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17-05-2020, 08:11 PM
1

Plastic in the Med

Plastic in the Mediterranean is killing the sea life.
Much of this comes from Almeria in Spain where hundreds of acres of plastic greenhouses produce luxury vegetables for Europe.
All the plastic degrades and ends up in the Med as micro fibers.
Unless things change drastically it will become a filthy barren sea.
its time we stopped buying out of season veg its wrong.
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17-05-2020, 09:01 PM
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Re: Plastic in the Med

Originally Posted by Muddy ->
Plastic in the Mediterranean is killing the sea life.
Much of this comes from Almeria in Spain where hundreds of acres of plastic greenhouses produce luxury vegetables for Europe.
All the plastic degrades and ends up in the Med as micro fibers.
Unless things change drastically it will become a filthy barren sea.
its time we stopped buying out of season veg its wrong.
I've been banging on about this for ages Muddy. And not to mention the pollution aspect from distributing it all around the world....We have the means locally to produce many foods that we are shipping in from other countries.
While ever we are sending all our kids off to university, they end up over qualified for farming the land, and don't want to get their hands dirty, hence the army of foreign workers shipped in each year to do our dirty work while most of the grads languish on the dole....
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17-05-2020, 09:10 PM
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Re: Plastic in the Med

It’s not they don’t want to get their hands dirty at least not all of them . It because it’s a future less backbreaking I’ll paid work living in shared trailers.
This is fine if you are a student wanting some fun and a bit of cash. It no good when you want a home and family.
Fruit picking is low paid manual labour how can they pay off their ruinous student loans what hope is there ?
It not so with Eastern European labourers . They can see an end and a benefit. With the money they earn here they can be well on the way to owning a house in some east European countries . Once they have that they can provide for their families on a low wage .
We in the uk have told our children study get a degree and the World will be your oyster not trailing behind a mobile factory at 2:00 am picking a useless vegetable like brocalli.
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17-05-2020, 09:36 PM
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Re: Plastic in the Med

Originally Posted by Muddy ->
It’s not they don’t want to get their hands dirty at least not all of them . It because it’s a future less backbreaking I’ll paid work living in shared trailers.
This is fine if you are a student wanting some fun and a bit of cash. It no good when you want a home and family.
Fruit picking is low paid manual labour how can they pay off their ruinous student loans what hope is there ?
It not so with Eastern European labourers . They can see an end and a benefit. With the money they earn here they can be well on the way to owning a house in some east European countries . Once they have that they can provide for their families on a low wage .
We in the uk have told our children study get a degree and the World will be your oyster not trailing behind a mobile factory at 2:00 am picking a useless vegetable like brocalli.
There are lots of farm labourers around here who don't live in a shared trailer Muddy. They live at home with their families and go to work like anybody else. Some of them even manage a farm of their own eventually and employ their own workers. Most of them didn't go to university, started at the bottom and worked their way up through hard work and long hours. Trouble is there are very few young people with the passion to replace them, so we end up with large conglomerates taking over the farms and importing cheap labour, mostly from abroad.

I know a lot of young people who have earned degrees in worthless studies and are now flipping burgers in MacDonalds. Most of them that are working are not doing the job that they studied for at uni. Such a waste of money and disillusionment after attempting to follow the dream of a better future.
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18-05-2020, 02:00 AM
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Re: Plastic in the Med

I don’t know where you live OGF but I live in the Cotswolds .
There are practically no farm labourers as such . The farms are run by farmers who inherited the farms from their parents their own children having been to the prestigious agricultural college nearby drive the tractors and will eventually come into their own. Farm labourers have as much chance of buying a farm as fly in the sky . Unless you are a pop star or other celebrity how does anyone buy a farm ? all the former farm workers ‘tied’ cottages Have been sold and renovated as bijou residences for those who aspire to country living and walk about in green wellies ( the £200 + a pair type ) in the rural village I live in there is not one single ‘farm labourer living in a house because there is not one single farm labourer.. In most of the picturesque cotswold villages it’s the same . There are practically no one living in them who works on the land unless they are the farmers sons. Even when I was younger farm labourers didn’t start at the bottom and work up . Once a farm labourer always a farm labourer working up was not an option . Farms were passed on to farmers sons ( no inheritance tax) who if they didn’t have a farm managed the farms of other farmers. In my village now one farmer works his own land . Another works his own land ( that he inherited from his father ) and employs one general labourer - that lives in social housing in the town 11 miles away . The rest of the land hundreds of acres is owned by the main land aristocratic owner of the region . He does employ people - none of whom live in the village . His own father had many tied cottages but over time time sold them off . None were affordable to farm labourers or their children who usually moved as adults into nearby towns . Only the well off live in the countryside here . A house sold in the village lately . It’s unique but not large with no land and sold for the staggering price of £800,000 . Farms cost millions of pounds even should they come up for sale .There is a massive divide between the rich and the poor . The haves and the have nots perhaps things are different where you are but somehow I doubt it .
Foreign farm workers are not generally employed by farmer jones but by massive corporate farms supplying supermarkets . They are merely cogs in a wheel of the vast factory farming machine . Most farms are highly mechanised they don’t need armies of farm labourers . Only the more delicate fruits and veg need physical labour and this is seasonal . How do you build a life on seasonal labour ? So you break your back for six weeks each summer what then ? As many people are NOT lazy why aren’t they all flocking to pick veg? The most usual reason is that is does not give a living wage in this country .
It’s the same in other countries .
In Spain those plastic greenhouses we were talking about in are not worked on by Spanish peons but by poor illegal immigrants from North Africa who live and work in appalling conditions to provide the haves of Europe with off season strawberries .

That is the truth about farming today .
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18-05-2020, 03:35 AM
6

Re: Plastic in the Med

What a sin! Unfortunately I don’t have a solution.
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18-05-2020, 03:36 AM
7

Re: Plastic in the Med

That’s a beautiful picture you painted in your avatar Muddy.
Very well done.
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18-05-2020, 05:45 AM
8

Re: Plastic in the Med

Bratti thank you but alas it wasn’t me - my Avatar is Whistlejacket painted by George Stubbs . Isn't it a magnificent painting ? The original which is in the the National gallery is life size. Whistlejjacket was brought to Stubbs for him to paint but when the painting was nearly finished Whistlejacket who was notoriously bad tempered tried to attack it thinking it was another horse !
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18-05-2020, 07:50 AM
9

Re: Plastic in the Med

I watched a programme about these acres and acres of plastic greenhouses last night I think it was Simon Reeve in the Mediterranean . I was shocked , the plastic is just left to rot and pollute and it showed how its embedded itself into a dried up river bed ready to go into the sea when the rains come to kill the seas . Then Simon spoke with a young African immigrant who told of his beatings by his millionaire boss and showed us where he and 25 others lived or I should say squalered in disgusting accommodation . His message to his fellow men was dont come here . His friend had died whilst working under the plastic of heat exhaustion and as he said just thrown away by his millionaire boss . It was shocking to watch . Those poor people and our poor planet .

I did not know that is where my salad and veg came from it really has made me think and upset me
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18-05-2020, 08:08 AM
10

Re: Plastic in the Med

It upset me too susan I do try and not buy imported vegetables .
I felt very sorry for the young man articulate even in a language not his own and obviously intelligent doing this brute work in appalling circumstances.

There are many North Africans in Spain they are all taken advantage of in some way .

No wonder they want to come to the uk we are at least humane.
 
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