Wow, I was about to write a similar comment, but you said it much better than I would have.
I just have a question about the “farms that operate at 80% full capacity.” Are you sure there are many such farms? I’d imagine most operate on thin margins, so it would be unusual for them to have unused sheds or significant spare capacity without a good reason. That said, Vasco listed other ways farmers could increase supply to meet demand quickly without building new farms in this comment. For what it’s worth, LLMs seem to disagree about how important such effects are.
To me, perhaps a bigger issue is anticipation. Once investors know that new farms face a high risk of being blocked or delayed by protests, they may (a) decide not to build farms at all (but someone else might build them instead), (b) shift their plans to other countries where protests are less likely, or (c) submit more planning applications than they really need, expecting some to be blocked. And if investors in other countries see a disruption in UK supply, they might also respond by building more farms abroad. If that’s true, the first few farms blocked might have much more impact than those blocked later, once the market has adjusted to the likelihood of farm-blocking efforts.
Wow, I was about to write a similar comment, but you said it much better than I would have.
I just have a question about the “farms that operate at 80% full capacity.” Are you sure there are many such farms? I’d imagine most operate on thin margins, so it would be unusual for them to have unused sheds or significant spare capacity without a good reason. That said, Vasco listed other ways farmers could increase supply to meet demand quickly without building new farms in this comment. For what it’s worth, LLMs seem to disagree about how important such effects are.
To me, perhaps a bigger issue is anticipation. Once investors know that new farms face a high risk of being blocked or delayed by protests, they may (a) decide not to build farms at all (but someone else might build them instead), (b) shift their plans to other countries where protests are less likely, or (c) submit more planning applications than they really need, expecting some to be blocked. And if investors in other countries see a disruption in UK supply, they might also respond by building more farms abroad. If that’s true, the first few farms blocked might have much more impact than those blocked later, once the market has adjusted to the likelihood of farm-blocking efforts.