or whatever to change what and how they farm so take the easiest route which can involve not doing anything. It’s a real disaster tying up land that’s not being used efficiently for food production or public goods.

[Paul in the woods]

4 minutes ago, AHPP said:

Yeah. Everybody will move out of the cities.

I didn't say, and don't think, everyone will move out of the cities. (Actually will there be an outside of cities if there's not planning restrictions, will one city just merge into the next?).

 

But, there's plenty of people who are willing to move out. Those people buying up all the rural property and pricing Big J out of the market for one. Many would have loved the chance to buy a large chunk of land and build a new property rather than buy and expensive, run down farm, and renovate.

 

As for a land tax, very John McDonnell.

[eggsarascal]

6 minutes ago, AHPP said:

I'm afraid they're not lovely. They're parasites.

Funny old world, if you're poor and claim benefits you're a good for nothing fucking scrounger, if you've got 200 acres and claim benefits you're lovely.

[Big J]

10 minutes ago, eggsarascal said:

Funny old world, if you're poor and claim benefits you're a good for nothing fucking scrounger, if you've got 200 acres and claim benefits you're lovely.

They are very nice people, but just have a different mentality towards land usage to me. I have a practical approach as regards land usage in the UK. We're not an especially large country and I feel that land needs to be used productively, whether thats for food, timber or other raw material production. Productive use of productive land would leave plenty of marginal land for rewilding, and certainly in terms of forestry, an ecologically valuable woodland can be an economically valuable woodland too. 

 

Personally, I would never constrain myself with stewardship grants if I had land, as it would hamstring me in so many ways that I'm sure that I'd feel that having my own farm was a burden. 

 

One thing I do feel I'd try to do (if I was lucky enough to end up with a few acres) is to have whatever woodland I owned open to the community (I draw that distinction between community and public - people from my village/locality versus from everywhere). Open access, as it's practiced in Scotland is a bit of a nightmare when it comes to land management, but I'm finding that the endless "Private land, keep out" signs down here are too far in the other direction. Responsible access as opposed to universal access, if that makes sense.

[tree-fancier123]

Maybe our laws on foreign ownership of land and residential property don't help. 

 

Also the goverment arent considering food security with all the relaxed planning. A serious drought all accross europe, or even warfare.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

48 minutes ago, eggsarascal said:

Funny old world, if you're poor and claim benefits you're a good for nothing fucking scrounger, if you've got 200 acres and claim benefits you're lovely.

Nail meets head ??s

 

nevermind “benefit street” if folks were aware of the scale and scope of public subsidy and beneficial business terms provided to the ag sector there’d be outrage!

[difflock]

1 hour ago, Conor Wright said:

Not familiar with what happened in nz. Did it work?! I live under a mossy rock and news can be a while coming my way!

Agriculture in New Zealand - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

In the very first paragraph, ALL agricultural subs were  removed in the 1980's