Logic's not a strong point when folk talk about food and farming

Minette Batters should be able to do better than this but of course the brief she’s trying to follow doesn’t make sense either. “Give NFU members more money” is her message but that’s not really something that does make sense. So, she’s left with this sort of nonsense:

…the president of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters, said ambitious proposals to help farmers increase food production, first put forward last year by the government’s food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, had been “stripped to the bone” in a new policy document, and meant farmers would not be able to produce affordable food.

Batters said she had told the PM on Friday that farmers – including those in the West Country seat of Tiverton and Honiton, where a crucial byelection will be held on 23 June – were furious with post-Brexit policies that they believed would make them poorer and leave them unable to compete with foreign producers.

By definition if the food being produced in Britain were affordable then there’d be no problems with competing with foreign producers. Because they’d not be cheaper than the affordable home grown stuff, would they? And if British farmers can;t produce affordable food then fine, we’ll take that competitive foreign produce then.

Then there’s this delight:

His method was hailed by organic farmers as a blueprint to make Britain self-sufficient in food without compromising on the environment, and helping farmers to transition from intensive farming.

But by definition intensive farming produces more crop on the same amount of land. That’s what it means. So how would Britain grow more, on the same amount of land, by using a less intensive form of farming? It’s abject nonsense.

Logic seems not to be one of the things concentrated upon when talking about food and farming.