For what possible reason would a government pay farmers not to produce any food?

3 months ago
12

"The next thing I'm going to tell you is unreal because now we've been offered two and a half thousand pound to join a scheme for three years. We don't supply you any food.
I am going to plant a field. I'm going to put spring barley in. I'm going to get four hundred and forty pound off the government per acre. OK.
That when it comes to crop size, leave it rot in the ground. So I don't get no straw for the cattle. You don't get nothing for your bread, for everything we make, okay? But I can also plant bee mix, which is for birds and bees. I can plant wild bird seed, which is for wild birds. I can also be paid to buy a ton of wild bird seed like anybody puts in their garden for the birds and drew it out on the ground. What's the meaning? I can get paid for that. Now my accountant says do it because in doing that I've not got to buy fertilizer which since the Ukraine War has gone from 250 pound an acre to a thousand pound a tone.
So in order to fertilize your food, I've got to buy fertilizer at a thousand pound a ton. It's come down a little bit and sometimes and it goes up a little bit. But that's basically where we are. So I've now got a crop that I don't have to spray. I don't have to send nobody out there with a tractor. I don't have to fertilize it. But I can just leave it in the ground and let it grow. I pick up my 440 pounds an acre and go all over it again and the government is giving me £2,500 for the next three years to do that. Wow. I'm not the only one. Yeah, why?"

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