Re: Effects of food import tax
>And yet, farmers aren't purchasing this equipment
Not objecting to your observation (and frustration), as I noted the UK was and continues to be a bit of a technology luddite...
I think it has something to do with UK management/establishment group think... Brexit (regardless of what finally happens) might be the beginning of the end of the well-entrenched Conservative establishment...
>Instead the newspapers are just saying that we need to import fruit pickers because British workers who have done their GCSE's...
Yes, one of the blatant contradiction in Brexit, large numbers in farming areas voted for Brexit as they wanted less immigration, ie. East Europeans, yet, don't want to do the work themselves...
Personally, I would like a post-Brexit government to actually deliver on the "will of the people" and massively reduce immigration, now that would be a wake up call to some groups of ardent Brexiteers...
>The other option of course is importing automation equipment
Err why? :)
A couple of examples:
Uni of Lincoln Robotics Research
If anything the UK needs to impose import tariff on farm automation equipment; something it can do today albeit with the approval of the EU (although it can use the national security waiver like Trump does as such equipment can be regarded as being essential to the nation's food supply), which given the purpose of the tariff would be to protect R&D and manufacturing jobs within the UK/EU, is likely to be rubberstamped.
>The latter might need a few things to help it get started .. but why is this not being discussed in the media? It's like there is a conspiracy of silence over this issue but it seems pretty simple.
Suggest you take a look at Australia; they have a similar problem. Conservaitve's claim labour costs there are too high and thus by implication they need to be reduced. However, there 'traditional management' businesses don't see that the real problem is productivity and that even with zero labour costs they still won't be competitive with foreign businesses who have invested in automation and other productivity enhancements.
Whilst M.Thatcher's policy decisions did kill a business I help found in the 80's (ho hum...) her government's CIM initiative was trying to do the right thing and give British manufacturing a kick up the backside with £incentives to change. I've not seen a subsequent government with half the talent...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
