Opinion: In the land of the blind

In the HG Wells version the blind people decide that sight is an aberration and demand that the one-eyed man should have an operation to remove his eye, and bring him into the world of the sightless. 

If there was ever a better parallel for where we are today I have yet to find it. It matches almost every reaction the public and government have to common sense being spoken. 

A great Arab saying holds that common sense is the only thing in the market that has no value at all: because those who have it don’t need it and those who don’t have no idea what it is. 

What has brought upon me this feeling of futility? Well, I am in Orkney and my dear friend who runs a nearby farm told me that the Danish government has just decided that 65% of its Grade 1 land should be turned over to solar panels. This piece of genius matches the complete idiocy of the Dutch government to buy out around 11,200 farms by 2030 with the view to take them out of agriculture to reduce emissions.

Meanwhile, Nature Scot is stopping a project worth £700m in order to potentially save 1.4 birds of a species that does not even nest in that area. Insanities abound. Despite this, my friends in agriculture and aquaculture continue to try to find ways to invest in business. From what I hear, however, they are becoming a rarity. If that is true then we are in deeper trouble than we can get out of easily. 

The world is experiencing a very turbulent period of weather. As the vegan/vegetarian agenda takes hold, we grow increasingly dependent on weather. Stock farming is, to some degree, adaptable as animals can survive on many sources of food. Plants need sunshine and rain, but not too much of either, and at their usual times. Unpredictability will bring about not just large price fluctuations but also unexpected shortages.

In the UK and Europe we are not used to food shortages. China, Russia, Africa and other places have experienced starvation in living memory but we have not. There were limits on food during the second world war but, in the UK at least, no starvation. 

We have become blasé about food arriving in our markets, and affordable food at that. This situation is going to change, and to a large extent that is because our governments have elected to reduce food production because (paradoxically) scientists are telling them that there will be a catastrophe.

I am not here to argue it one way or another but I can tell you that reducing food production in an overpopulated world will result in very bad things. The UK for instance is nowhere wear self-sufficient in food and importing what you need to live will only work when there is a surplus elsewhere. We saw what happened in Sri Lanka when that started to really affect the population there.

I feel a bit like the one-eyed man sometimes, but then I talk to farmers and realise that there is an army of the one-eyed in this country. We can see what is coming but we are not, and will not be, listened to because the government and their advisers think we have something wrong with us. I really hope I am wrong but I am yet to find a farmer who thinks I am. I also hope that they don’t start to think our premonition is an aberration and follow the script of the HG Wells story.