I have no idea if there are more of these types of incidents occurring or if they are being reported more widely for other reasons but pundits like Ice Age Farmer are pushing the line that these events are deliberate.
The story is ghastly although the life of a battery hen is a total misery, the poor little things.
But it’s the potential for human impact that’s the worrying thing.
If I remember correctly India scaled back on promises of grain exports because of depressed yield forecasts is they’d need most (all?) of the harvest domestically. And there seem to have been a constant stream of scary reports like these. Hopefully they are more ‘reasonable worst case scenarios’… but why?
One coincidence is likely a coincidence. Two coincidences is surprising. Three is suspect. Four is likely deliberate. Five is overwhelming circumstantial evidence. Finally, six or more is criminal and we are way past six.
The fallback sustaining-starch staple in thin times is spuds… Wonderfully satisfying food for shoe-string-living neo-peasants (can you sense my Irish peasant ancestors speaking through me? )
My turf-grown potatoes are growing deep-green, clean-leafed and vigorous. Try it! Dead easy, low-labour, clean-handed method. Any titchy little spare patch of ground - so long as the soil is properly fed before and/or during - can yield several sacksful per couple of kilos of chits; mum’s back-garden for instance, or the piece of guerilla-gardener squatted field-edge where I’m growing this year; and they’re storable for a year, done right…
We can have a chat about the detailed practicalities of this, if anyone is feeling the cold wind of upcoming reality strongly enough yet…? These daft little grass-roots (no pun!) initiatives are the upcoming wave of the future, as Times get ever more Interesting. Canny surfers should be starting their ride right now…
I’m gob-smaked at the huge amount of growing land that remains totally un-planted on the estate where I live…hoping we can get hold of this issue and encourage a much more proactive attitude (esp. for the poor half-starved -in more ways than one-, kids)!
Right G! It’s everywhere you look. We’re really not serious about full-fledged home food production, Cuban or Chinese style. Not yet. We need the WW2-style ‘Dig For Victory’ enthusiasm to get that going. (Though of course, I’d say: ‘Mulch For Victory; Don’t Ever Dig!’)
Neighbour of mine worked for years in tech., in the rich Gulf States, and acquired a Chinese wife whilst he was there. They have a boat here which they visit now and then to prepare for their retirement. Every time they turn up, within days, she has Pak Choi and other food plants set and growing, on the bank of their mooring. That’s the right attitude: any little pocket-handkerchief of land can be co-opted, as well by St. George’s Hill Digger-style guerrilla-gardening as by formal land title.
Trouble is, despite all the current hyperventilation over rising prices, the most of us still have it ridiculously easy, and won’t budge from just lazily latching on to the teats of the local supermarkets - until we’re forced to get going with our own food productions, by genuine hardship, the likes of which we Pampered Twenty Percenters have never known in Britain in our lives this past seventy years or so.
If one watches UK Column News, you’ll have seen several times, coverage of the so called green agenda. Lots of talk about food security but lots of farmland being ‘set aside’ and no longer producing anything except a good space for butterflies and other wildlife.
I am firmly opposed to mono culture agriculture and intensive farming but bio fuels and set aside just highlights the government’s hypocrisy on this (and of course on every other!) issue.
Coming up. If I can get a neighbour to take some pics with a phone, I’ll see whether I can get one or two onto the thread - though I may muff this, being computer-illiterate. I’ll put it in a new thread.
but I can’t see the Ruling Mafiosi backing such a campaign: self-reliance on the part of the population reduces their leverage. Weak docile peasants reach for the cudgels rather less. Fill them up with calories and no nutrients and they’ll stick to the couches and Britain’s Got Talent.
It’s almost as though they actually don’t care about public health at all, despite banging on about it incessantly. Might it be a covert proxy variable for that rich, delicious, control they so savour…?
)
but I can’t see the Ruling Mafiosi backing such a campaign: self-reliance on the part of the population reduces their leverage. Weak docile peasants reach for the cudgels rather less. Fill them up with calories and no nutrients and they’ll stick to the couches and Britain’s Got Talent.