Ceteris Paribus

From here

Me: “[famers] can put up greenhouses anywhere (as long as it’s not too steep). Mushrooms grow underground.”

Bayard: “You still have to grow plants in something. If it was more economical to grow fruit and veg in polytunnels, everyone would be doing it already.”

Well not necessarily.

The point was that dairy farmers claim to be worried about Brexit, for some reason they say milk prices will fall if they can’t export it as easily, ignoring the fact that the UK might well be importing less milk and milk products as well, so it would largely cancel out and might even go in their favour.

But let’s assume they are right.

The economics is this:

At present, with milk prices as they are, the most profitable use of a certain field is dairy. Putting up polytunnels to grow fruit and veg is less profitable. More income but more expenses. So the rational thing to do is dairy.

If milk prices fall sufficiently, dairy will less profitable or even loss making. At which stage, polytunnels and fruit and veg is the more profitable alternative. Probably not for Welsh hill sides used for insanely unprofitable sheep farming, but the best use for those hill sides is just let trees grow on them (or whatever grows naturally on Welsh hill sides).

Plus I’m not sure Bayard is even right. Take a train across the Netherlands and the entire countryside (the small gaps between towns) appears to be covered in polytunnels. And, despite being such a small country, the Netherlands is the second largest food exporter in the world (the article has a photo of the one single field not covered in polytunnels or surrounded by housing).