Economists put reason for divergence down to Brexit and Britain’s energy price guarantee

Snapshot of Eurozone inflation falls to 5.5% in sharp contrast to UK. Economists put reason for divergence down to Brexit and Britain’s energy price guarantee.

  • G4Z
    5·
    1 year ago

    No, the disruption to supply chains from covid and brexit have driven investment decisions to grow more in the UK and to use tech to replace low skill labour that wasn’t possible with FOM providing serfs to grub about in the dirt. Cheap labour is a barrier to tech. Modern slavery is a big issue in farming

    I agree, modern slavery is an issue as is paying these workers too little these are really domestic problems though which we still have thanks to the government farm worker visa scheme importing them from the RoW anyway. Germany and Finland both have FoM and they have 2 of the top vertical farm companies (one of them even has a project in Bedford apparently. So I don’t really see how they can do it in the EU, and somehow we couldn’t?

    The CAP was designed to deliver cheap food during conflict, it’s failed at the first real test.

    It was designed to ensure food security and nobody has gone hungry so that’s not really true is it.

    The CAP takes the largest slice of the EU budget and the ‘modern’ farming it encourages have destroyed biodiversity and soil

    Natural resources including CAP, CFP and any other rural and environmental measures so that’s not really true either is it? Also, even if you do include all that, it comes second to Growth projects (38% vs 47.01%)

    Policy to fix this has failed miserably to the tune of our entire net contribution to the budget of 66b

    Hasn;t Brexit already cost more than our total contributions over 47 years? We were close to that according to Forbes 3 years ago.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/01/21/brexit-costs-close-to-matching-britains-total-eu-contributions-infographic/

    So we’ve spent multiple times more than EU contributions would have been for the last few years to fix nothing, and stimulate an industry that is apparently already thriving within the EU.

    Doesn’t sound like a Brexit benefit to me, it’s just loss after loss.

    • emerty
      14·
      1 year ago

      Infarm’s farm went bust.

      Hasn;t Brexit already cost more than our total contributions over 47 years?

      No

      Even by the measure that the OBR states, GDP per capita, UK was 2nd in Europe in 2016 and is still 2nd in 2022. The economic impact has been massively overstated.

      https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=GB-XC&start=2016

      Investment may have been delayed, but that’s just delayed. There’s plenty of money looking at undervalued UK companies in deeptech and fintech

      • G4Z
        51·
        1 year ago

        No

        What on earth do you mean ‘No’.

        Even by the measure that the OBR states, GDP per capita, UK was 2nd in Europe in 2016 and is still 2nd in 2022. The economic impact has been massively overstated.

        What’s that got to do with what I asked you?

        I’m talking about a figure that’s been spent/lost or not earned due to Brexit, and the OBR puts it at well over 200 billion now. Which is more than we ever spent on the EU in total over 47 years. Just a fact mate.

        Investment may have been delayed, but that’s just delayed. There’s plenty of money looking at undervalued UK companies in deeptech and fintech

        Or maybe, investment would have been even higher in the EU and we might have some of the top vert farm companies, like Germany and Finland does eh?

        I really don’t think you’ve demonstrated at all that Brexit has benefitted the vertical farm industry like you said it has.

        Simply, no Brexit benefits here, as per usual when you scratch the claim even slightly.

          • G4Z
            21·
            1 year ago

            It’s paywalled, perhaps you can quote me something relevant?

              • G4Z
                31·
                1 year ago

                Thank you very much, I’ve read it, but it doesn’t support what you claim and it’s actually quite a lightweight document.

                Your claim was that Brexit was a gift in the agri tech on account of the disruption and increased costs of farming associated with Brexit.

                This is the only part which strikes me as relevant to this claim

                None of these is necessarily bad, and there is a wider framework to consider as technological change offers up what Gove called the ‘third agricultural revolution’.43 The coming of digitalization, and with it robotics, provides the opportunity to switch from labour to capital, and hence the restrictions of migrant labour and the associated higher wages may accelerate the process, and this in turn may increase productivity, which is low in British agriculture (partly because of the cheap labour reducing the incentives to digitalize). There may now be the necessity to, for example, get robots to pick soft fruits.44

                The case for gene editing in agriculture is substantial. There are also considerable advances in indoor farming, urban farming, and the moves to insect- and plant-based proteins to replace meat production. British agriculture in 2030 and beyond will be very different, and in assessing the impacts of Brexit on British agriculture, the impact of policy on the deployment of new technologies will form a major part.

                Lot of ‘may’, ‘could’ heavy lifting going on there. Certainly doesn’t refute my point that all of this is/was entirely possible in the EU, and in fact the biggest vert farm companies are in the EU, not in the UK.

                Sorry mate, I gave this argument every chance to prove a Brexit benefit, this one is still very much ‘not proven’ for me, unless you have something better?

                • emerty
                  11·
                  1 year ago

                  Opportunities obviously have to be couched in possibilities. Or do you really expect 40 years of bad subsidy to be undone in 3 years?

                  Vertical farming is just one aspect of CEA, and before covid and brexit the UK didn’t need vertical farms. Now we do. Necessity is the mother of invention.

                  There are plenty of other areas that the UK can regulate based on science rather than feels now.

                  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2321556-uk-to-relax-law-on-gene-edited-food-in-post-brexit-change-from-eu/

                  And other than agriculture, AI

                  https://ukandeu.ac.uk/ai-in-the-eu-and-uk-two-approaches-to-regulation-and-international-leadership/

                  • G4Z
                    21·
                    1 year ago

                    I mean, you said it was a gift, and now you’re back tracking on that quite rapidly.

                    Vertical farming is just one aspect of CEA, and before covid and brexit the UK didn’t need vertical farms. Now we do. Necessity is the mother of invention.

                    Sure, but I don’t see how they’ve made it necessary in the EU and have 2 of the biggest vert farm companies, and somehow we couldn’t?

                    There are plenty of other areas that the UK can regulate based on science rather than feels now.

                    Right, but you’ve seen the shitshow we get from Westminster right? What makes you think policy will be any better, if anything our government seems to consistently make worse decisions than the EU does in my view.

                    On AI, that’s just another lot of maybes, and so far I can’t see any tangible benefit you can point to in that article.

                    Further, the EU changes and modifies it’s legislation all the time as well, so any future ‘benefit’ over being in the EU could just as easily be undone at a future date and then whatever advantage we had will be gone.

                    I don’t think any of this is anywhere near justifying or mitigating the enormous damage that has been done to this country, it would be nice if there was at least something but I don’t see it.