Farmers urged to vote to stay in the EU

Feb 25, 2016

Referendum scheduled for June 23

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

Britain’s environment secretary Liz Truss insisted to farmers that they vote for Britain to stay part of the European Union when the vote is held on June 23.

According to The Guardian, while at the National Farmers’ Union annual conference, she classified leaving the EU as a “leap into the dark.”

Stay or go

As part of the EU, Britain can export agricultural products to 27 other countries without trade barriers and tariffs, and reach about 500 million people.

“We are able to export our high quality products freely, without the trade barriers we deal with elsewhere and with a say in the rules,” she said.

Farmers who attended the conference appeared to have mixed feelings about whether or not Britain should remain part of the EU.

Livestock farmer Tom White told The Guardian that he’s confident Britain will be leaving and he supports it. He said it will remove any inefficiencies.

Other farmers said they support Britain leaving because of there’s not enough support for farming.

There are also those that support Britain remaining part of the EU.

Simon Bainbridge, a sheep farmer who sells most of this product within the continent is one of them.

He told The Guardian that leaving a free market would be wrong, especially with the volatility in prices.

According to an Oct. 2015 article in The Guardian, leaving the EU could cost farmers between 35 and 50 percent of their gross income and only the most efficient 10 per cent would be able to operate successfully without subsidies.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.