Easter this year will be so close to Brexit that Scottish sheep farmers and English and Welsh ones for that matter will be waiting nervously to see if many of them will still be able to sell the lambs they have worked so hard to grow. Europe is the major market and if a no- deal Brexit occurs it will have disastrous consequences. A fall in the £ and tariffs of 40% on our lamb being sold to EU (the biggest market) will mean they wont be able to sell it.
The price will drop so much that it wont be economic to feed and keep these lambs – this will lead to the biggest mass cull of lambs out-with a disease containment incident like ‘foot and mouth’.
The wreckage of Brexit will have caused this.The Tory infighting that is at the heart of Brexit and could bring this about could also be the trigger which ends many rural businesses linked with farming. We can accuse the farming community of having their heads in the sand and even for supporting the Tories, but we cannot accuse them of creating the conditions and crazy economics which sees hundreds of thousands of animals culled and buried in pits unsold all in the name of Westminster Tory political posturing. G