He his-self's Blog

June 2008 - Posts

• Highland Show

  We are fortunate that Scotland has the very best agricultural show in the UK. Yesterday had a real buzz about it, peoples heads are not down trying to survive anymore, they are up and looking to a bright future. The show has it all, superb livestock, all types of machinery, food, clothes, forestry, renewable energy, climate change, agricultural research, education, a new single government agency (Scottish Environment And Rural Services) and much much more besides. A most pleasing sight were the thousands of schoolchildren and a few harassed teachers joyously exploring and learning all about food and agriculture while thinking they were having  a fun day out. I did not agree with some of the stuff on climate change see http://www.macaulay.ac.uk/videos/cc/ It might have helped if they had asked some real experts (me for a start) about what will happen in the future. All of the above scenarios are fanciful at best and do not reflect what farmers are actually doing now and real achievable plans for the future. The vision of rosy cheeked happy communities got right up my snout as one who has actually had to deal with the "community" and deliver real change. The bankers were smiling, mine anyway, the rest of the economy might be flat but the rural sector in general has a very bright future. We have a government that has the right general idea for the rural areas but still has not got delivery of those ideas particularly the SRDP on track yet. Farmers were smiling even machinery dealers the most notoriously miserable of men couldn't help the odd sly grin. Its great to be a farmer just now.   Posted Jun 20 2008, 10:11 AM by He his-self with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Food, SRDP, Highland, Climate change

• Hail

  Part of the joys of farming in the north are the long days we get here, sunrise is at 4AM and sunset after 10PM. It give us a chance to relax outside when when the weather is good and work in the office when it is not.  I have been pondering the direction our business should take after a conversation with a Government official. The SRDP system here has been a total failure so far and I was trying to find out why. After a long talk, the exasperated civil servant said " the scheme is not for your benefit, its to put money into things we want you to do" The poor civil servant clearly did not like the fact that rural people might have ideas and priorities of our own and we might think their ideas and objectives were total nonsense. It is clearly going to be almost impossible for farmers to get any sort of support or benefit into the real rural economy with this scheme. As we are one of the lucky ones to have survived this far my attitude is hardening that the government is the enemy, not to be trusted, certainly not believed in its propaganda and probably best ignored. So I have decided to use an agent for any further dealings with the SRDP despite the costs involved, they are of course much less honest than me but will therefore be much more successful. We will use the SRDP to build real food producing capacity, the exact opposite of what it is clearly intended for. I think almost everyone else will do the same. I must be getting much more awkward as the market is now a better bet than any environment support scheme. This change in attitude is going to lead to a lot of trouble as both consumers and government have failed to see the world has changed. I cannot compete with Kansasfarmer for the size of hail or volume of rain but I bet we have him beat on temperature, it was 5C here this morning and the freezing level will be below the mountain summits all day, June better get my wellies washed for the Highland. Posted Jun 14 2008, 09:55 AM by He his-self with no comments Filed under: Food, SRDP, Highland